Baking in Soroti

By Sara:

I've been having fun teaching a local business man named Isaac some new baking recipes and techniques.  He owns a café and a copy shop.  Anthony and I go to his copy shop quite often to make copies of our training materials.  When I went their to get copies of my baking instructions and recipes, Isaac was really interested and asked if he could make a copy for himself to try out in his café.  Later, when Anthony was making copies for TLT, Isaac asked him if he thought I'd be willing to come in to the café and bake some of those things with him and his staff so he can add new things to his café menu.  And so I did.  I've gone in a couple of times and we have tried out a bunch of different recipes.  Isaac is very motivated and excited about perfecting the recipes now that he knows generally how they go.  He likes making new things and having people try them (he always sends one of the things we bake home with me for Anthony to taste!)

Together, we made steamed cassava cake, steamed yeast bread, (American) biscuits on a frying pan, and fried cassava doughnuts.

Since he has a cafe, Isaac has these fancy deep fryers.  It is very convenient for making doughnuts.

The cassava doughnuts turned out really well and everyone enjoyed them.  Cassava cake was also a favorite.  Apparently the staff kept going to the kitchen all day and sneaking bites of the cake!

I got to learn from Isaac too.  He showed me how he makes his excellent chapatti.

And then we used the same frying pan to make flour tortillas.  Isaac is a natural when it comes to baking.  Tortillas are especially easy because they use a similar technique to chapatti.

Recently, I also did a baking training at Soroti PAG with our friend Agnes.  As always, homemade cakes are enjoyed by all.

10 things I love about my Ugandan pastor friends

By Anthony:

1.  They pray continually.  They pray when we start driving in the car, and pray again before we get out of the car.  They pray to begin the day, and pray to end the day.  They pray before every meal and before tea.  They lead overnight prayer times at church.  They lead days of prayer and fasting.  If you share a burden with them, they will pray for you immediately.  They pray long and loud at church.  They spend a lot of time talking to God and praising his name.

2.  They are always ready to share the Gospel, any time, any place, wherever they go.  Just last week during my training, some of the pastors were staying with me at the same guest house.  During their rest time after a very long day, they still found time to lead a young woman to Christ who worked there.

3.  They sacrifice.  Their lives look more like the apostle Paul's than like mine.  Like Paul, they know hunger, sleepless nights, thirst, and know what it is like to have little money.  They don't get supported by their churches very much (most get about $2 a month from the church), and have to work in their gardens to support their families in addition to serving as pastors.  Relatives sometimes call them "fools" for going to Bible college or serving as a pastor.  I have not known sacrifice compared to these pastors.

4.  They are tender with their families.  Family relationships in Uganda are sometimes hard to hear about.  There is a lot of domestic abuse.  There are a lot of marriages that are mainly functional.  There is rampant alcoholism and sexual infidelity tearing up families.  But when we see our pastors with their families, we see love in actions of service, and tender affectionate love through words and touch.  We see them take time to talk and play with their children.

5.  They laugh easily.  Their lives are full of joy and it is contagious.  Their smiles are quick and easy and genuine.  They tell jokes and have a good time.  They love laughter.

6.  They are eager to learn.  While it's true that some pastors out in the village don't see training as necessary, the pastors I know are very eager to learn.  They sacrifice to come to trainings and eat up the new knowledge.  When they go home from trainings, they take their notes with them.  For these pastors friends their rest every evening is not to play games like I do, but to read the Bible and read over their notes.

7.  They are humble.  At least with me, pastors here are so humble.  They are willing to listen and learn from me, a young man only 30 years old.  Even old wazee (old men) are willing to ask me questions and listen to me as if I was their elder and mentor.  Of course I am learning from them as well.  But it takes great humility, (especially in this culture where old age is respected), for them to give me such respect as a younger person.

8.  They are hospitable.  I can't count the number of pastor's homes I've been invited to.  Always they are so welcoming, along with their wives and children.  They serve us, feed us great food, and make sure we are comfortable.  And of course they have to sacrifice a great amount financially in order to do all of this, possibly even borrowing money from neighbors to host us.  But they act like it is all so natural and like it costs them nothing.

9.  They love their communities.  They do not just preach, but they act.  They reach out in love to people in their churches and communities.  They go and pray for the sick, they visit those in jail and comfort them.  They build new homes for widows.  They give food to the poor.  They counsel broken families.  They work for community reconciliation.  And much more.

