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.

Terrific Teaching Tidbits

By Anthony:

This is my last post about my time teaching at Berea Christian College.  This post is just a collection of fun teaching stories, random events, and interesting class discussions.

I was teaching about creeds one day, and was asking which creeds the students knew. They got the Apostle's Creed, and then the Nicene Creed, and then one student said something that sounded like "Athanasian Creed," but on more careful listening was actually - "Assassin's Creed."  For those of you who don't know, this is a video game!  I'm not sure if the student knows it is a video game or he just heard that phrase somewhere.

One of the most exciting things that happened during our last semester was that I had a chance to preach a sermon completely in Swahili.  It took hard work and a lot of help from Sara to prepare it.  We also had our Swahili private tutor check it over to make sure it was correct.  And in the end, I had to be glued to my notes while preaching.  It went really well.  Some students said that if they could not see me, it might have been a Kenyan preaching.  They understood me clearly.  I was able to do this again a few months later.  Here is a video Sara took from that first time, and then some videos of the second time.  I stumbled here and there, but you have to start somewhere.  Enjoy

This last term, every Tuesday morning, I took all the Berea students together through manual one of Timothy Leadership Training about pastoral care.  We did not make it through the whole manual but it was good.  The best part was when we discussed visiting others in Christ's name, and each student chose a college staff person or teacher to go and visit.  They thanked them, encouraged them (some even with Scripture), and prayed for them.

In one class we had a discussion about the practice in the Old Testament of redeeming the firstborn child (see Exodus 13:11-16 and Numbers 18:15).  I was surprised to hear that in some Anglican churches, they still follow this practice.  People bring their firstborn child to church, and give an offering of money to redeem that child back from God.  They do not view it as saving the child, but rather as a way of showing thanksgiving to God for the child (though one snarky student said that they do it just as a way to get money for the churches).  I did not criticize them for doing this ritual, but instead offered my opinion.  I explained that we are all redeemed in Christ.  Jesus is the firstborn of the new family of God of which we are a part, and he has fulfilled the requirements of the firstborn for us.

The students continually tried to get a rise out of me by calling the Bible a white man's book or calling Christianity a white man's religion.  Even if they were just having fun, I never failed to remind them that not only was the Bible not written by Europeans, but many of the people who put the books of New Testament together were North African Christians, and that North Africa had most of the important theologians of the early church.  Further, there is a long history of Christianity in both Sudan and Ethiopia.



We had a long discussion about curses, and whether Christians today need to be afraid of them.  Not all of the students fear them, but some of them do.  They particularly worry that if they go against certain cultural practices and traditions, that they will inherit curses.  They want to follow Christ over culture but they are afraid that if they break tradition that relatives and other people will put curses on them.  They said even many bishops believe that these curses are real and powerful.  They said they've seen so many cases of people experiencing the curses so they know it is a real danger.  I'm not sure I totally convinced all of them, but I explained that bad things happen to all of us all the time, so what they see as curses might just be problems we experience on a regular basis in this broken world.

I also explained that curses do not have power on their own, but I believe if something is happening to someone because of a curse, then it is either power coming from God or from Satan.  They seemed to agree with this, but then wondered if God was the one making the curse happen.  I explained why I don't think God would do that, and also that we do not need to fear Satan's power because of Christ.  But it is a topic that challenges me.  What about the curses we see in the Bible?  For example, look at how Elisha called down a curse on people who insulted him and they were killed.  Would God work through a curse we speak today?  As Western Christians we too easily dismiss the power of people's words.  But perhaps God honors our blessings and curses of people more directly than we tend to think?  It's something I need to study more.



I never missed a chance to teach against the prosperity gospel.  I have found that many of the students did not actually believe the prosperity gospel.  They don't truly think people will be healed every time.  But what may be even more disturbing is that a few of them and some other preachers will still promise healing during church services to the congregation - "Trust in Christ and your sins will be forgiven and you will be healed from all your diseases right now."  They said people won't want to listen to you if you can't promise solutions for them.  They want to give people hope.  Thankfully, I don't think any of the Berea students will ever preach like this again.  I have thoroughly convinced them of the errors of the prosperity gospel and the need to preach honestly regardless of whether it attracts people or not.

When teaching about Gnosticism, an ancient heresy in the time of the early church, I explained that the Gnostics valued secret knowledge in order to gain salvation.  I asked whether Christians in Kenya ever try to guard knowledge of salvation as a secret.  I received a very clear "no."  But then I asked whether Christians in Kenya ever try to guard any knowledge as a secret and I found out that it is really common to guard knowledge that can be used to make money.  So some people refrain from sharing good ideas with their neighbors and keep their skilled knowledge to themselves.  One of my students said she does this also.  Thankfully all of the other students disagreed with her and tried to convince her this was not loving but selfish.  They mentioned to her how Sara freely taught all of them so many different good skills like baking, and agricultural methods, instead of guarding that teaching or charging for it.  And they want to follow Sara's example.



