Baringo TLT Stewardship

By Anthony:

In November, Sara and I had the privilege to go back to Baringo for two days, for me to lead Timothy Leadership Training (TLT) and for Sara to lead a training on baking with a clay oven.  I led the second TLT manual, "Christian Stewardship."  We discussed giving, generosity, church finances, accountability, and managing our resources that God has given us including our money, land, time, possessions, talents, and bodies.  This group is primarily church leaders from one Anglican Diocese, but this time we had a pastor from Deliverance Church as well.  For more information about this group and this training, see this post - Baringo TLT.



Small group discussion:



One of the joys of every TLT gathering is listening to the reports of the church leaders.  They had to report on what happened when they went home and tried to implement the actions plans that they created for the first manual, "Caring for God's People."  Most of them had planned to visit church members who had completely stopped coming to church, in the hopes that they would come back.  I'm excited to announce that in total, 87 people who had left the Church, have been faithfully coming to these local churches again every week because of these home visits!  In addition, some people were visited who did not have a relationship with Jesus as their savior.  Because of these visits, over 20 people got saved!  In another case, a church member who had become paralyzed sought treatment at a hospital, but he could not afford the treatment even with the help of the church. So his family took him back home but the church committed to praying for him.  Over a month of prayer he became miraculously healed and now can move as normal!  Here is a pastor giving a report:

The goal is to be faithful to their planned activities, and then to trust God for the results.  If they had challenges carrying out their plan, we discussed them and tried to problem solve together.  One challenge was the case of a church member who had left the church together with his family.  He had been a treasurer but had ended up spending the church's money which had been kept at his home.  He repented long ago, but he does not want to return to church again until he can pay back the money (about $1000).  This led to a great discussion about the importance of churches having bank accounts rather than having members keep money in their homes.  And we discussed what could be done to deal with this issue, so that the family doesn't wait years to return to church.

Another challenge was that some people did not want to return to church because they knew they were doing things they were not supposed to do.  For example, a number of people said they wanted to come to church, but they cannot give up brewing alcohol because that is their livelihood.  This led to a great discussion about pastoral care, about helping people find other work through skills training, and about the Gospel.  The Gospel is that knowing Christ and receiving salvation comes first, and only after that does God clean up our lives.  We don't clean up our lives first before we can come to church or meet with Christ.

They have to write written reports to turn in to me as well:

Small Group Discussion:

Here are some highlights from the discussions.  When talking about caring for God's creation, I mentioned that we should not kill animals for no reason, but only if they are a problem to us.  The Bishop supported my point well in giving a personal testimony.  He recently had a monkey that was eating his maize.  His family managed to catch it.  But instead of killing it, (as most people would), he decided to warn it instead.  He put paint on it, and then gave it a strong verbal warning.  It did not come back again.  Haha, I would have loved to see this.  He reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi.

We talked at length about the rhythm of work and rest.  Most said that they never rest, because even when they have a day off from church work, they do other kinds of work at home.  We talked about the reasons that we don't rest (not trusting God, being people-pleasers, wanting to feel important, pride).  But now some of the church leaders are going to try hard to rest one day a week.  I can discuss this issue now without being a hypocrite because I do rest one day a week now and I'll never go back, it's wonderful.

We discussed the importance of washing hands with soap.  At almost every training I've done in Uganda and Kenya, people don't use soap after going to the latrine or when washing hands before and after eating.  Almost always they only wash with water.  Since Kenya is so developed, this never ceases to surprise me.  We discussed how prevention of sickness is much less expensive than treatment.  We will see if there is soap next time!

Thinking about what they will do for their next action plans:







In discussion, I also learned that a lot of East Africans do not tithe because they have the idea that tithing is only for people who earn a salary.  But the vast majority of East Africans are farmers.  They do not earn a salary.  Some of the pastors plan to teach people that they can also tithe on their harvest, giving 10% of what they sell their harvest for.

When discussing caring for God's creation, I was so happy to learn that the church we were at in Mogotio has already done several community cleanups of plastic litter on the ground and the streets.  They plan to do at least one more and they think there is actually hope of the community staying clean.  This is because Kenya recently passed a law completely banning plastic bags, even old ones you might want to reuse, and so far they seem to be enforcing it.

After all the discussions, everyone made a new action plan concerning stewardship.  I had to approve each one to make sure that both the goals and the activities were SMART (Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic, and Time-bound).  See the pictures below of me approving new plans:

Most of the new action plans have the goal of the offerings in their churches increasing.  This is not about the prosperity gospel though, but instead about good stewardship.  Their activities include preaching about stewardship and generosity, visiting people in their homes, and setting a personal example in giving generously.  For example, some of them are going to give a cow or a goat to the church as a way to lead by example.

