Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Animals

By Sara:

My farm is now complete with a pair of goats (Beren and Luthien) and a pair of rabbits (unnamed).




They don't really like being held, but we'll work on that with their future babies.


A duck in the hand is even more squirmy though:


Then there are these guys:


We're still working on training our stubborn puppy, Beorn.  Caleb always appears at training time so he can be involved in this process to show off his obedience and get treats.  Conveniently, the dogs love papaya and we have lots of papayas.  Here is some practice with "sit" and "stay" with papaya pieces as a reward.



Clearly I have no idea how incredibly difficult this is.



The Rainy Season

By Sara:

It is now the rainy season in this area of Uganda, which means that we always need to plan for events to be delayed or cancelled due to heavy rains in the afternoon/evening.  When most people get around on foot, bicycle, or motorcycle, rains can make it difficult to get where you're going (without getting soaked to the skin and all muddy).




Along with the rain comes some beautiful clouds, though:


My garden is also flourishing with all the rain it is getting (this is from April 18th).  


These pumpkin leaves are apparently very scary when they blow in the wind.  Beorn was barking like mad at the garden, so I finally let him inside to see if he had found a snake or a rat or something.  It turned out that it was just the pumpkin leaves.  He was very tentative about getting close to them to find out if they were dangerous or not.


I planted this half of the garden the day before one of our torrential rains.  I was worried that all the seeds would have washed away or died after being completely submerged under a good inch of water.  Amazingly, most of them have since sprouted and are doing pretty well.


I also had to move the ducklings out of the garden, so we built a little enclosure for them and covered it with a tarp, so it can be removed when there aren't baby birds being raised inside there.


They're starting to look like ducks now: no more cute fuzziness.


By May 10th, the first half of the garden has really taken off.  I can almost hide in there:



Fireless Cooker

By Sara:

One of the most universally useful cooking techniques I've found is "fireless" cooking.  Technically, this isn't completely fireless, but it's a method that vastly reduces the amount of fuel needed to cook many foods, especially those like beans which take a long time.  You can see a video of me explaining the process to some pastors here (you don't even have to download the video this time!).

I've shared about this before (scroll way down to the bottom of the post), but I had an opportunity to practice it with some of the staff of one of World Renew's partner organizations here in Uganda.

Not only does a fireless cooker save fuel (therefore saving money and caring for God's creation by not needing to cut so many trees for firewood or charcoal), but it also can help with health - not having to stand over a smoky fire for hours watching food cook, and it saves time - you can go do other work while the food is cooking instead of needing to be constantly keeping an eye on it.

We soaked beans overnight, then boiled them for 10 minutes.


Then we covered the pot, wrapped it in a towel, packed it into the fireless cooker and covered it with more blankets.


After 4 hours, it was the moment of truth:


Are the beans really fully cooked?


They were!  Fully cooked beans, only using about 20 minutes worth of fuel (to bring them to a boil then boil for the 10 minutes). 


As I've been sharing more about fireless cookers, I've learned more about them.  They were basically the original crock pot and the rule of thumb is to put your food into the fireless cooker for twice the amount of time it would take to cook it normally.  I need to do some more experimenting myself on other types of food besides beans, beans + maize, dried sweet potatoes, fresh sweet potatoes, and rice (the things I have tried before).  But the staff who tried this with me were excited to go home and try it themselves, as well as to teach it to the rural communities where they work.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Book Recommendation - Crazy Busy

By Anthony:

I would like to heartily recommend the book, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem by Pastor Kevin DeYoung. It's a short book, and it's entertaining, helpful, and well written. This book is not for all Christians. Some people are spending too much of their lives watching television. But I know many of you, our supporters, are probably doing too much, always running around, or you are doing too much for the wrong reasons. If that is you, you could benefit from reading this short book.



This book was written for me. I struggle with pride, people-pleasing, and wanting to be important. I struggle with feeling guilt that I'm not doing enough, not teaching enough, not caring enough about people, not reading enough, and not praying enough. All of that makes me over-commit and try to do too much, and I end up being too busy.

On top of all of that, I'm quite OCD, and that causes me to rigorously schedule my life to try to make sure I'm staying on top of everything: making sure I spend enough time with friends and family, getting to know the neighbors, exercising, staying on top of Greek, Hebrew, Swahili, and Ateso languages, having devotions, writing blog posts, writing new curriculums, reading theology books, mentoring leaders, talking to my accountability partner, having prayer time with Sara, etc. I get so stressed out about trying to live a perfect and balanced life, and I don't want to forget anything, so I end up writing down on my planner everything, even things like "shave." It's embarrassing but true. Then I feel guilty when I fail to achieve doing all of this.