10.  They love God.  This one is most important, but I believe #1-9 give evidence of this, so I will end there.

Of course these pastors are not perfect, and I haven't shared with you about their weaknesses (if only they could come to trainings on time!).  But in all seriousness, sometimes I look at my life and feel like a pagan compared to them.  They inspire me to take life more seriously, love God more intimately and passionately, and sacrifice to follow Jesus.

Emmanuel and Joyce's Demonstration Garden

Another friend of ours, named Emmanuel, who works for PAG in Soroti, and his wife Joyce, wanted to start a demonstration kitchen garden in their compound during the dry season.  Emmanuel discussed this with Eric, from Pennsylvania, who is working at Pentecostal Theological College in Mbale (where we used to work) and Eric agreed to come to Soroti to help Emmanuel and Joyce start it up.  I joined them too since I never pass up an opportunity to do some gardening!

After we finished setting up the garden and planting, we visited someone else from PAG who is raising tilapia and catfish in fish ponds.  It was really interesting!  She has quite the system going and said that she likes to relax by going to feed the fish if she is feeling stressed. 

Living with Beggars

As many of you know, we lived in Uganda for a year during 2009-2010.  That was the first time we had to struggle with how to daily live in the presence of very needy beggars.  I'm not talking about the children or adults who every day ask us to give them money, or demand that we give them our bicycles, or to give them our dog, Caleb, when they see us taking a walk with him.  I'm talking about the people truly in need, the beggars who sit around on the street or in the market.  These are people who are asking for help not only from mzungus, but also from fellow Ugandans.  Some of them are sick, or have bleeding injuries.  Some of them are missing fingers (or all of their fingers) or legs.  Likely some of these are injuries from contact with the Lord's Resistance Army in the past.  Most of them are very elderly and hobble around weakly.  Apparently (according to merchants at the market) the beggars have families they go home to at night, but they don't seem to be taken care of very well.  Here is a photo of our Soroti market where we go shopping and see beggars each week.

Back in 2009, it was easy to say "no" to the rude people who would demand we give them money even though they were not poor.  But with the beggars we were confused about what to do, especially while reading books about dependency on mzungus.  Largely, we ignored the beggars.  I'm not sure how to feel about this.  On the one hand, we couldn't give to every beggar, we didn't have time to talk to every beggar, and most of the beggars we couldn't speak to at all because we didn't know their language.  On the other hand, I have a very painful memory of eating ice cream outside of a supermarket in Mbale, while right near us was a beggar begging for food, and we did nothing but ignore him uncomfortably.  It was not the exactly the same, but it felt too much like the rich man who did not care about Lazarus (Luke 16).  I repent that we never even tried to help some of these beggars.  Thank you Lord Jesus for giving us grace and mercy!

In the past 5 years preparing to come back to Uganda, we have received advice and ideas from others and made a  commitment to ourselves to better care for beggars.  We still try to avoid giving foolishly and creating dependency, but we want to recognize the humanity of beggars and care for them in some way.

We decided to give food to beggars we see in the market each time we go shopping.  We give healthy, ready-to-eat food, direct from the market.  Honestly, it probably does not accomplish that much, but we hope that if we and other Ugandans give in this way we can at least sustain these elderly beggars to have food and drink for each day.  While giving in this way is not a long term solution, it makes me feel better than ignoring them.  And it is much better than giving money which could be spent on alcohol (Uganda is one of the leading countries in the world for alcoholism). 

I also feel that by speaking to them, it helps to restore some of their dignity.  They may struggle with shame, and feeling worthless, and there are inferiority-superiority dynamics between Ugandans and mzungus.   When we give food to the beggars we shake their hands, and speak our little bit of Ateso by going through a series of greetings, and then telling them, "God bless you."  A few Ugandans have seen us do this and thanked us for what we've done.  I had fun with one old lady beggar, who turned out to be a Pentecostal Christian and we enjoyed a whole series of "Praise God" and "Amen" just like we would do in church.

Giving food takes just a few minutes, but even this can be annoying when you just want to get your shopping done quickly and go home.  I'm just being honest about my sinful nature.  But overcoming poverty takes more than a few minutes.  I'm sorry to say I've only got over my sinful laziness one time in order to have an actual conversation with a beggar.  But that one time was fruitful.

