Bible Studies in Tanzania

 By Sara:

As we mentioned in our January prayer letter, Anthony and I traveled to Tanzania in January.  Anthony was testing his Helping Without Hurting in Africa training.  In the meantime, I got to sit in on our friend Brett Harrison's seminar.  Brett and I are writing a curriculum called "The Earth is the Lord's: Bible Studies on Agriculture and Creation Care" and he was leading a group through those studies.  He also included lessons on plant and soil science and on legumes.  Did I mention that it was all in Swahili?  Good thing I often practice Swahili by reading the Bible and a book on plants.  So many science words...

We took a field trip on one of the days to Brett's grad school research farm and got to see lots of thriving legume green manure cover crops.  Mucuna, jackbeans, pigeon peas...now I feel very impatient to plant my garden at home.

Taking pictures of everyone else taking pictures never ceases to amuse me:

And we also visited some of the farmers Brett has been working with for years.  It was encouraging to see the ways they have been creative with growing cover crops and with intercropping and to hear about how these practices have helped them.  I hope that someday I'll meet farmers in Uganda who are as enthusiastic about and have benefited as much from conservation agriculture.

I especially enjoyed seeing some excellent intercropping.  It was nice to know that I'm not the only one who mixes everything together in one garden.  Here are some jackbeans grown below sorghum and sunflowers:

And look, a cassava plant mixed in there too:

Some pigeon peas as well:

Here's the proof that I was there too:

I'm looking forward to opportunities to go through the Bible study curriculum with farmers in Uganda and I hope it will be useful and encouraging for them.  I know I myself learned and was encouraged during this week of study and I co-wrote the curriculum!

Helping Without Hurting in Africa - Tanzania

By Anthony:

I had the chance recently to test out the curriculum I am writing with my friend Jonny Kabiswa, a Ugandan, and with Brian Fikkert, the author of When Helping Hurts.  It will be published sometime this year or next year by the Chalmers Center in the USA.  It is based on the book When Helping Hurts, but contextualized for Africa, and it is divided into two courses.  Each course takes two full days of training.  We are really excited about this project, and over the next 6 months, other leaders all over the continent of Africa will be helping us to test it out so that we can make changes and edit what we have so far.  We have finished writing Course 1, and are working hard on Course 2.

This is the same curriculum that I taught in Uganda a few years ago many times, but that one was a rough draft version, very different from what it has become.  We hope that it will be very beneficial to African leaders as they seek to help the poor wisely and effectively, avoid common mistakes, learn how to use their own resources and not be dependent on the West, and work on development in their communities according to biblical principles.

Sara and I traveled to Tanzania in January.  While she was working with another missionary testing out their Bible studies, I was able to give a Helping Without Hurting training.  The host who organized the training was the African Inland Church (AIC), and we did the training in Geita.  This is one of World Renew's partners in Tanzania, so it was nice to do something to connect with the World Renew Tanzania team.  Most of the participants were from the AIC (pastors and development staff), but we also had World Renew staff attend, as well as some other missionaries and leaders living in Geita.

The training went well.  I really love our new curriculum.  The main issue is that we probably have too much content and we will likely need to shorten many of the lessons.  We were definitely short on time in this training, but this was mainly due to language.  The training was advertised to be in English, rather than Swahili.  And we were not going to do translation due to time.  However, some people showed up to the training who did not know English.  They didn't want to turn anyone away, and these people were eager to learn, so some of the pastors translated most of what I said.  This was quite a big challenge for me, as it necessitated cutting out much of the material and rushing through what we did go through.  But overall it was a success. I have already heard from one of the pastors through email that he has been teaching his church leaders the lessons from the manual.

They learned how to think about poverty in a different way, going beyond thinking about poverty as only "lacking money."  They left with an understanding of how idolatry, corruption, sin of various kinds, environmental destruction, and feeling inferior all contribute to poverty.  Some of the longest and most engaging discussions we had were about:

-How people in the church today worship on Sunday but also are engaging in witchcraft or charms in order to try to get blessings and money and positions.

-How women are made to feel inferior in their cultures.

-How everyone speaks out against tribalism, yet it continues, including discrimination in job appointments.

-How Africans, including the participants, sometimes feel inferior to foreigners and sometimes not.  Most said they feel equal before God, but they feel inferior in terms of wealth and resources.  But then we had a lesson also about identifying the skills and resources that God has given each of us.

The pastors who were present seemed to appreciate it the most, and some of them were eager to take Course 2, so that they will get the certificate and ability to teach others the same curriculum.  This is exactly what we want!  The only problem is that right now we have not yet finished writing Course 2.  I also learned from this testing, that the best way to teach this would be to meet once a week, like a typical Bible study group, and do only one lesson a week, so that participants can do the take-home activities and action plans in between lessons.

Here is a photo of one of the dramas we designed for the curriculum:

Ducks and Dogs and Other Random Stuff

By Sara:

Here are fun pictures for you of our animals and daily life.

We got Caleb a treat when we traveled to Kampala in December.  It didn't last very long, but he enjoyed it.

We started out with 6 ducks.  They like to wander around the yard, even at night, quacking softly, and sometimes looking in at us through the door:

One of the ducks became Christmas dinner:

In late January, though, the duck numbers multiplied:

There are 13 ducklings - one is randomly yellow.

For Christmas, we got a puppy who we named Beorn.

He was unhappy after getting his first bath.  We tried to cheer him up with a piece of biscuit (cracker), but Caleb was the one who was way more interested in it:

He is definitely fulfilling the purpose of keeping Caleb company and giving him exercise:

Here are a couple videos of Caleb and Beorn playing together:

When they're not playing, though, the dogs spend their time lazing around:

There are large quantities of papayas growing in our yard and the good thing is that if one is overripe or smashes on the ground, the ducks love them.

And apparently so does Beorn:

In other news, I've been working on building a brick rocket stove.

The final product.  I'm a little concerned that it's too tall, but that was the size of the pipe we found, so it will have to do.  Next step: testing it out.

I'm also working on a clay oven, but am waiting for my parents to come to build the actual oven.

Driving in Kampala

By Anthony:

Sara took these videos while I was driving through Kampala. I put them together and sped them up so you can see what it is like there. It's a bit stressful, and this was an easy low traffic day and time. Make sure to listen with the sound on to hear the funny part.

The video was too big to upload to this blog, so you will have to download and watch it from this download link - Kampala Traffic.