A few photos from our time in the USA

By Anthony:

In this post I'll share a few photos from our time in the US. I'm not going to share about everything we did or show photos from all of our visits to family and friends. Here are only a few selected snapshots.

We were able to get good quality time with everyone in each of our families. Here are just a few photos. The first is with my parents:

Sara's parents:

The Sytsma clan:

We enjoyed peaceful farmland. 50,000,000 people are crammed into the small country of Uganda, so quiet places like this were a nice change.

Sara got to see lots of goats.

We visited and presented in 16 churches, and visited some churches multiple times. It was a lot of traveling around the country, but it was a joy to be with God's people.

And we had some chances to do fun things. We hiked in Texas at Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

We hiked at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. We even did sand sledding there.

I caught a kangaroo rat there, which was running around our campsite every evening. They are really cool animals.

We were surrounded by buffalo in Custer State Park:

We enjoyed the fall colors at Lake Michigan.

Sara made some cool acorn people.

We even had time for a few games of cornhole!

I'll be sharing more reflections about our time in the US soon, but for now enjoy these photos.

Mwanza, TA and Moyo, UG HWHIA Trainings

By Anthony:

I thank the Lord for many great opportunities to teach Helping Without Hurting in Africa along with my co-author Jonny. Here are some highlights from two trainings earlier this year.

One training was in Mwanza, Tanzania with World Renew Tanzania and their partner organizations and churches. I got sick with strep throat while traveling there, and therefore Jonny had to lead the first half of the training on his own, but I improved enough to help teach later.

I thought I had completely forgotten all my Kiswahili, but by the end of the week a lot of it had come back! It made me want to try learning it again, but it's just not that useful where we are in Uganda. Another cool thing about this training is that we had four bishops attend the training the whole time. These are the types of participants we really cherish because they are able to go home and implement significant changes in how things are done in the churches and organizations. Sometimes pastors come to our trainings but are unable to easily make changes due to their leaders not being exposed to the principles we are teaching.

Another training was in Northern Uganda near Moyo, Uganda. This was right next to the South Sudan border at missionaries Jacob and Carol Lee's training center called Reaching Africa's Unreached. To get there we had to take a car ferry across the Nile:

While waiting for the ferry one cow enjoyed the shade of our car:

Most of the participants were pastors coming from materially poor areas. So this training was less about how organizations should do programming to reach out to the poor, and more about how these pastors can help their own families, churches and communities. There were participants who were from Uganda, refugees from South Sudan, and refugees from Sudan. For this training it's best to just have you read Jacob Lee's blog post about our time there. He included a lot of wonderful photos! Sara was with me on this trip and in that blog post you can also read about some of the things she taught while there.

Beyond what is shared in Jacob's blog post, I can add a few interesting tidbits. First, the photo above is of the drums they had at the center that they use to call people back to class after each break. I had a ton of fun being the drummer! I played percussion and marching tenors and drum set my whole youth, so I really miss it. 

Second, I learned some interesting things from the participants who came from refugee camps. Apparently many Ugandans have registered as Sudanese refugees in order to get free food. I'm sure that it is very difficult to sort out who people really are, especially when many refugees don't have any official papers or ID cards.

I also learned that each refugee family has been apportioned plots in which to farm to grow their own food. I'm not sure how much land, but I'm guessing it might not be enough to easily survive on, but nevertheless, it's something. Recently there has been a big furor over the UN reducing the amount of food rations that each refugee family receives. They have been getting rations for years now and it is something that is financially difficult for the UN to sustain, and besides the cost, it is not healthy for people to live in a state of absolute dependency forever. On the other hand, you don't want to reduce assistance too early for people in desperate situations, unless people have viable alternatives to support themselves. The participants told me that a lot of refugees simply refused to cultivate the land plots they were given, but now, years later, when the UN has started to reduce the food ration, those people have finally begun to farm. It is a very interesting example that touches on many of the discussions and principles we look at in HWHIA.

Worshiping together was beautiful, especially since we didn't have a sound system:

Theological Education Network Meetings

 By Anthony:

About two or three times a year, I have continued to host theological education meetings for bishops, Bible college principals and teachers, and pastors involved in informal theological training programs. You can read about it in this previous post - Theological Education Network. 

We had two meetings in 2022 with Odeng Francis from Uganda Christian University. He has spent many years consulting for both government and faith based organizations and institutions. He led two separate meetings for us about governance and leadership. Many of the small Bible colleges are still wrestling through how to structure their leadership and how to create boards and recruit board members to oversee the schools. These issues might seem a bit boring or tedious, but they are tremendously important. Issues of authority, conflict of interest, and unclear leadership structures cause many colleges and churches in Uganda to divide or fall into mismanagement or corruption. 

At recent meetings we were able to give the participants theological books donated by Crossway. This publisher has been very generous to try to equip African pastors with helpful books for ministry. Various titles have been given, but below they had just received the book by Conrad Mbewe: "God's Design for the Church: A Guide for African Pastors and Ministry Leaders."