It started by talking to a merchant selling potatoes near the beggars and I asked him what they do to help the beggars.  We had a good time discussing, and I asked him if he could give the beggar near us, an old man, a job selling potatoes with him.  The merchant could not do so.  But I said, "surely this man is able to do some kind of work.  Does he have any skills?  How can we find work for him so he doesn't have to beg?"   The merchant said actually the man knows how to make rope using old bags.  Bags like in this photo:

The merchant once in a while gives him old tattered bags that are no longer useable and he has made ropes from those.  But most people aren't jumping to give bags away.  So the merchant led Sara and me to a place selling second hand-bags and we bought a bunch for 3,000 shillings (which is about $1.20).  We were able to talk to the beggar through the translation of the merchant.  I affirmed his value as created by God, and affirmed that God had given him skills, even the amazing skill of making rope that I don't know how to do.  He agreed to use the bags to make ropes to hopefully start earning more for himself.  All of us want something meaningful to do in God's world rather than having to beg, so I hope he finds joy in his work.  My calculations are rough but I think he may have been able to make about 18,000 shillings through those bags and ropes, and hopefully he used some of the money to buy more bags to make more ropes.

We were hoping this man would not have to go back to begging again.  A week or two later, we went back to the market and I went looking for him.  He was not in his spot.  I talked to our merchant friend who said he has not been begging and instead was going around selling his ropes.  But unfortunately, weeks after that, Sara has seen him begging again.  Maybe we will have to go and talk to him and see what other solutions we can come up with.  I'm still glad we did what we did, but it seems it was still not a long-term solution.  If you have suggestions, be sure to let us know.

Life here is complicated, especially when it comes to poverty and money.  We definitely don't do everything perfectly and have ignored and shown frustration to plenty of poor people.  We need Jesus to help us be loving and patient each day.  Pray for us about this.  But we are grateful that God has been transforming our hearts and minds, giving us wisdom and desire to help more than we have done before.

Book Review: The Poisonwood Bible

This year I started reading books together with my friend who is also the pastor of one of our supporting churches.  We read a book each month and discuss.  The first book we read together was The Poisonwood Bible.  I thought I'd give you a few thoughts about the book in case you were considering reading it.

First of all, it was a very interesting book.  It is set in the Belgian Congo, what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is about the life and ministry of an American missionary family.  The book is well written, with interesting unique characters, interesting events (both personal and political), and it really gives you a whiff of the rich aroma of African life, down to gritty details.

Even though the book's setting is roughly 50 years ago, I was amazed at how many commonalities there are between the missionary life then and our lives in Uganda today.  We are still stared at and people still ask us for stuff every day, which is surprising since mzungus have been in Uganda for 100 years.  The book also reminded me again about certain things I love about African culture, and things I find disturbing and wrong.  Just like there are things I love about my own culture, as well as things in it that I find disturbing and wrong.

The book is very challenging regarding political and economic issues (though perhaps a bit anti-American).  It was convicting thinking about the role the USA (and other Western countries) has played in the destinies of other countries.  It's probably far too easy to judge our leaders for past events in hindsight, and yet, it is profoundly disturbing to think of the ways we have messed with the leadership of other countries for our own ends, especially because in some cases this has caused great poverty, corruption, or violence.  The book is of course fiction, but it parallels much that has really happened.  The book inspired me that as one very small voice, I need to do what I can to help my country act justly. 

I started thinking that if I can't control the huge large scale problems my country and other countries are causing, at least I can try to make a personal difference.  In the book, at times the individuals of the missionary family are at odds with the actions of their home country.  I think the same is true for us today.  The USA is a very generous country and is trying to help other countries, but often the giving is done unwisely and can increase corruption or dependency.  So as in the book, sometimes I feel like my country is doing great harm on a large scale, while I'm trying to do the opposite on a very tiny scale.  That can be quite depressing.

One of the main themes of the book is a very critical look at the pastor missionary father of the family.  In my opinion, he is an extreme caricature, as opposed to the other characters which are mostly balanced and believable.  I'm not saying that there never has been a pastor like him.  I'm sure there has been, but they must be an extremely small percentage.  He is abusive, racist, foolish, uncaring, unloving, hypocritical, prideful, selfish, and ridiculous in his missionary methods.  It was painful to read and I kept wanting to shout, "Not all pastors are secretly abusive and unloving!"  My concern is that the book perpetuates an offensive and inaccurate stereotype of pastors and conservative Christianity in general.  Most Christians I know are very loving, not hypocritical, and up front about their weaknesses.

I am also concerned that the book gives a false impression of real Christian mission work.  We live in a culture in which tolerance means pretending we all believe the same thing, and that love means not telling someone they are wrong about something.  We live in a culture in which trying to convert people is seen as intolerant, oppressive, and even hateful.  As I strive to help people see why missions is actually a loving thing, this book could work against me.  The author in a way sets up a straw man argument, a terribly intolerant (in the real sense of the word) racist example of mission work.  Such an example of missions makes it easy for anyone to criticize missions as oppressive and intolerant.  Even I, after reading the book, thought for a second, "should I even be a missionary?"

But the truth is, most missionaries today, are not like him in the least.  Missionaries are careful and culturally sensitive and not trying to take Africans out of their culture.  Missionaries are not doing their work to get a scorecard of converts.  They are sharing their faith with other people because they have experienced God's love through Jesus, and they cannot help but share that love with other people.  To not share how to have a relationship with God would be the most hateful thing to do.  See this old post for more on that.  Thinking about all of this, in some ways the book seems very anti-Christian, though it's possible that was not the author's intent, and maybe it was intended as a helpful correction to the errors of some Christians.

In the end, I would heartily recommend this book to young missionaries who are passionate in their faith and excited to do mission work.  Such a book will give them good challenges to work through regarding their faith, missions, culture, and politics.  And they will find it an enjoyable, if somewhat depressing, story to read.  Hopefully reading it would help reveal to them any ethnocentrism or racism that they might not realize they have (most of us have these to at least some extent).  And it's a book that helps us to think through the difficulties of presenting the Gospel in new cultures.

I am very glad I read the book.  It was a book that was hard to put down because it was so interesting and the characters were so colorful.  It was a book that made me think.  Yet, because of the above, I recommend it only with some qualification and caution.  If any of you do go out and read it, let me know what you think of it!

Conservation Agriculture Near Anyara

I had the fun opportunity to do a conservation agriculture training in a village church near Anyara, with one of our many friends named Emmanuel.  We spent one day talking about the theory - why it is helpful to try not to disturb the soil much, to keep soil covered, and to rotate crops.  Then, we spent another day preparing some demonstration gardens right next to the church where people will get to observe them.

We practiced using our hands to make measuring sticks and then marked out the spacing for planting on a rope.

Since it is the dry season, it was very dusty when we cleared the garden space.

Normally, we would leave a tree stump in a big garden, but we wanted to be able to compare the control plot with the conservation agriculture plot (without extra variables), so some guys took out a tree stump that was in the middle of one of the plots.  Emmanuel is the second from the left in the white shirt.

We took a group photo and plan to take another one later, when things start growing.  We can't plant until the rains start (probably in March), but everything is prepared and ready for planting.

Another cool thing about this training is that one of the participants is an organic farmer who had some materials about organic pesticides that he shared with the group.

He went out and found some of the indigenous plants that you can use and showed them to everyone as he explained the process of making pesticides with them.

Katakwi TLT - Christian Stewardship

I just got back from a week of Timothy Leadership Training in Katakwi.  It was very hot!  So hot that the pastors were complaining each day about it and fighting off sleep.  I was uncomfortable myself sitting all day with my clothes thoroughly soaked in sweat.  It is the dry season.  Each night of the training I slept in a 90 degree room with no fan (and had to listen to cocks crowing and Muslim calls to prayer throughout the night).  But regardless of such challenges, it was a very successful training.  Here is a video of morning worship.

As usual when the pastors reported on their previous action plans, there were powerful stories of transformation.  Many people got saved, families were reconciled, and even a health center was thoroughly cleaned by 24 church members, toilets and all.  It was a powerful witness to the community.

However, there were many action plans that were not successful.  You need to please pray for these leaders who are attending all of my TLT trainings.  I am certain that Satan is throwing up roadblocks to hinder these actions plans.  This Katakwi group is small, but in this group some had unsuccessful plans because of financial challenges, because church leaders refused to be trained, because a pastor's bicycle was stolen, because a pastor got very sick, and because a pastor got into a motorcycle accident.  Pray for them.

