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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Lord's Supper

By Sara:

Somehow, despite attending church every week that we are not traveling, we have managed to spend about two and a half years total in Uganda without ever celebrating the Lord's Supper in church!  The few times we heard that it was going to happen, we ended up being somewhere else that week.

Finally, we happened to be around on a Sunday that the Lord's Supper was celebrated at our church in Soroti.  We thought you might enjoy seeing what that is like in the Pentecostal church in Uganda.


There were these little biscuits and some kind of not-grape-juice. 


Here, the "disposable" cups are saved, washed, and re-used the next time.  The ushers were preparing for the second service.



We are thankful for the opportunity to be with our Ugandan brothers and sisters in Christ to remember together Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and the sacrifice he made for us.

Mental Exercise to Refocus your life on God

By Anthony:

This post might seem a little silly when you start reading what I am proposing.  But if you take it seriously, it can actually be very helpful.  I can't make any promises that it will help you, but I can say this little mental exercise has worked well for me.  (I am totally open to criticisms about it too!)

Back in high school, someone told me he sometimes imagines that he is the only person that truly exists, and everyone else in the world is placed there by God to interact with his life even though they aren't real.  So if you try this, you are to imagine that God created the world just for you, and that he died just for you, and that he is watching just you as live through life, make decisions, and go through the process of sanctification.  While you are distracted and comparing yourself to other people saying, "at least I'm doing better then them," in this exercise it's just you, and God and all his angels are watching you, seeing what you will make of this life he has given you.  If you really do this, it's rather intimidating.

Obviously this is not true and there are ethical dilemmas in imagining a God who would do this.  But if you stop and just imagine it, what happens is you imagine God's entire focus being solely on you and every little thing you have done in your life and every day.  It surely causes you to reevaluate just about everything in your life.  If you've been indulging in secret addictive sins, or wasting much time, this little mental exercise can snap you back into reality.

When I have forced myself to think this through, it has produced profound feelings of God looking right through me, knowing my every thought.  It produced profound feelings of regret and guilt thinking of God being displeased when I've done wrong, because his whole focus is on me!  It can even produce great joy thinking of God taking delight that we have confessed our sins and trusted in Jesus' dying for us, and God taking delight in that we enjoy fellowship with him.

The point is that after the exercise, when you remind yourself that this is just imagination and not true, and everyone else actually exists, and the whole world doesn't revolve around you, and God is looking at everyone and not only you, even then you realize the very true and powerful theological point.  The point is that God is big enough to still completely focus on you while he completely focuses on everyone else as well.  God is that big.  He knows about everything that everyone is doing while at the same time knowing exactly what you are doing, and he is watching you with expectation.

Doing this has helped me at times to take life more seriously and strive to live for God more fully.  It has also helped me to have a better appreciation of God's presence with me.  That he is truly with me all the time, and so intimately that it is as if no one else exists.  He is able to be that intimate with me even though he is intimately with other people all over the world as well. 

Thursday, June 18, 2015

KIDO Conservation Agriculture Training

One of the Ugandan partner organizations that we work with, KIDO, did a training for community motivators earlier this year about conservation agriculture.  These community motivators are going to be the ones helping with KIDO's work in their own communities.  So this training was to help them gain skills and knowledge that they will pass on to the groups they work with at home.

There were activities and also indoor lecture.  One of the activities was starting a demonstration plot.



They also got to see the demonstration of how covering the soil helps to prevent soil erosion.


I talked about the different kinds of plants they can use as green manures and cover crops in their gardens to help protect and improve the soil.


I also gave some practical ideas for how they can do conservation agriculture.  Part of this involved going outside and trying out different options for reducing tillage.  For example, using a dibble stick:



And digging planting stations.



Katakwi Church Visit

About five years ago, when we lived in Mbale, we visited the Pentecostal church in Katakwi town.  Just last month, we visited there again!  It was ushers Sunday, so the ushers led all of the singing and were appreciated during the service (the ushers were also the ones to prepare lunch for us so they were quite busy!). 



Even after living in Uganda for more than two years and visiting lots of churches, there are still firsts.  This time, what was new was that when we were invited to the front of the church to introduce ourselves, the ushers first escorted us to the back of the church (down the middle aisle), then marched back up to the front with us!  It was definitely interesting.  We wish we could have shared a video of it with you so you could be entertained, but since we were both marching, that's not possible.  You'll just have to imagine it yourselves :)

We did have someone take a picture of both of us when we were introducing ourselves.  The church was extremely appreciative of our limited Ateso.


By the way, this is what we looked like in the same place five years ago:


Anthony preached about the danger of the Health and Wealth Gospel that says if you follow Jesus, you will be rich and healthy and that if you are not, it must be because you sinned.  We heard lots of appreciative compliments about the message after the service.


While we ate lunch, Anthony made a friend, who was very fascinated by his arm hairs.


Anthony knows this little girl's father, Calvin, from some of the trainings he has done in Katakwi.  So after lunch, we went to visit Calvin's uncle who owns a monkey.


Clearly it is a very good-tempered monkey and puts up with a lot from the neighborhood kids who always come over to play with it.  Apparently Calvin's uncle also has a baboon, but he keeps that one in the village.


Thursday, June 11, 2015

Baby Animals

Who doesn't like to look at pictures of baby animals?  Here are some photos of our baby guinea fowl and baby rabbits.  The first one is of the rabbits at one week old.


And here they are a week later, at two weeks old:

 



Kaberamaido TLT - Preaching

Last week I finished manual 4, "Biblical Preaching," in Kaberamaido.  It proved to be the most difficult week of TLT I have had yet, both because it is the most difficult manual to teach, and because we had a very large group.  But it was very successful and meaningful.  I was exhausted by the end after going non-stop from 7:30am to nearly 8:00pm each day!  But I am so thankful that God was with us that week and helped all us to grow and learn together.  It was a week of worship and preaching to one another.  I'll keep this blog post short as you can read about the content of this TLT manual in my previous blog post, Amuria TLT - Preaching.


