Kotido TLT Workshop and Graduation

By Anthony:

It was a great pleasure to travel to Kotido in Karamoja at the end of January with co-facilitator George William, to lead a facilitation workshop and celebrate a TLT graduation. Sara came as well in order to teach a group of women about fireless cookers, agriculture, nutrition, and Bible studies. 

By the time this TLT group finished, it was down to only 6 people. The rest had difficulty continuing to travel for the trainings (Karamoja is a huge region with long distances between towns). But these 6 participants were really active and committed and God has used them in big ways through TLT.

In the facilitation workshop, they learned how to teach and facilitate groups. Through a lot of practice they were able to become experts in helping people to make TLT action plans. We also helped the participants to form themselves into a training team so that they can start new TLT groups and teach others. They made plans to start new groups in their region and we encouraged them and prayed over their plans.

Here are some testimonies they shared during the workshop discussions:

• Defelix shared that TLT has ensured that their church is now adhering to financial ethics in how they handle the church's money. There is transparency and accountability.
• Jimmy shared that the Biblical Preaching manual helped him so much to be able to preach to his home cell group during the covid-19 lockdowns in 2020.
• Jacob shared that the Harm to Harmony manual helped him to work for reconciliation in broken families of his church and he saw a lot of transformation in those families.

After the two day workshop, we had their TLT graduation during the Sunday morning church worship service at Kotido PAG church. Here are some video testimonies we recorded on the graduation day that they said we could share with you. I found them extremely encouraging!

Jacob Lochul Testimony:

Narereng Lucy Testimony 1:

Narereng Lucy Testimony 2:

Okello Emmanuel Testimony 1:

Okello Emmanuel Testimony 2:

Amadi Desmy Testimony:

I preached during the graduation and talked about servant leadership: following the example of Jesus who washed his disciples' feet and died for our salvation. I explained that we wanted to wash the graduates' feet so that they will never forget to be servant leaders, and to pass on what they have learned in TLT to others.

This is a video of the foot-washing. You can see me laughing in it. We were surprised and delighted when one of the church members wanted to also serve the graduates by putting their socks back on for them!

This is a video of Jimmy, one of the graduates, and some family members and friends singing a song that he wrote.

More pictures of the graduates:

After the graduation we and the graduates had lunch with a big group of pastors, deacons, and ministry leaders from the church. Part of hospitality in their culture in Karamoja is to make sure that "visitors go home with the culture" by being dressed according to their cultural traditions. My attire would be more traditionally authentic if I didn't have anything on underneath. Sara's attire is also a more modern version of the women's traditional attire. We truly felt very loved and honored. We hope we will have future times to visit them for more fellowship together.

This is my co-facilitator, George William: