Cindy's Internship

By Sara:

Cindy, a woman from my church in the US, spent two months with us as an internship for her Master's Degree program.  The trip was delayed by a year due to Covid and then even after she arrived in May, we had to adjust the second half of her internship due to more lockdowns in Uganda.  We are thankful that we packed in lots of visits and activities around Teso for the first few weeks before the lockdown prevented us from using our vehicle anymore...

Cindy showed our small group how to teach Bible stories by drawing pictures, then we took turns practicing:

She got to visit Rose's family in the village the day before the lockdown started.  Her kids were really interested in smartphones - their older siblings let them play with their phones when they are home in the village:

We visited people at their homes and were served juice, peanuts, and lots of fruit.

Cindy got to plant a tree at Tom's home in the village when we visited them:

Churches were closed as part of the lockdown, but beforehand, we were able to worship at a village church as well as the one we normally attend in Soroti.  Anthony preached in the village and in Soroti one Sunday.

We appreciated having Cindy look at things through new eyes and take pictures of what now seems normal to us, reminding us of the excitement of being in Uganda for the first time.  Like auction off a chicken in a church service as part of the offering.

Cindy spent almost a week in Katakwi on her own, teaching groups of pastors about smartphones and computers.  It was a lot of hard work in a few days, but everyone who attended the trainings gained new skills for which they were very grateful.

These kids wished they could come in and be part of the training:

As mentioned before, in her first week, Cindy trained Anthony's team of TLT facilitators on smartphone and computers.  The skills they learned will help them write reports more easily and quickly.  They also had a great time learning some photography skills so they can take better pictures and videos at TLT trainings.

But once we were all stuck in Soroti full-time, Cindy was willing to make what was supposed to be two Soroti trainings (one on smartphones and one on computers) into about 10 smaller trainings at our house.  Anthony and I are so grateful for the effort she put into the materials for these trainings.  She did a lot of work preparing Powerpoints, learning apps and settings on the most common types of phones people have here, researching the questions people wanted answered, and then patiently going through these topics over and over in the different groups.

We heard testimonies from some of the people she taught about what a great teacher she is ("Cindy can really teach!") and how much the new skills they have in taking pictures and using Microsoft Office will help them in their work and ministry.  After learning how to take panoramic pictures, one person went to his workplace and took a panoramic picture of the office.  When he showed it to his boss, the boss was very excited and asked him to get it printed for advertisement!