Another leader plans to start tithing not only on his salary but also on his chickens, eggs, and vegetable produce.  

Another leader plans to revive and organize a church choir that has become stagnant.

Another group wants to make sure that by March, when we meet again, there is no plastic litter on their church compound or on the street around the church.

Several different people are planning to plant trees at their homes and at their churches - 50 trees here, 100 trees there, etc.

Praying for their plans:

Pray for these wonderful men and women who are seeking to put what they learn into practice.  May all of us learn from their example to read God's Word and actually try to do what it says.

Goodbyes and Random Photos

By Anthony:

We are now in Uganda, back in our old hometown of Soroti, but in a new house.  We are busy settling in.  Here are some photos from events and goodbyes over our last couple months in Kenya.  At the end are some random photos and fun videos of Caleb and ping pong.

We went to Nairobi in November for a goodbye lunch with our World Renew Kenya team.  They gave us nice gifts, said things they appreciate about us, and prayed for us.  We enjoyed an amazing Ethiopian feast with them.

Also in November we had our Berea College Graduation.  It's nice that we will still see some of the graduates from time to time.  Some of our Berea students are in the TLT group in Baringo that I will continue even after moving back to Uganda.  Also, one of the graduates is from South Sudan and is returning now to his family in one of the refugee camps in Northern Uganda.  We look forward to visiting his place there and encouraging the people living with him in the camps.  Here is a picture of the student choir.

Us and some of the other tutors:



Now to the more random photos.  This is a rather small load on a motorcycle compared to many that we see on the road.  This is our friend's motorcycle who took our old tires off our hands.

It's really fun to have fruit trees and especially to harvest avocados in plenty like this.  We are excited that our new house in Uganda is surrounded by many different kinds of fruit trees.

It's common to see people on bicycles catch rides on the backs of trucks.  Extremely dangerous, but much less work.

Caleb doing his favorite activity, digging up mole hills:

Ping Pong:

Kitchen Gardening

By Sara:

My students in the practical class planted some kitchen gardens for our last lesson.  We first looked at the keyhole garden which the previous class built last year.  The chard they planted is still thriving, but there is space around it, so these students filled in the space with radishes and beets.

I also brought a wheelbarrow of compost from my garden for them to sift and use for planting raised bed gardens, using old tires.  We brainstormed benefits of a raised garden - like how it can be a way to avoid diseases or pests that are in the soil below, or how you can use good quality soil and compost in a small space which you couldn't put in a huge garden.

We also talked about the benefits of having a small kitchen garden next to their house, like being able to grow healthy vegetables to add to their meals and having them nearby where they can keep a close eye on them and water them if needed.

Here the students are seeing how good compost is supposed to smell: 

Making Yogurt

By Sara:

Like I said when I shared about bee keeping, I surveyed the students last year about skills they wanted to learn.  One skill which many students were interested in was how to make yogurt.  Conveniently, this is something I know how to do well and have a lot of experience in.  I even discovered a new way of making yogurt using a tool which everyone here in Kenya has: a thermos (also, I quickly realized that Kenyans call it a thermos after people here didn't know what I was talking about when I initially called it a flask, which is what Ugandans call it).

First, I taught the people from the farm.  They were interested in yogurt making too, especially since they raise dairy cows and have plenty of milk.

It's actually a very simple process.  First, you heat the milk to almost boiling, when it starts foaming (this is about 85ºC - one student asked a very good question about whether the milk was safe, since he had heard that you need to boil milk to kill pathogens in it.  Boiling is the easiest way to know you have pasteurized milk, but in reality, you only need to heat it to 165ºF for 30 seconds to pasteurize it.  And 85ºC is close to 185ºF, so you're good).  Then, let the milk cool to 45ºC, which is cool enough to dip (a clean) finger into and not feel burned.  That's what is going on in the picture below:

Then, you add a few tablespoons of yogurt to get the bacteria working on creating more yogurt.  Pour the mixture into a thermos, close it tightly, and leave it for 8-24 hours.

Now in all the times I have made yogurt, I have never, not even once, had it not work out.  Unfortunately, this one time I was teaching the students, it did not get very thick.  It so happened that when they tested the temperature of the cooled milk, it was still really hot (apparently the student who tested it has very high pain tolerance), so the bacteria didn't do their job very well.  The good news is that the yogurt at the farm was very successful.  And even though the one for the students didn't turn out the way I would have liked it, they were pretty thrilled (even though they don't look it in the picture below...)

In addition to the yogurt lesson, the students were interested in learning more about raising dairy cows, so I asked Evans, who is in charge of the college cows, to share his knowledge with them.  The students had a fun time going over to the dairy, looking at the cows, and asking him all their burning questions.

 We even went to take a look at the different kinds of crops they could grow to feed cows, including some which grow wild here.