I enjoyed hearing the wonderful things God has done through these pastors and leaders through their action plans from the last manual, "Overcoming Violence in the Family." 

Five TLT members had teamed up to make one big action plan.  They put on a marriage conference for 60 couples.  The attendees were church leaders and members of the board of PAG Kaberamaido's development organization and their spouses.  They drew heavily from the TLT manual for the conference, but also had a guest speaker who really made a powerful impact.  During their report I got to see pictures of the married couples holding hands and hugging as part of the conference activities.  So many people gave testimonies that they had not done things like this with their spouses since they were first married, or ever!  Unfortunately the guest speaker died in a car accident only one month later.  We can say that he was working for God's Kingdom right up until the end of his life.  He is already greatly missed and PAG members from all over the country came to his burial.

In the town of Otuboi, another three TLT members put on a similar couples conference.  They had 30 couples attend and they taught what they had learned from the TLT manual.  They even got some of my fellow TLT leaders to come and lead some of the sessions.  It went so well that people are asking for the teachings to continue, and those who missed are begging for them to do another conference.


Kevin, a female pastor with an interesting name, had a goal to reach out to 3 drunkards in her community.  She tried to minister to them without much success.  Then her neighbor started a fire on accident that burned down her house.  The neighbor had to pay people to build her a new house.  It turns out that the laborers were the very drunkards she was trying to reach.  They ended up becoming friends and although they have not stopped drinking, they are now visiting together with Kevin once a week and are willing to hear God's Word from her.  When Kevin's co-pastor was giving the report he said with a smile, "God allowed her house to get burnt so that she could reach the drunkards."
Simon had a plan to get one day of rest every week along with his entire family, to share God's Word together and play with their children.  He had been convicted when we discussed in TLT that God commands us to rest for our own good.  When Simon went home and told his wife about his action plan, she thought he had "become a mad person because there is too much work to do."  But she was willing to try it out, along with the kids.  Now his wife's health is improving, her back hurts less, and the neighbors have commented how healthy and happy the family appears.  She is now fully appreciating their days of rest!
One of my co-leaders, Betty:

A couple pastors taught 40 youth the biblical perspective on marriage and sexuality.  This is not a topic that is talked about here directly (very different from American culture).  At times, if you dare to teach about this subject in church, the Christians may criticize the pastor for teaching about something that shouldn't be spoken about.  So I was very proud of them that they did this teaching.


Another testimony that makes me smile:  After pastors taught families about how to honor one another and treat each other in the family, they came back again later for follow up.  The wives testified that their husbands have changed and now listen to their wives' ideas, and the children testified that they are so happy when they now see "their mother and father playing and smiling together."
The Bishop had tried to get some drinking joints to voluntarily shut down.  He has not been fully successful, but one drinking joint actually moved their location after he talked with them, farther away from the town center.  At first, the people he talked to would ridicule him and call him names.  But he has earned their respect through his love and patience.  The drunkards and drinking joint owners now come to him when they need prayer.  They brought him a very sick boy who was healed after he prayed for him!  And now whenever he comes to talk to them, they get out their Bibles and get ready to listen to him.

 

There were many other encouraging testimonies of families being reconciled, husbands and wives learning to love and serve one another, houses being built for widows, people getting saved, drunkards giving up drinking, and teaching families or church leaders lessons from the TLT manual about how to have healthy, godly families.

These Kaberamaido leaders have really taken to TLT.  They are enjoying it very much and it is growing their capacity as leaders.  If you couldn't see this from their reports, I have further evidence that they value this training.  Some of the members valued the last manual so much that they translated much of it into Kumam, their local language, in order to teach others.  In addition, one of the TLT participants was just given the position of pastor for the first time, overseeing one of the churches, because of his training from TLT.  Since only a few pastors have ever been to Bible college, going through TLT is quite significant preparation to qualify someone to become a pastor.


As you can see in these pictures, it is mango season and people were really enjoying them.  I was amused.  These pastors sit dignified in formal clothing one minute, and the next minute, shoes come off and they scamper up the tree just like they did as children.  They climb 50 feet high up branches I surely couldn't manage, and then they shake the branches and the sky rains mangoes, 50-100 of them dropping at one time like a barrage of hail.

I was also amused that so many people at all of these "Timothy Leadership Trainings" are calling me "Timothy" accidentally.  "Anthony" is a bit difficult to say for some people here.  And I guess being associated with TLT in such a close way isn't a bad thing.  I've had many worse nicknames!

Group work outside:

Some members have to take their babies with them to TLT!






It was very exciting to hear them preach their sermons, which we then evaluated.  Only four of the eight groups had time to actually preach their sermons to all of us, but all eight groups wrote very good sermons over the course of the week.  They are excited to go out and preach these sermons in their churches and teach other pastors what they have learned.  I was impressed by the humility shown by all the participants.  They were eager for the evaluations and corrections.  They are hungry for learning and change.  Their attitude is contagious and I hope I can also be the same way in all my life and ministry.




I won't say much about the action plans other than that all of the participants are excited to put into practice what they have learned.  They all want to improve their preaching, and most of the participants made action plans that involve teaching what they learned to the pastors and leaders who were not able to attend TLT.  This is the beauty of multiplication.  This group was nearly 50 leaders, and thinking about all of their action plans and who they intend to train, another 500 leaders may get trained by them.  May God bless these pastors and use them to proclaim his Word. 



Thursday, June 4, 2015

June 2015 Prayer Letter

Thank you for your prayers for us!  Enjoy our newest prayer letter - June 2015.