Random Photos

By Sara:

Here are some fun and interesting pictures from our lives over the past few months.  We got kind of behind on sharing pictures, so some of these are a little bit old.

First of all, Paul, who works for us, has been saving the money he has been earning in order to start a shop.  He just started it recently and we went to visit.  We bought some sugar while were there.

At home, every evening, Caleb and our friend's dog know when it is time to go for a walk.  This is what happens around 5pm.  However, they have gotten to the point where they nudge open the door earlier and earlier each day, maybe thinking (hoping) that it is evening already?

Beorn's favorite place to hang out is on top of the clay oven, even when there is a fire burning inside.

In fact, he loves to climb on anything he can.  Here is a video of one time when he sneaked inside and started jumping on the furniture.

He also was hanging out in the wheelbarrow sometimes.

We had some heavy rains in October and November and it got to the point where the soil was pretty saturated.  As a result, one day when it rained a lot, the water just sat in our yard for a few hours before it was able to start soaking in.

I bought this giant passionfruit from one of the pastors in Anthony's Amuria TLT group.

This is a picture with the flower for that passionfruit plant:

And the inside (it was really good! - you can eat the outer part and it tastes kind of like honeydew melon and then the middle part with the seeds is like regular passionfruit):

I also chopped my hair short again.

We enjoyed celebrating Thanksgiving with Trent, who has been working in Kaberamaido the past few months.

Then, the next day we went hiking in Mbale with him and another friend, Eric.

Sometimes people take pictures of us and aren't very sneaky about it.  I got a picture of this guy who was taking pictures of me.

Sadly, in preparation for moving, I had to sell all of my animals.  I said goodbye to the goats and chickens yesterday and I was very sad to see them go.  I wanted to take pictures with them to remember them by and when I was trying to do so, this happened:

I think Luthien was the only goat who realized that this was a sad day:

Creative Farmers

By Sara:

As part of my work, I have continued visiting the farmers we work with in Amuria, Katakwi, and Kaberamaido to see the work that they are doing and encourage and advise them in it.   I want to share some of the good things that they are doing.

One farmer in Katakwi built several different kinds of kitchen gardens right near his house and his family has been enjoying fresh vegetables from them.  He decided that he likes this one in the front of the picture best because it is easiest to build and maintain.  This is a keyhole garden like the one I built in my garden.

As part of disaster risk reduction training, some other people in Katakwi identified flooding as one of the biggest disasters that they frequently face.  They talked to old people in their villages and learned that people used to build raised houses so they could put their belongings in a dry place when it floods and even be able to sleep somewhere dry.  So they have started building some of these houses again.

In Kaberamaido, there are resource people who are teaching their neighbors about conservation agriculture and trying it out themselves.  Their neighbors have seen their example and are also trying these techniques out, including the man below (in the blue shirt), who planted jackbean with his cabbages to improve the soil and protect it from erosion.  He looks forward to making a good profit off of the cabbages when they are ready to be harvested.

Merry Christmas!

By Sara:

Merry Christmas from Uganda!  Our friend Eric, from Mbale, came to spend the week with us.  May you, too, have a wonderful day celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus!

Even though there is no snow (it is hot and sunny), Christmas in Uganda is still Christmas.  We thought you might like to see a little bit of what we do for the holiday.  We've been celebrating Advent for the past four weeks.  O come, o come, Emmanuel.

And we even have a Christmas "tree" (it's a branch!)

We are eating gingerbread cookies:

The traditional Christmas sweet roll (made in the shape of a wreath by my mom, but too big to fit in my oven like that, hence the double C)

And the Christmas turkey (roasted in the clay oven at 500 degrees!):

May God give you peace and joy this Christmas!

The Wonderful World Renew Staff of East Africa

By Anthony:

At our last Regional Team Meeting (for East Africa), our pictures were taken and we thought we'd share them with you so you can see the great people that we work with.  These photos were taken by Theo Bremer-Bennett, the husband of the new World Renew executive director of the USA, Carol Bremer-Bennett.