When discussing sin one day, I found out that a lot of my male students really were confused about what to think about lust.  Some of these poor male students were thinking that just seeing a beautiful woman was sinful lust.  They were quite relieved when I said it is not wrong to notice beauty, but wrong to then purposefully dwell on thoughts of that woman or mentally undress her, etc.  They were feeling guilty for being in town and having a immodestly dressed woman walk past them.  It was nice to give them some relief, though we also discussed how to fight against lust.

Teaching these students was very fun most of the time, despite some frustrations and challenges.  I will miss them.  I will miss most of all the vigorous class discussions and ping pong.  It's hard to move, but some of these students we will still get to see as we keep coming back to Kenya periodically to give trainings.

Teaching challenges

By Anthony:

One teaching challenge - people forgetting to put their name on an assignment!

Teaching is not always easy, and sometimes it's not the student's fault nor my fault.  Here are some challenges that I faced this last term, especially with the students who were at Berea for their first semester.  Thankfully, despite the challenge, the students worked hard to learn with good attitudes.

1. Language issues constantly slowed the teaching down.  The students came from a variety of areas in the country, each with their own local languages, though most of them speak Kikuyu.  They know Swahili but not as well as they know their tribal languages.  They know English but some students really struggle with it despite it being a requirement for coming to this college.  And I don't know Swahili well enough to help translate much during class (though I'm trying).

I have great compassion for the students, because even after the countless hours I've put into Swahili, it is still hard for me to understand people speaking in Swahili.  But sometimes I felt like I was teaching English classes.  Here are some words the new students had no idea about: martyr, abortion, incest, atheism, ignorance, cannibalism, treason, monk, monastery, celibate, persecution, heresy.  Those aren't the easiest English words for sure, but when you have 30 words like this per class period it slows things down.

2. Sometimes in class discussions, the students did not make clear whether they believed something or if they were just making a comment to hear my reaction.  At times, I've thought students were rejecting the faith based on what they were saying in class.  But then later, I would find out they were just saying what they hear people say in the community, and don't really believe those things themselves.  They are saying them for the sake of learning.  So possibly, I've blogged about some things students have said that might not even be things they really believe.  Things got better after I told them to tell me whether it is their own question or a question that they hear from others.

Me teaching the 2nd years:

3. The students, especially the first year students, lack biblical knowledge.  It was really hard to add church history or theology to their knowledge, when there was very little biblical knowledge to build on.  None of the first years have read the whole Bible.  None of the first years have read the whole New Testament.  My most knowledgeable first year student had read most of Luke, some of Matthew, and some of John.  Not one of them had been reading their Bible every day, but I think that changed with my encouragements.  And honestly, they were very eager to learn, which is all a teacher could ask for.

Some examples of biblical concepts the students didn't know: Who Pontias Pilate is, what is a Jew, what is a Gentile, doctrine of Providence, the Holy of Holies, Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Greeks, Samaritans, Priscilla and Aquila, Herod, the difference between "the Church" and a local church, and who Jesus said would be the rock of the Church.  I taught them early church history, so it was hard to find points of connection with things they already knew.

Not only with biblical knowledge, but some of the students were sheltered in general.  It's probably due to poor primary and secondary education, but none of my first year students could name any countries in North Africa besides Egypt, and they really struggled even to name all the countries bordering Kenya.  They also did not seem to know where Asia referred to.  I don't say this so that you will look down on them.  It's not their fault.  I just want you to know how much teaching is needed in East Africa.

4. The students had so many good questions!  This makes teaching a delight actually, but when they had so many good questions it made it really hard to get through the syllabus.  The last term we just finished was especially hard because of Kenya's re-election; Sara and I had to leave the country twice (for the election and the re-election) which caused us to miss a lot of classes.  Sometimes their questions were about tangential issues but they were still critically important because they are the practical things they are thinking about such as curses, dowry, and drinking alcohol.  I'll write more about these discussions in another post.

2nd years in discussion:

5. We found that students quickly forgot things we taught them, or at least they seemed to.  We got the same questions over and over from the same groups of students but in different courses.  Or Sara would cover one difficult question in her class, but then they would also ask me the same question in my class.  That was a bit frustrating, but we also know that it takes most people, including us, several times to hear something before we really get it to stick, transform our lives, and let it inform our other beliefs and actions.

Pray for the students that they would continue to learn a lot and grow in Christ through their other semesters at Berea without us.

Student Garden

By Sara:

Despite all of the frustrations with voracious sheep eating the practical class garden, and to my complete amazement, the maize managed to revive itself.  The students were really excited to see how well it grew while they were on holiday and actually wondered if I had put extra fertilizer on it (besides the manure they used when planting).  But no, it was only fertilized the once with manure.

This maize possibly looks better than the maize of the same variety planted nearby because we weeded around it early, mulched some of it, and intercropped other parts with beans.

We recently went out and tied the maize leaves around a bunch of the cobs to keep birds from peeling them open and eating the maize. 

It was also an opportunity for the students to each pick a cob to eat, boiled (but don't imagine corn on the cob because it's not sweet corn).  They were pretty excited about the maize and had lots of fun taking pictures. 

I'm not sure if I'm being baptized in this picture or what: