Crazy Uplifting TLT testimonies!

By Anthony:

As I continue to send out and coach Ugandan TLT trainers to lead different groups around the country, I enjoy hearing the testimonies and reports about how God is using his people. So I've collected a few stories for you to enjoy. As you read, continue to pray for these leaders and groups. Not every person who goes through TLT has testimonies as powerful as these, and yet these are not uncommon TLT stories either. I continue to be amazed at how God is working through this program.

Here is Boniface, a TLT student, and also a former student of ours at Pentecostal Theological College in 2009.

Boniface is from Pallisa, Uganda. In his community, they have 500 people sharing the same well. It had become really dirty and broken down, and the dirty water was causing people to get typhoid regularly. For his TLT action plan, Boniface worked together with the Local Chairman (LC1) to mobilize the community members. Together they repaired the well and put a fence around it so that it would stop getting contaminated by animals and pollution. This was all done by the community without any outside direction or funding.

In this same Pallisa group, Isaiah bought and planted 30 trees on the church land as a long term investment so that the church could benefit financially from those trees in the future. The church members are the ones watering and caring for the trees now.

Rose decided to teach families on personal hygiene and sanitation in order to avoid sicknesses and help people be good stewards of their bodies for the glory of God. She was able to train three families and they really appreciated it.

Peter Opolot reported that before he went through the manual, From Harm to Harmony, he did not know how to honor his wife. His wife had planned to take him to the probation office to demand he buy her clothes and take good care of her. She blamed him for only taking care of their children and neglecting her needs. After the training he realized he was not acting well towards his wife. He repented and prayed to God to give him some financial help. After God provided him some money he surprised his wife by buying her very nice clothes. He says “My wife is now the smartest woman in the village. Our love for each other has improved greatly. We enjoy time together and plan together. Our family growth is clearly being realized. I thank God for helping me to be a better husband through TLT.”  ("Smart" in Uganda means "looking nice" or "well dressed").

Here is the rest of the TLT group from Pallisa:



In this same Pallisa group, they recently went through the Preaching TLT manual with facilitators Emmanuel and Joseph. The participants were shocked and touched by how much they learned and the realization of the ways they had been misusing the Bible in their former preaching. Emmanuel reports: "In moments of prayer the participants could be heard praying and repenting aloud in tears for the way they ever abused the Scripture before and they were desperately asking for God’s grace to help them clearly understand the Scripture and preach it out in a way that glorifies God. Together with the pastorate leadership, they asked that all pastors in their pastorate should be trained on the Biblical Preaching manual."

Emmanuel continues: "The participants decried the current emphasis in our culture of seeing a miracle and power as the center of preaching. They then appreciated the 4 step method of writing the sermon as a very simple way of writing a sermon. Each participant wrote a sermon out of the given texts to practice.  

 At the close of the training, as we prayed for the action plans and closed, the unusual move of the Holy Spirit occurred - participants prayed in tears, and several people spoke in new tongues. The prayer session which was not expected to be long became unusually long. People could be heard pleading for mercy, confessing and making commitments to the Lord. There was unspeakable joy among all participants who hugged each other and felt the blessing of the Lord."

Another picture from Pallisa:

There is another TLT group in Gulu, Uganda, and they are about to finish and graduate. In that group, Rev. Canon Richard made an action plan to visit those who worship demons or idols to preach the Word of God to them and pray for them. In the end two witch doctors got saved! Additionally, other people he talked to were convicted that they were sinning in using ancestral shrines to worship. Members of those families were delivered from demon possession and in total these families completely destroyed five ancestral shrines.

Also in Gulu, Rev. Alfred organized a program of preaching and evangelism for his TLT action plan. Preaching was done in five parishes and in total 47 people trusted in Jesus as their Savior!


Yet another ongoing TLT group is in Apac. God has been using the leaders who are being trained in their churches and communities. Here are a few stories from their action plans from manual 1, Caring for God's People. Peter visited four elderly people from his church. When Peter visited one of them, a widow, he found that she was living in a desperate situation. Peter mobilized the church members to provide her with food items and they also repaired her grass thatched house that was in a very bad condition. When the people of the community saw this, people began to respect the church more. More people started to attend the church and both the number of members has increased as well as the amount they are collecting in church offerings. People are trying to follow this good example by visiting and caring for each other in love.

Otto planned to visit six elderly people in the community (not church members) and give them some material support as well as spiritual counseling. He did succeed in visiting them and his actions motivated the whole church to be more active in supporting the elderly, both elderly church members and other elderly people from the community. The other community members, neighbors, were touched by this care for the elderly and ten people have confessed Jesus Christ as their savior. This has resulted in a new church being opened in that community beginning with these ten new believers!