This time Lazarus could not come and be my co-facilitator, because he was on his honeymoon after just getting married!  But Baker came and helped me instead.  You may have read about him in Sara's recent post.  He is a gifted leader and was a huge help to me especially with translating.  His testimony is very interesting.  For example, I learned that he used to be part of the Arrow Boys, the local militia that fought Joseph Kony and the LRA near Soroti.  He is a very strong Christian leader and is doing important ministry as you can see from Sara's blog post.

I won't go into much detail about what we learned in this manual, as I've already told you in two other posts.  If you need a refresher, here are the links -  Amuria TLT - Christian Stewardship.  
Kaberamaido TLT - Christian Stewardship.

This TLT group is only about 18 people but that makes for very interactive discussion and people being able to talk much more than if they were in a large group.  I was privileged to have my World Renew supervisor, Edward Etanu, join this group.  It was funny helping him write his action plan one minute, guiding him what to do, and then the next minute during a break he was telling me about some things I have to do.  Not everyone is blessed to have such a humble supervisor.

A few Ugandans have beards like me, but not many.  This pastor says he knows most Ugandans think facial hair is scruffy looking, but he and his wife like his beard!

One leader, Tom, is a treasurer of his church, so he helped me by writing some example budgets to teach the students how to budget.  About half of the churches represented had never written a budget of any kind.

Here is Baker and a pastor helping an older women's leader who has trouble reading English.  The women's leader is 65 years old, but has the strength of a 30 year old.  You are never too old to learn.

I felt very loved this TLT as I was sent home with a monstrous bag of G-nuts (groundnuts, that is peanuts) from one student, and the women's leader above gave me a bottle of oil from the shea-nut tree.

Above and below you see students with their action plans. 

• This time most of the plans were about planting trees at churches.  
• Another leader has a plan to take care of his body through exercise and diet. 
• Another plan involved cleaning a local health center. 
• One pastor plans to train 7 church treasurers on report writing. 
• Another pastor hopes to see the giving increase at his church by 10%. 
• Another pastor, Richard, plans to train 6 pastors in the whole Stewardship manual. 
• An elder has a plan to give all 12 pastors in his assembly some time to rest (as they are all extremely overworked with almost no rest ever).  He is going to make sure they get a two day un-programmed retreat with their wives at a guesthouse. 

Pictures of Caleb

I've been saving up some fun pictures of Caleb to show all of you.  This is where Caleb is every day from about 10:00am to 4:00pm, when he is wiped out and sleeping.  It's hard to walk out the door!  We let him in the house sometimes too but generally he doesn't come in without permission.

Okay this one isn't Caleb, but still a fun pet picture.

Below are pictures of Caleb getting neutered in our yard.  As I said on facebook - "hopefully this will cause him to stop trying to reproduce with our goats trying to create an abnormal mutant dogoat. Such a creature may well be interesting to me, but I don't think Sara would approve."  Well, it was successful.  He is still a super excited crazy dog, but he is no longer mounting the goats.  The surgery was done very professionally and took a few hours for everything, including setup and post examinations.  They used horse tranquilizer so he wasn't fully back up to his normal self until the next day.

We enjoyed having our friend Marissa stay with us for a couple weeks.  She and Caleb really bonded and I'm sure Caleb misses her.

On our walks Caleb finds all sorts of interesting treasures like this corn cob.  He always has to snatch things quickly because I don't let him linger.  Among other things he's picked up and carried: unidentified poop, sticks, rope, a shoe, a doll, and plastic bags.

This could be a result of our sinful nature, but one of the most fun things on a walk is when Caleb sort of jumps at children (who are in no danger whatsoever), and they take off running and screaming.  We have found that children are more scared of a dog on a leash than a dog not on a leash.  It seems the children are usually not terrified but having fun being scared.

Below is Caleb gracefully pooping with all of the fowl in the yard coming to eat it up quickly.  It also works the other way around.  Caleb runs to eat the chicken poop as soon as it drops.  And don't forget the goats and their poop.  As you can see, we don't have to do a lot of picking up of poop in our yard.  And we don't let our animals lick our hands....

Below are some pictures of a hill in Soroti we walked up with Caleb.  It's not the famous "Soroti Rock" but it still gave us a good view.  Our house is somewhere in the trees yonder.

Soroti Rock in the distance.

A man and his faithful dog.