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.