Visit to Timu, Karamoja

By Anthony:


Some of you may remember that Resonate Global Mission is supporting our partner, PAG Uganda, with their church planting efforts in Karamoja. You can read about that here. I'll try not to repeat too much in this new post. In September 2022 we visited Timu, Karamoja again, and the two new church plants, somewhat nearby, in Tultul and Morungole. Our goal was to see how the church planting was going and encourage and pray for the church planters. In addition, we had another day to train the pastors and their wives from the Timu area.

If you are not familiar with the Karamoja region, I highly suggest this podcast I was able to make with the Bishop of PAG Karamoja Pastorate who was with us on the whole trip. He talks about the beauty of the people and land, the diverse tribes and cultural practices, the violence and insecurity, and the poverty and dependency in the region. He shares incredible stories of God's protection over his life, and also shares how some warriors have given up their guns and turned to Christ.

This trip took us 5 hours by road to reach our guesthouse, and then another 1 hour drive to where we did the training in Timu on the next day. These are remote areas and you see very few other vehicles. We are thankful that God kept us safe on the roads from car trouble and that we had no encounters with cattle rustlers.




The view from the church at Timu is amazing (minus the rubbish on the ground).



Our colleague Stephen came with us as well. We had the whole day to teach some church leaders at Timu. Sara taught about the fireless cooker and made maize and beans with the participants. I taught about community development and utilizing the resources that God has given us. Stephen then taught about the biblical view of marriage and the challenges pastors face in their marriages.



The fireless cooker is not truly fireless. The beans need to be boiled for 10 minutes instead of the normal 3 hours. Here is the outdoor kitchen:









There are two Timothy Leadership Training groups in the area that were started as part of the initiative of raising up new leaders, especially to help some of the young churches, but we didn't get to visit those TLT groups on this trip.

First we visited Tultul PAG. It is a small church but steadily growing. Here is a picture of their worship service taken soon after the church was started, many months before our September visit:



When we visited, the church now looks like this (though a few of the people were just curious neighbors seeing what we were up to):



When you want people to know it's time to meet, you begin by singing a song. Then slowly people trickle in:



Here is Jacob speaking to the church. He is the one overseeing, caring for, and teaching the church planters in the two church planting sites. He needs your prayers. It's a difficult task, especially traveling in areas of insecurity.



While we visited them, Stephen gave a short biblical encouragement.


A couple people committed their lives to Christ during our visit.



The church in Morungole was another full hour drive away from Timu. And when you drive from Timu to Morungole you drive through basically just bush with almost no homes. In Morungole, PAG already has land and a church building. The church has had challenges in turnover of pastors, but the members are committed. Most of the members are women and children, and only a few men. This may be partly due to cultural issues like men not wanting to give up drinking.





Stephen again preached.



Amazingly, around 70 people prayed to receive Jesus as their savior. It is possible that many of these people have been attending the church every week, but never made an official commitment to Christ.



Last, I leave you with this incredibly encouraging testimony from Pastor Hillary Angura, who used to be a fierce Karamojong warrior but became born again, and now he is working with PAG as an evangelist and pastor (in a different area of Karamoja from where the new churches are). I took this video with him during our trip and interviewed him for my podcast as well.



Here is Pastor Hillary's podcast that you can download and listen to. It's longer than I wanted it to be, but does include some very interesting testimonies.

Julius and Baby Rabbits

 By Anthony:

This is another post of random photos from our daily lives. Many of you may remember our former guard Julius who got saved some years ago and who we were trying to encourage and disciple. He moved back to his village and also lost his phone number, so we had been out of touch for a year or two. But we found him in town! He moved back to Soroti and is working for a guard company again. Now we can talk to him whenever we want.

Here are the baby rabbits. They are now much bigger by the time of this posting. They grow quickly!

They were small but fast:

World Renew had a meeting recently in Soroti and many of our church leader friends were at the meeting, so we had some over to our home. It is a big deal to visit someone's home for the first time, when normally you are only meeting them all the time at different meetings and trainings. It was a special time of fellowship and they encouraged us so much as they shared testimonies about TLT and other ministries.

Part of Sara's garden below. The big leaves are pumpkin leaves and they are one of our favorite greens/vegetables.

On one of our visits we received a gift of honey to take home. It was quite the mess of honeycomb and honey, but Sara has mad skills:

Stephen Omoko, our Resonate colleague here in Soroti, started a new initiative called Bishops' Coffee Break. He and his wife host a time for Bishops and their wives to relax, work on their marriage, have     quality time, and work through issues. Who pastors the pastor? Or the bishop? They were so grateful to Stephen and Resonate for such a space created for them. Here is Stephen and Sarah:

There is a Resonate vehicle which has been parked at our house, but which Stephen uses, we have had a problem with a rat that got into the vehicle when Stephen was on a visit somewhere. One day I was able to see it in the trunk, and quickly grabbed a stick and managed to kill it. Hopefully it didn't damage anything important in the vehicle. We had tried poison before that, but it didn't work. It was very big.

Sometimes you need to take a break and do something fun. Federico and I went fishing on Lake Kyoga with the help of our night guards who thought it sounded like a fun activity too, and since they live near the lake, they assisted us to rent a boat and paddle it around. Federico is one of my very good friends here in Soroti. He is from Argentina and actually learned English in Uganda so he has an excellent Ugandan way of speaking. We have many shared interests besides fishing including VR, ping pong, and board gaming. Unfortunately we didn't catch a single fish!

Land and Building

By Sara:

We've been making some real progress toward living on our land, so we wanted to show you some pictures of what has been happening over approximately the past year since we got land.

This is what it looked like when we got it:

This is the land being cleared of bushes:

The first building step was digging a trench and laying the foundation for a wall:

All of the work is done by hand, including mixing the cement.

However, this is how work can go so quickly:

Here's Anthony and our friend Martin, who is managing the building process.  We appreciate him so much; he is doing great work and is very hard working:

The guys digging the pit latrine:

After that, putting up a gate:

Obviously, planting a garden was a priority for me.  Here are some of the bananas and tree seedlings I planted right away at the beginning of this rainy season:

On planting day:

About one month later:

And then only two months after planting everything:

Then, work started on laying the foundation for our house:

And there is the filled foundation:

This week, they started laying out the rooms and putting up the walls!

Women's Ministry

By Sara:

I have been enjoying joining some of my friends from Soroti to do ministry in different areas.  Jane and Betty invited me to go with them to a church just outside of town to teach about improving relationships in the family.  This was part of the women's ministry in PAG - women from different parts of the pastorate go to visit other churches and share with them.  They rotate who is traveling where at various times of year.  Jane, Betty, and I planned some different topics and discussion questions.  It went well, though we didn't have as much time as we expected (about 2 hours instead of 5), since everything started late!

Here is Betty using the example of Ruth to talk about having loving relationships within a family:

Jane shared on the topic of good hygiene and caring for our family's health by the way we treat our bodies.

Another time, Jane and I were invited to a church in Usuk, about an hour north of Soroti, to teach at a one-day marriage seminar.  We facilitated some very lively discussions about how to honor people in our families and how to improve communication with one another and do it in a godly way.

While we were there, we talked to some of the women who had been at a baking training with me and Betty almost a year ago.  These four women (Betty, Esther, Josephine, and Deborah) are four out of 7 women who formed a group to bake cakes.  So far, they were hired once to make cakes for a wedding: