Christmas in Uganda (guest blog post by Marissa)

I got the privilege of staying with Sara and Anthony over the Christmas Holiday. Not only did they welcome me with good food, they actually made it feel a bit like Christmas in this 90 degree Ugandan heat. They are both pretty intentional people so we had everything from an advent wreath to a “Home Alone” viewing! Each tradition that we participated in here had a little piece of Uganda added to it. The advent wreath was laced with Bougainvillaea flowers and our Christmas tree was an orange tree cutting. We dyed our Christmas cookie frosting with Moringa and Malabar Spinach seeds and our stockings were filled with fun/weird Ugandan (but actually Arabic) candies- like cardamom/coffee gum and tamarind gummies. Of course we had a turkey for our Christmas meal, but we butchered it ourselves!

(We also butchered a chicken)

We only traveled once and it was over the weekend to a church across Lake Kyoga. I had been living on the coast in Kenya about a month ago, so it was nice to see some water and palm trees again.  Despite a few hitches, the hour boat ride definitely beat driving in a car for 9 hours around the lake. The Nile River travels through Lake Kyoga and the whole thing was lined with bushy Dr. Seuss looking papyrus! I grabbed a few reeds and tried my hand at making paper so I could bring back a fun gift for someone. Unfortunately the reeds didn’t stick to each other like they were supposed to after soaking them. I also couldn’t get them sliced as thin as was necessary so my attempt at papermaking wasn’t very successful.

Papyrus!

Despite our busy schedule of cooking, baking and general Christmas activities, I truly had a chance to rest. I was safe and in one place for more than a few days (traveling for months at a time can be exhausting). I got a chance to read “The Last King of Scotland”, brushing up on some of my Ugandan history. There was even time for morning runs and afternoon naps.  Christmas is truly restful in Uganda.

Here are a few more highlights from my Ugandan visit:

-Carrying a live chicken like a football on a half hour motorcycle ride while sitting on fresh fish

-Selling said chicken out of the window of a car to a group of drunk men

-Visiting the Marisa Café

-Drinking a cappuccino at the Marisa Café!

-Receiving a hand sewn “gathering apron” for Christmas from Sara (with support from Anthony)!

-Trying to keep a fire going in Sara’s recently constructed cob oven for 3 hours and then satisfyingly baking pita and loaves of bread

-Anthony’s Christmas Sunday sermon at the church across the lake

-Simply looking at Sara’s beautiful garden and eating yummy veggies everyday

-Rolexes (egg wrapped in chapatti)

-Taking their dog Caleb for late day walks

-Caleb also was neutered while I was visiting and I got to watch the operation as Caleb was injected with horse tranquilizer while I stood under the shade of a mango tree (Not necessarily a highlight, especially for Caleb, but it was interesting getting a chance to watch)

-Talking with the church about Creation Care with Sara

-Entertaining a group of children by gargling water, bouncing an orange on my elbow and catching food in my mouth. (see panoramic photo below)

-Going for a hike in Mbale

Wazungu are apparently very interesting

This is what success looks like.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas from Uganda!

Happy Christmas!  Here's a little bit of the Christmas celebration that's going on at our home in Soroti.

A Christmas tree with homemade decorations.

 Traditional Christmas breakfast (in the shape of a C instead of a wreath, but still...C is for Christmas).

 Holiday baking with our friend Marissa who's staying with us for Christmas:

 Cookies dyed with natural colors (powdered moringa leaf, turmeric, and malabar spinach fruits)

And the Christmas Eve lighting of the Advent wreath candles.  Candles of hope, peace, joy, and love.  And the final one, the Christ candle, as we remember Jesus' first coming and look forward to his second one.

A video of unpredictable Ugandan weather - hail and rain in the dry season...

Merry Christmas!

Introduction

A few weeks ago, we attended an Introduction for the first time.  This is a traditional party that people have before a couple gets married.  Relatives and friends from the man's side go to the place where the woman is from and meet up with all her relatives and friends.  In a way, it is a place for the two families to see each other and to officially approve of the couple as well as the dowry. 

It was crazy how many people showed up from the man's side.  They had to wait outside this little arch for a ribbon to be cut so they could be let in to the party.

It was a very colorful affair, with music and lots of beautiful women in fancy dresses.

There was also a lot of picture-taking:

After a long time, the future bride showed up among the crowd of other women and her husband-to-be also was picked out from the sharp-looking men.  They marched around the venue so everyone could see and approve!

TLT Kaberamaido - Stewardship

Recently I was in Kaberamaido for the 2nd manual of Timothy Leadership Training, "Christian Stewardship."  Again, I was assisted by three Ugandan master trainers from Soroti.  It was a good turn up.  We had about 65 people in the first training and still had 52 this time.  One interesting thing I found out is that two of the pastors were a part of TLT way back in the day when it was still called "Project Africa."  They said the training is a lot more interactive than it used to be and they are loving it now.  TLT is continually updating and improving and God has used it in powerful ways in so many countries.  Here is a video of a worship time.

Part of this TLT was making reports about previous action plans from the training three months ago on pastoral care.  The pastors did have some challenges.  Some failed to fully complete their plans because of lack of time due to garden work, lack of money, and ministry scheduling conflicts.  But I heard many great testimonies as well.

Most of the pastors reported increases in church attendance as well as increases in the church offerings.  One church had 114 new people.  Another church had 100 new people because of making more pastoral visits, and giving had increased from 400,000 shillings to 1,000,000 shillings.  It's hard for me to believe, but God can do great things through these pastors when they make a ministry plan and are faithful to carry it out.

There were also reports of people being healed, families returning to church after being visited who had previously quit the church, people giving their lives to Christ on visits (10 people for this pastor, 5 for that one, etc.), and marriages being reconciled.  There were a few cases where the pastors were able to bring resolution and peace to neighboring families in the midst of land wrangles.  Many of the pastors were able to go out and teach the TLT lessons on Pastoral care to their churches. 

One lady visited prisoners at the jail.  Her ministry was successful and a few people got saved.  One of these was a young prisoner whose family had deserted him and so he could not get bail.  She prayed for him and then that very week she met him in a taxi as he was headed home.  His family had come and bailed him out.

My pastor friend Emmanuel had a plan to give marriage counseling to 12 couples.  He helped them through challenges about not getting enough rest, taking care of the children, and marital arguments.  In the process there were questions about family planning, and as it was out of his expertise, he found a nurse who could counsel the families with the knowledge that they needed.  After the counseling, the marriages were experiencing better harmony, and Emmanuel had them all come together for a big celebration and fellowship.

The bishop had a plan involving many of his evangelists to reach out to a neighborhood in Kaberamaido town.  In the end 120 people got saved and joined the main town church.  God is good.

One common challenge the pastors had was that their Christians expected the pastors to give them financial help or gifts on their visits.  The pastors are in most cases poorer than their Christians, so this is not viable for them to do long-term.  So we counseled them to get help from the church to care for these people instead of being forced to do it all themselves.

To go through this Stewardship manual, we divided into two groups.  I explained to you much of what this manual is about in this blog post from Amuria.  Generally it's about giving in church, financial accountability, and stewardship other areas of life.  This time Sara was able to come for one whole day of TLT, to assist in talking to the groups about all the different ways we can care for God's creation.  It was very helpful having her there, and of course the pastors loved having her and wanted her to stay all week.  I'm grateful that God has made the two of us a good ministry team.

We emphasized the problem of rubbish (litter) on the ground.  I had a chance to be a living example without thinking about it.  I was given a bottle of water and on the top is a little plastic wrapper that most people just throw on the ground.  As I opened it, I put the plastic wrapper in my pocket to take care of later.  When we came to the discussion of littering, one of the pastors mentioned how he saw me put that in my pocket and that he would not forget it.  They agreed to start cleaning up rubbish and not littering.  In fact that very day, many of them started picking up rubbish all over the church compound.

Again I did the demonstration using dirt.  Below is a picture of the bishop getting his hands dirty.  At first I asked them how they felt seeing their bishop get his hands dirty like this.  They said, "we are ashamed.  We don't want to see him do that.  But since it is a demonstration we will forgive you."  But then I went on to talk about how it is not shameful to work in the dirt or to be a farmer, that God himself worked in the dirt to create us, and he was the one who planted the garden of Eden for Adam and Eve to work in.  We talked about the problems of class division in Uganda and how most people think of farming as the lowest thing.  Initially, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do this demonstration again, but I am so glad I did.  They talked about it for a long time saying they wanted to do the demonstration in their communities as well.  It was powerful.

Below is a photo of some of the pastors praying over their new action plans.  There were many encouraging action plans about increasing financial accountability. 

•  The manager of the PAG's development organization in this district has a plan with the Pastorate secretary and accountant to train all PAG assembly pastors, secretaries, and treasurers in the whole district on accountability, recordkeeping, budgeting, and reporting at churches.
  
• Other pastors plan to train their leaders on this stewardship manual.  
• Many, if not most, of the action plans hope to see an increase in the amount of giving at their churches, through changes in financial accountability, and teaching the right reasons for giving.  
• A couple pastors are going to teach their members to steward their time better and stop coming to church services late!

• Many of the pastors are going to train their churches or families on the seven T's of stewardship - time, talents, treasures, tasks, terrain (environment), temple, and transmission (children). 
• One church leader is going to train the ushers on how to keep the church clean of rubbish and have them plant trees and flowers. 
• A youth pastor plans to make 6,000 bricks for the church along with the youth. 
• One pastor has a plan to have 200 trees planted on the church property. 
• A development worker has a plan involving 8 people who sell charcoal in the community; she wants to teach them and help them plant at least 10 trees each. 

Below is a picture of the students holding their action plans.

Here is a cute old lady who has the desire to learn and did not want to be left out.  Here she is holding up her action plan.  She is illiterate and her action plan is just a bunch of scribbles but I still accepted it with the others :)    All in all it was a great week, and I'm thankful to get to do what I do.

 

December 2014 Prayer Letter

Our prayer letter for December can be found Here.  Thank you for supporting us in prayer!

Tanzania Trip and WHRI Farm Reunion

During the end of November we took a week long trip to Tanzania (passing through Kenya).  We were doing two things.  First, we were visiting a school called Nassa Theological College near Mwanza in Tanzania, right on the coast of Lake Victoria.  It is the Bible college for the Africa Inland Church denomination in Tanzania.  This denomination is one of World Renew's development partners, so we were checking out the school.  We might write about the school visit another time, but this post is just to show fun pictures from our travels and pictures of our WHRI reunion which was the second reason for the journey. 

 

After visiting the school we went on to Arusha to visit Neil and Christy Rowe Miller.  Neil was one of our leaders and teachers at the WHRI farm, where we studied agriculture for one year.  Neil is now working in Tanzania.  It turned into a farm reunion because we took with us Emily who was doing an internship in Uganda.  Geoff doing an internship in Tanzania also came.  And then Ben and Marissa who were each doing work in Kenya came as well. 

 

So enjoy some pictures.  First, here are some men in Uganda carrying matooke.  We passed by dozens of bicycles loaded down like this, perhaps on their way to the border.

 

It took us 2 days of driving to reach the school.  Driving can be hectic, but God kept us safe and gave us energy for it.  Once we got to Tanzania, the roads became very well paved, and there was much less traffic.

Here is a photo taken from a hill above the school in Tanzania.  You can see Speke Bay, part of Lake Victoria.

Here are some animals we saw while touring the school.  I think this one is a red-headed rock agama.

Here is Emily holding a leopard tortoise.

Here is a baby bat that Emily found.  We think it looks like Gollum.

Here is a nasty big black scorpion.  The students quickly took off its stinger after the picture.

 

The map showed what looked like a highway from the school to the city of Arusha in Northern Tanzania.  To our surprise and delight it turned out that the main road passed through Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater National Park.  However, the fees in expensive US dollars was not a fun surprise.  But thankfully it turned out to be a great game drive even just quickly passing through.  (I don't recommend traveling through these parks in your own vehicle though because the roads were tough to plow through).  We'll show you just a few of the many animals we saw.

 

This is a bat-eared fox.  We also saw a serval cat, but we missed taking a photo of it.

This is a pack of striped mongooses.

This is a secretary bird.

The grasslands went on forever.  So flat.

 

This is Emily with us who was doing an internship in Uganda and staying with us some of the time.

We passed by several Masai villages and many herdsmen.

This is the Ngorongoro crater.  It was quite breathtaking, much like the Grand Canyon.

 

This is Mount Meru next to Arusha.

Here is most of us from the WHRI farm reunion on a hike.

A few people decided to go down into the middle of this small crater, and climb up the steep slopes.  If you look closely you can find Neil and Ben.

Silly synchronized jumping picture.

 

In Arusha on the way to church we had a good time trying to figure out the meaning of this picture on this bus.  Jesus holding a lamb, in a forest, and next to him it says, "the shark", with pictures of a shark and dolphins below.   Maybe they are trying to capture that Jesus brings both gentle grace and the judgment of a fierce shark?

 

Colorful bananas

On the way back home through Tanzania and Kenya we got a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance.

Then we randomly passed by a bunch of camels, possibly some kind of camel market.

In Kenya we spent the night in Nakuru and got to go to an American style restaurant called the Java House.  I had a hamburger, fries, and a chocolate chip cookie sundae.  We really enjoyed ice cream and milkshakes as a rare treat!