5 - Saving Homes

Summary

[Those who are not revivalists] they don't repent, they don't really know one another. If you really open your heart, I never hide anything from [my wife]. She’d never hide me anything. We are one. You find really the journey is very, very smooth. You find the journey is very smooth.

—“Isaiah,” March 6, 2012

Introduction

Mary's home was located several miles north of Mbale, a modest town in eastern Uganda that is nestled on the western slopes of Mt. Elgon. Even at ninety-two, Mary had a liveliness in her voice, and she warmly invited me into her house—a tidy, homely, four-room concrete structure whose exterior was a freshly painted yellow. It was not an extravagant house, but it was clean and well swept; things were in their place. Jerrycans arranged according to size and color stood along one of the walls of the dining room, which we could see from her living room, where we sat. I asked her about how she kept her home. She responded:

When you accept, God gives you knowledge even if you are not educated. For me, I’m not educated. I can do things better than these who are educated with degrees because God is the one who gives me all this knowledge. If God says, “Do this,” you can do it. And the reason people are like that, they want to be an example to other people so that others can know that the saved people are like that—are clean. Because as old as I am, I tell the children do this and that, and they do. You can see even with the jerrycans there, they are ordered because all that knowledge comes from me… . And all the time I pray to God, “God, give me more knowledge. Even in these years I need your knowledge.”

For Mary, who converted to Balokole Christianity in 1945, being a Mulokole meant that she had to organize her life and her home around new values, values that came from God-given knowledge. She was saved, but her salvation did not seem to be concerned simply—or maybe even primarily—with eternal life.