Uganda children to perform

A group of children from Uganda will visit Temple Baptist Church to share African music and dance with the public at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The Watoto Children’s Choir will present its new tour, “Beautiful Africa: A New Generation,” featuring 22 children age 8 to 13.

“We not only get to see and experience something different, but also to be a part of something different, something that’s making a difference,” said the Rev. Randy Jaspers, senior pastor at Temple Baptist Church.

The concert is free and the public is welcome to attend. A freewill offering will be received for the general fund of Watoto.

The performance will be part of a larger tour, with the previous night spent in Sioux Falls, S.D., and the night after the Jamestown concert in Bismarck. While in Jamestown, the children and their adult chaperones will be hosted by nine local families.

“It gives us a window into another part of the world that we would normally not encounter,” Jaspers said. “To really experience things firsthand — few of us will ever get to go to Africa, but here Africa is coming to us.”

The choir is part of the ministry of the Watoto Church, a community church in Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

According to watoto.com, the choir has traveled around the world, serving as advocates for African children, since 1994, presenting Watoto’s vision and mission.

All the children have lost one or both parents to war, poverty or disease.

When at home, they live in Watoto Children’s Villages, which are small communities of “families” — each three-bedroom house has a housemother caring for up to eight children in it, with running water and a bathroom. Each village has schools, a clinic and a multi-purpose gathering hall.

For more information about Watoto or to hear a sample of its music, visit watoto.com.

Sun reporter Kari Lucin can be reached at 701-952-8453

or by email at

klucin@jamestownsun.com

Tags: life, religion