Felix's goal was to reconcile three different church committee members who had felt hurt by the church and were not greeting one another anymore and were not attending church services anymore. Felix was able to visit them and talk with them. They forgave one another, and these three members have resumed attending church services and are even serving in committee meetings again.


After reading such stories, what can we do but praise God for the ways he works through his people? 

Devotional for Development Workers and Missionaries

By Anthony:

Here is an article/devotional that I wrote:

https://network.crcna.org/global-mission/devotional-development-workers-and-missionaries

Fireless Cooker in Kabale

By Sara:

Part of my training in Kabale was on how to make and use a fireless cooker to prepare food, especially beans.  I trained a group of about 20 people, but all of the people Anthony was teaching in a different room wanted to see, so they came for the "unveiling" of the beans.  Here are some of the videos of what happened when we opened it up.  First, lifting off all the blankets and feeling the heat still inside:

Next, opening up the saucepan and seeing the beans.  Get a good look at peoples' faces when the lid is taken off!  And listen for the reaction of the first person to taste them:

Then, a video of people being served beans and a testimony from one of the participants:

Finally, everyone getting a taste:

After seeing this, one of the people in Anthony's group (who wasn't even in my training!) decided to try it the next day.  She said she always likes having beans, but there usually isn't someone home early enough in the afternoon to cook them for dinner.  So she soaked her beans overnight, boiled them in the morning, and put them into the fireless cooker she made (picture below).  That evening she went home and had beans for dinner!

One of the participants in the training is an agriculture field officer who trains community volunteers.  He is excited about his plan to teach all his 70 volunteers how to make a fireless cooker so they can teach other people in rural areas.  Too many trees are getting cut for firewood and charcoal, which is damaging the environment and making the cost of cooking fuel more expensive.  He said this cooking method will be very useful for the people he works with.

Baking Cakes and Scones in Kabale

By Sara:

As part of my training time in Kabale, I had two days to teach a group from two Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG) churches about baking cakes and scones without an oven.  They were a very focused group and caught on quickly.

Steaming a cake:

Decorating:

The maize cake (cornbread) was the favorite.  After the lesson was over, some of the group stayed behind to make another big maize cake - doubling the recipe.  And two days later, someone who wasn't even in the training had a participant share the instructions with her so she could make a maize cake too (she brought some pieces for me and Anthony to taste!)

Day 2: making scones

At the end of the two days, the participants divided into groups based on the church they attend and made some plans for how they will put their new knowledge into practice.  Some of them planned to train young people in their church to make cakes and then will form a bigger group with those trainees to start baking cakes as a business.  One lady planned to start baking scones and selling them near her home.  But each person is definitely going to make a cake for their family within the next month!


Baking Part 2:

After returning home to Soroti, I received some pictures from one of the church groups in Kabale about how they put their baking skills into practice, so the below pictures are compliments of Sarah, who was one of the facilitators of this training in Rwakaraba PAG church.

I am always excited to see people putting their skills into practice and sharing them with others!  My hope is for people to take what they learned and spread the knowledge rather than relying on me to teach everyone.

At Rwakaraba PAG, about 30 women and youth attended the training on baking cakes and scones:

 

  Practical learning:

  Some of the products from the training:

 

 

I think they have already improved on what they learned a couple weeks ago and produced some very professional looking baked goods!

Bible Studies and Agriculture in Kabale

By Sara:

One of the Ugandan organizations World Renew works with is located in the southwest of the country in a place called Kabale.  Each year, representatives from all the Ugandan partner organizations get together with World Renew staff, so we have had the chance to get to know some of the people who work in Kabale with the Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG) churches in that area.  The PAG Kabale pastors and development staff invited me and Anthony to come and share some of our trainings with them, but since it takes 2 days to travel from Soroti to Kabale, it took us a while until we were able to organize a visit which worked for everyone.  They did a great job of inviting and coordinating different groups of people interested in the various topics we had to offer so Anthony and I could travel together and both have work to do each day.  I taught Bible studies and agriculture to one group, and baking and the fireless cooker to another group.

Here's a picture of a beautiful evening in Kabale:

For two of my days of training in Kabale, I had a small group of people who joined me for Bible studies on creation and agriculture and some simple agriculture lessons.  They were a committed group and very interactive.  We had engaging discussions about the Bible passages and they all were able to make excellent plans for how they could obey what they learned from Scripture.

On the second day, a couple of the group members led the Bible studies so they could get practice being facilitators.  They did a great job of asking follow-up questions and guiding the group through the Bible study steps.  I am confident they will be excellent Bible study facilitators as they go out and put what they learned into practice.