Hiking on Mount Elgon

 By Sara:

On Saturday before our church visit in Kapchorwa, Anthony and I took a hike in Mount Elgon National Park, which is nearby.  We did that once before, in 2010, when we lived in Mbale, so it was fun to do so again.  It is a beautiful place:

People who live near the national park are allowed to come in once a week to collect dry wood off the forest floor for firewood.  Saturdays are the day, so we saw lots of people cutting up branches and carrying it out.

This is a feather from a Great Blue Turaco - pretty cool!

For comparison, here we are in the same national park 12 years ago, when we were brand new to Uganda:

Kapchorwa Visit

 By Sara:

After an extended time of planning and delaying because of lockdowns and previous engagements, we managed to visit a church in Kapchorwa with the PAG bishop from the area who had invited us all those months ago.  Kapchorwa is beautiful and quite a bit cooler than Soroti because it is at a higher elevation, on the slopes of Mount Elgon.  Most of the Ugandan star runners come from that area, or at the very least train there. We drove by the homes of some Olympians.

Here is the church we visited:

The church wanted to learn about the fireless cooker, so I explained how it works and we started the process of boiling the beans for 10 minutes before the church service:

The training was originally going to just be a certain group of people who were supposed to come early, but they didn't, so we ended up including most people in the church as they were arriving for the service:

The beans stay in the fireless cooker for 4 hours.  Conveniently(?) the church service was really long, so the beans were ready right at the end of church!  There were lots of choirs singing special music:

Another guest preacher gave a short message and then Anthony preached.  The bishop also talked to the church about the denomination's vision and mission.

And then, before everyone went home, we opened up the basket of beans.  It is always fun to see peoples' surprised and amazed reactions:

Bukwo

 By Sara:

One of the places TLT is happening in Uganda is Bukwo, a town near the border with Kenya.  When the TLT group studied the manual on stewardship, the facilitators told them about some of the skills I teach and they invited me to come and teach women from the church while the next TLT manual was going on. 

Looking out the church window in Bukwo, you can see Kenya just over that hill:

Two of the skills I taught the women were: how to make cakes and how to cook beans using the fireless cooker.  Even though they are very close to Kenya, there isn't anyone in their area who makes cakes, so they were super excited that they can now make cakes for weddings (and be good stewards by saving money):

In TLT, when learning about stewardship, the group discovered that many people in their churches were not married in church because they thought it would be a huge expense (it usually is).  These people had been traditionally married (which means the man paid the woman's family a bride price), have been living together for years, and have children.

The TLT participants already believed that it was important for people to get married in the church, but they realized that the culture pressures people to have expensive church weddings which many can't afford.  So they decided to organize a mass wedding for anyone in their churches who wanted to make their vows before God.  To save money, the ladies I taught would make the cakes and all the couples would contribute some money for the food.  The wedding took place after I left, but some of the women sent me pictures of one of the cakes they made.  And more than 50 couples got married on that day!

I also taught about the fireless cooker (you can see one of the ladies holding up the pot we cooked the beans in):

The ladies said that it is hard to get enough firewood or charcoal in their area, and they eat a lot of beans, so they were excited to learn a new way to save on fuel.