This photo includes most of the people on the World Renew East Africa staff, including visiting staff from the home offices in US and Canada.  World Renew has offices in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, but there are also a few people working in South Sudan and one of them joined us for our East Africa meeting.

The Tanzania Team:

The Uganda team we have come to love!  A couple people in the photo work in a much larger region which includes Uganda. The second photo is more recent and includes our new country team leader, Raymond Mutava as well as other staff that were missing in the first photo.  We are so thankful that after nearly two years, the Uganda team has a country leader again.

 

The Kenya team we are excited to join and get to know (there are also some missing from this picture)!

Last Kaberamaido TLT - Work and Worship

Recently, I finished my last week of Timothy Leadership Training in Kaberamaido with the help of Baker, Betty, and Agnes.  It was a hectic week.  I had to learn to get over my perfectionism and impatience in the midst of many distractions.  There was a meeting some development team staff had to go to, there were multiple burials that many of the pastors had to attend, and then on Wednesday we had to cancel half of the day because the president of Uganda came to visit Kaberamaido as part of his campaigning.  But even with these disruptions, the training went on well and they learned a lot.  We completed the manual, "Serving God in Work and Worship" which you can read about in my Amuria post.



It was nice to hear reports from last manual of Sunday school teachers being trained and Sunday Schools being started.  Unfortunately many of them did not complete their action plans that they set out to do.  I think fatigue is starting to set in since we've been meeting for TLT every 3 months and then they do action plans after each one.  (Keep in mind they already are extremely busy in their day jobs of being farmers, and in their normal ministries).  Now that we are finished, they are going to make sure in the coming months that they complete their old plan from manual 5 ("Teaching") as well as their new one for this manual, "Work and Worship."



Here are some of the topics we discussed that I found interesting:

• What does it really mean to say "Praise God!" while preaching?  When should we use it and when should we not?  Is it better to say "Amen!?" instead?  Are people giving praise to God in the middle of the sermon when we say it?  Or is just a habit that we say it?
• We had a discussion about how so many Christians or even whole Christian families do not own a single Bible.  I asked if people had money to buy them.  I was told that most people do have money to buy them, but it's a matter of priorities.  They said people would rather spend that money on airtime, school fees, or other things they want.  Many people are waiting for a missionary to give them a Bible and so they spend their money on other things instead.  And then some people don't really have an interest in reading.  I'm not making up these answers.  This is what I was told by a whole group of pastors.  Let's be more cautious in handing out Bibles.  It can create dependency rather than good stewardship.
• We had a long discussion about confession, and whether and when it's good to share about our sins to other people.  One lady said, "the problem is, when you tell someone about one of your sins, someone will call you on the phone and tell you about it before you even finish the conversation!"  Meaning that it's hard to find people who you can trust who won't quickly share the information with others.   A lot of people have got themselves landed into church discipline when they shared their struggles with someone who was not good at being confidential.
• We had some discussion about worship wars.  Here one of the struggles is new music from America versus traditional local language songs.  Also, another struggle is that many churches are moving to using a keyboard instead of the traditional instruments of Ugandan tribal cultures.  Some of the skills to play these instruments are slowly dying out.  And the older Christians aren't all big fans of the super loud electric keyboard with speakers.
• We discussed the lyrics of many popular worship songs in Uganda, and how some of the lyrics have little to no meaning, such as things like, "now we are all clapping, now we are all dancing," etc.  They are excited to write new songs, and use the Psalms as inspiration.
• We discussed baptism.  This time a pastor pressed me to find out my view on baptism and what my denomination does.  I was hesitant to share but didn't have a lot of choice.  I informed my Pentecostal brethren that I was baptized as an infant, and I was sprinkled, and gave a very brief explanation of why we do that.  For many of them, these practices are clearly wrong and I've heard Pentecostal pastors here in Uganda say people aren't saved who practice baptism this way.  So I was hesitant to share.  But I was very glad to find that they didn't condemn me, and in the end I think it was good for broadening their understanding that you can be brothers and sisters in Christ even with differences of belief on important things.