I know those feelings are stupid and unrealistic. I've been working against these tendencies for the last 10-15 years. I've learned how to say "no" without feeling too guilty, and I've really learned to treasure one day of rest each week. And I make sure to spend some time just relaxing by watching movies with Sara, or playing computer games. But this book gave me some more practical tips and insights to continue working on my problem. It gave me the needed reminder that I can't do everything. I shouldn't try to do everything. De Young reminded me that I can "care" about many causes and many people suffering in the world, but I can only really do anything about one or two causes / issues in a passionate way.

A good quotation:

"Jesus didn’t do it all. Jesus didn’t meet every need. He left people waiting in line to be healed. He left one town to preach to another. He hid away to pray. He got tired. He never interacted with the vast majority of people on the planet. He spent thirty years in training and only three years in ministry. He did not try to do it all. And yet, he did everything God asked him to do."

Let me tell you about one of his ideas that has helped Sara and me already. It's called "planning for margin." You can't fill up your whole schedule. You need to leave some white space, some margin, in your schedule for the things that come up that you have not prepared for. So Sara and I have already started reminding each other to do this. In Uganda, a lot of unexpected things can happen that really mess up our schedule (probably true everywhere). The power is off, start the generator! The water is off! The chickens are loose! The neighbor is at the gate and wants to talk to me. A friend calls and says they need to come over to ask for a loan. There is a snake in the yard! The vehicle needs to be fixed, but we have to take it to Mbale or Kampala. We get home from a long week of training to 100 emails waiting for us. We have learned to plan some blank days here and there for catching up on stuff and working on long term projects like curriculum writing. But sometimes we never even get to working on projects those days because of all the other stuff that comes up.

De Young also talked about setting priorities. This was a very helpful reminder. I can't do everything, and in this culture I have to disappoint people a lot. I cannot give money to every person who asks. I cannot go to every wedding or burial. I cannot say "yes" to every teaching or preaching invitation. I end up saying "no" a lot and it hurts, because most of the time it is concerning something I really want to do and something that would be really meaningful. Maybe one solution is for another missionary pastor to come and join our team here! There is certainly plenty of work to do.

Near the end of the book there was a surprising section on how we do need to be busy much of the time. We need to work hard, care about people, and get involved in the messiness of their lives. As Christians, we WILL be busy. And being busy is hard. But De Young points out that we should not expect the Christian life to be easy.  s we can expect suffering as Christians, we can always expect busyness. But there is a healthy kind of busyness and an unhealthy kind of busy that he talks about in the rest of the book. A lot depends on how much rest we are getting, our priorities, our motivations for what we do, and what we are actually doing with our time.

He points out that even the apostle Paul had stress from busyness. In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul talks about all of the suffering he has gone through. In verses 27-28, Paul ends with: 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churchesIf Paul had stress and worry, thinking about all he had to do for his churches, then surely we will be busy sometimes also, and sometimes have stress. But we persevere, God helping us. We focus on Christ and the good news of the Gospel, and it is our joy in Christ, and knowing God's love that keeps us going.

Let me know if you read the book.

West African Truckers

By Anthony:

We have to cross the borders a lot in East Africa as we go to trainings in Kenya and Tanzania. It's very tiring but part of the work. We saw this documentary recently and thought you might find it interesting. The border crossings in West Africa are very similar to the ones here. Though at least the border we most often frequent has become restructured and much more organized in the last couple years, making it quite a bit better than what you see in the video.

In our border crossings we have had plenty of times of traffic jams, with trucks lined up for miles. Sometimes we have had to navigate through trucks and buildings, even driving over sidewalks, and over short cement barriers. We have had more uncomfortable police checks than we can count, with them usually asking us for something, like food/soda/money, which we don't give to them, though we have given small devotionals (like "Our Daily Bread") before. We have dealt with the offices we need to visit being in a different place every time we go. We have dealt with the bureaucracy. We've seen corruption/bribery happening right before us. And we've seen the inconsistency as people in cars have to go through painstaking processes and forms, while others walking or bicycling or on motorcycles at least seem to do whatever they want, zipping through the border.

Pardon anything offensive or vulgar language in the documentary. It shows real life.