Sister Rosalba, head teacher at Mary Immaculate Primary School, and Jody
Whilst going on a jog on the weekend I ran into Sister Rosalba – the head teacher at one of our neighbouring schools, Mary Immaculate Primary School. During the jog I was listening to a Timothy Keller sermon about social justice. As always, it was a challenging word and made me mull over what social justice looks like in Gulu community and how I could try to put a piece of that social justice jigsaw together.
Along the way (and in the middle of my thought process) I ran into Sister. She gave me a lovely embrace and called me her ‘best friend’. She then went on to explain why she said that: “because you don’t give me money, you give me knowledge.” Sister then spoke about how children’s reading had improved so much at her school (it’s true – they are our number one government school in town… at the moment).
She was telling me how P1 children (reception/kindergarten) all want to borrow books and have a new desire and motivation to read. And how her teachers were now more confident in teaching. This was encouragement to my soul.
She then shared how it was her birthday that day – she turned 59!
Some of the children had given her one or two hundred shillings (up to 7c or 4p); a piece of soap and other small items. Sister then told me how she had accepted their small tokens of appreciation; and how it was encouraging to see children learn to be generous. This reminded me of a few New Testament parables and I returned to my musings about social justice. Still don’t have it figured out (probably never will), but happy to be on the journey with people like Sister Rosalba to encourage me along.
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 