Here are pictures of praying for new action plans:

Some of their new action plans:

• Most people are going to train their fellow pastors and worship leaders in this new manual.
• One pastor is going to make sure he and his family rest one day a week (something that most of the pastors thought would be impossible, even if God did command us to rest).
• One leader is going to plant 200 trees to help show people in his community the value of work.
• One pastor is going to teach his church about confession and start a practice of communal prayers of confession.
• One pastor is going to teach about the value of hard work as a way to glorify God, and hopes to see a 10% increase in church offerings.
• Some worship leaders are going to write new worship songs for use in church.
• A couple pastors are going to teach their church how to keep pigs and chickens so that people can increase their incomes.

 

December Prayer Letter

Enjoy our new prayer letter.
You can access it at this link - December 2015 Prayer Letter

Keyhole Gardens

By Sara:

Well, I finally used up all those empty plastic bottles I had sitting behind our garage for months and months.  The following story will explain how I got to that point.

When we went to Tanzania for our World Renew East Africa team meeting, we got to visit a farmer who has been doing all sorts of interesting things with farming.  On a small amount of land, he has been able to earn enough money to send his children to school and university!

He is growing vanilla, which is a very marketable product, but one which you have to work really hard to grow - each flower needs to be hand-pollinated if you want any vanilla beans!  He also has biogas from the manure of his few animals.  And his gardens were just incredibly beautiful and well maintained.  I hope that someday I can have as beautiful of gardens.

Here's one of the beds that he had just prepared and planted seedlings in:

But anyway, on to his innovations, he had sack gardens.  This is something that I tried in my garden, but it didn't work so well.  My sack disintegrated in Soroti's hot sun in not very many months.  But his were great:


He also had keyhole gardens, raised gardens that have a ring of sticks in the middle, filled with manure and grass.  There is also a "keyhole", a notch in the shape of the garden so you can step in and reach the middle.  You pour water from washing or bathing into the middle where the manure is and as the water goes in, it spreads out to the rest of the garden, bringing nutrients to the plants.

So anyway, I was inspired.  It seemed like a good way to use all my plastic bottles - in building the sides and filling in part of the middle of a keyhole garden.  Here's my keyhole garden as I built it (not as pretty as his, but we have to start somewhere, right?)

And here it is as things have started growing:

Steaming Cakes and Skillet Baking

By Sara:

Our friend Emmanuel, who is a pastor in Anyara, has been transferred to a different church, in town.  So he asked me to come and teach people in his new church about baking.  I have gone there twice - once to teach how to bake cakes by steaming them and a second time to teach how to bake things like scones and biscuits on a frying pan.  I forgot the camera the first time, so no pictures of baking cakes.  And the second time, there was a wild thunderstorm while we were baking, so the pictures are kind of dark.  But they are there!

There were a lot of youths who came to the trainings and they were very eager to learn baking skills.  It was very fun teaching this group because they are all so enthusiastic and willing to experiment.  When I came back for the baking on frying pans training, I learned that they had baked a cake after the previous training and used it for the bread in Communion at church!

It was also fun sharing how you can use old bananas to make banana cake and cooked sweet potatoes to make sweet potato biscuits.  Some people were also surprised to discover that you can make breads on a frying pan without coating it in oil.  The breads people make most often here are chapatti and mandazi, both of which are very fried.  So it is exciting to find that you can make tasty (healthier) breads even without an oven.  (It is also cheaper when you eliminate the ingredient of oil).

Here are some cheerful participants holding the instructions for their friends.

This church is right next to a school, so there are always crowds of school children who come in during their breaks (recess? lunch?) to see what is going on, and, of course, to taste the food once it is ready!