Katakwi TLT - Caring for God's People

Last week I began the first week of Timothy Leadership Training in Katakwi.  It went very well, though we only had about 20 participants.  However, there is blessing in this also.  With a smaller group the discussion is much more rich and people get more chances to speak.  It also allows me to really get to know some of the pastors.

Sara and Ben sat in with me for the first day to see what the training is like, but then they had other work to do during the week.  Ben is a friend of ours from the farm we were trained at in Texas.  He was already in Kenya on a trip so he came to visit us for a couple weeks.

Here is a picture of my co-trainer Lazarus, a pastor of Victory Outreach denomination.  He just became a master trainer with the rest of the Soroti TLT group.  God has blessed me richly with passionate, sacrificial, godly, and wise fellow trainers.

I've already written much about this TLT manual in other posts, so I won't mention all the good conversation, but I just want to tell you about the topic of healing this time.  Each lesson takes between 1 and 2 hours.  We spent nearly 5 hours on the healing lesson and that was with cutting the conversation short!

When we began the lesson, most of the group believed that God heals us every time we pray with faith.  I let them hash it out together for a long time before I did any speaking.  After hours of discussion everyone was in agreement that God always has the power to heal, but sometimes may not heal us.  Sometimes suffering in our life is part of his will and plan.  It turned out that at least some of the difficulty was a translation issue.  Some people were thinking God heals every time, and some people thought God heals any time.  Finally we were all on the same page that God heals any time, but not every time!  It was a very good discussion, in which we totally dismantled the health and wealth gospel.  People realized that God's will is important, not just the strength of our faith.  Before, most thought that if you pray with faith for God to give you ten vehicles, he will give them to you.  But now they realize he will only give to us according to his good will and purpose.  We went over many passages of Scripture about suffering in the Christian life, looking at the life of Jesus and Paul especially.

In the discussion, we were all able to agree that God can use medication and doctors to bring us healing, and he gets the glory even in that situation.  This is so important because there are still some preachers out in villages that counsel people to throw away their medication, and often these people die.  One interesting thing was that some people were under the impression that God heals certain things like malaria or sicknesses, but in the case of a car accident, God won't or can't heal, and you need to take someone to the hospital.  So we also discussed and agreed that God can do anything and heal anyone regardless of the situation.

As you can see in the photo below, it wasn't all tense discussion.  We had a good time too!

Another aspect of the healing discussion was about traditional medicine, witchdoctors, and local herbs.  This might seem like an easy issue to you back in the USA, but it is very complicated.  You have witchdoctors who are helping to heal people, truly helping, but doing so with religious rituals leading people away from Jesus.  While they may not be followers of Jesus, they do know of herbs that really work to help with sickness, many of the very same herbs that get used to process our drugs back in the USA.  So what should people do about clinics that use traditional medicine?  And should Christians go collect herbs from the forest to treat their problems?  We might quickly say "yes!" as long as its divorced from the religious rituals, and even development organizations often teach people about such valuable plants that God created.  But there are complications.  Firstly, many people incorrectly dose these herbs and hurt people, or they don't clean them correctly and people end up getting other health problems or worms in the process.  Secondly, this can easily be a stumbling block as the apostle Paul talks about.  It can lead people into thinking that witchcraft is okay.  So it's a tricky process, and most of the pastors were counseling that yes, those herbs God created can be used, but it needs to be a slow cultural change so as not to lead people astray.

Last in this lesson, it came out that not only the participants, but especially those in their churches fear death.  They trust in Christ, but there is still fear of God's judgment for sin after death.  We discussed the Gospel, that Jesus took the punishment for all of our sin.  It seems like everywhere Sara and I go, and every sermon I preach, we are continually hitting the message that we are saved by grace, not by works.  Maybe it is the lack of discipleship and teaching in Uganda, but it seems like most people believe that we are saved by faith in Christ, but also we have to make sure we do just enough to scrape our way into Heaven.

Here are some photos of praying over their action plans.

I'm very excited to see how God will use them.  Some are going to begin visiting their Christians regularly.  Some are going to train other pastors in this whole TLT manual.  A few ladies are going to visit the hospital regularly to pray for the sick.  One church is going to clean the grounds, and cut back "the bush" at a health clinic.  Others are going to try to reconcile people back who left the church.

Here are our gracious and joyful cooks from the week.  I ate well!

Testimonies:

“I am satisfied with this training, and especially on the side of healing, I really learned that God heals according to his will, and this has really lifted me up in my faith.”

“Next time when I come back I will bring for you any thing which I am not going to tell you now.”

“I have learnt to share/work together as a team in church ministry.”

“You need to have a plan in whatever thing you do.”

“We need to celebrate with people who have been released from church discipline.”