We had fewer members attend the recent meetings, but those who came found it valuable. A few pastors, however, were discouraged that their bishops did not attend since it will be challenging to try to change some of the leadership patterns and structures when their leaders did not get to hear the important discussions.

Our most recent meeting in February 2023 was facilitated by Atuheire Boaz, from Living Word Uganda. This may have been the meeting with our best discussions yet. Boaz is a gifted facilitator and he led the participants through the topic of partnerships. What does healthy partnership look like? How can it benefit theological schools? He taught about partnerships between Bible schools in Uganda and local leaders, foreign partners, churches and denominations, local institutions, and other Bible schools.

There was discussion about the challenge of working with other cultures, other denominations, and having different visions. But he made a great case for how we can accomplish a lot more if we are willing to work with other leaders and institutions in partnership. 

Monkey Stories

 By Sara:

A few weeks ago, Anthony and I traveled to Moyo, in northwestern Uganda, for a Helping Without Hurting in Africa training and agriculture trainings. 

While we were there, I discussed with the farmer pastors about some of the pest challenges they have in their areas.  One of the biggest issues is monkeys and baboons destroying their crops.  This is especially difficult because those animals are protected by the government, so it is illegal to kill them.  And at the same time, they are incredibly destructive to food crops, which endangers the lives of the people depending on that food for their survival.  I have read a lot of articles and studies on ways people try to keep monkeys away from their crops and there really aren't any non-lethal fail-proof methods, so I asked the group if anyone had tried anything that worked.  Here are a couple stories.

An old man who was always drunk was annoyed that baboons were eating his crops.  Then it came to him: if baboons eat people food, maybe they'll also drink people drinks!  He put out some alcohol where the baboons always came and watched to see what they would do.  They sniffed it, tasted it, and liked it.  By the time they were done, there were a bunch of drunk baboons around.  The old man chose a big male baboon and since it was drunk, it followed him willingly home where he tied a bell around its neck.  When it got sober, it ran off to rejoin its friends, but chased them away by the ringing of the bell.

A similar story came from someone whose family member caught a monkey and tied a bell around its neck.  When he released it, it went directly back to the other monkeys who are "still running from it to this day"!

After telling these stories, someone said, yes, but just remember to be careful trying to catch one because they are very dangerous.  There was a guy who would sit on a big rock where he was above the surrounding land and could see baboons coming from far off.  From his perch, he would shoot them with a slingshot to chase them away.  But the baboons observed him closely and one day, some distracted him by coming at him from the front while two big ones snuck up from behind and pushed him off the rock.  He broke his back and was lame as a result.

So...next time you're around monkeys or baboons, watch out!

Counseling Ministry With Jane

By Sara:

Anthony and I are so grateful for our friends here in Uganda who support and care for us in many ways.  One of my friends, Jane, and I have been working on counseling materials to share with church leaders as well as general trainings we can do to help people improve and build relationships in their families.  Jane has a lot of experience and wisdom in informally counseling people; it is one of her passions.  So, when I was invited back to some churches in Apac to teach women, Jane came with me.  We divided up our time and each shared on different topics.

Jane did a great job teaching about parenting issues and having good hygiene at home.  I really appreciate how free she is to share openly about topics a lot of people shy away from.  And as a Ugandan, she has a cultural perspective on all of these home and family matters that I don't have. 

I enjoyed the decorations at one of the churches.  This group brought shiny plastic garlands and draped them over me and Jane when we came into the church to welcome us!

The second church had organized a group of couples - church leaders and their spouses.  They had lots of good questions and stories to share out of their experience in ministry.  My topics to teach were on honoring the image of God in other people and forgiveness/reconciliation.  Since these were church leaders, they were eager to take what we discussed and put it into practice in their congregations.

Baking Bread Without an Oven

By Sara:

I recently did some experiments with friends to see how we could teach people a simple method to bake bread without an oven.  It was a fun time and we were successful in figuring out different options.  We started out by making yeast bread dough and letting it rise.  We put sand into a large pot and put it over a fire.  Then, we set our pan of rolls inside that pot, on top of the sand, and covered it.  We discovered that we needed to keep the fire pretty low to prevent the rolls from burning, but they did get ready and browned nicely like rolls in an oven.

We also made a loaf of bread using the same method.

After that, we also made "salty buns", my grandma's recipe, on a frying pan.  You put some oil or cooking fat on the pan with salt sprinkled on it, then let the rolls rise on top of it for 30 minutes.  After that, you fry the rolls on both sides.  This one was my personal favorite, but other people preferred sweet bread to salty.  Perhaps it would be more locally acceptable if the salt was left out.

 

By the end, we still had dough left over, so we fried some of it like traditional Ugandan mandazi (sort of like doughnuts).  Those turned out well too although they might not be cost-effective for someone to sell and make a profit. 

All in all, it was a productive day and now we have more skills we could share with other people who want to learn!

HWHIA Zoom Training Testimonies

By Anthony:

From January to March, Jonny and I taught our course Helping Without Hurting in Africa over Zoom. We started with 62 participants, but after some people dropped, the core group was about 44 participants. These were mostly African leaders but also a few missionaries from various foreign countries. The participants were from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Togo, Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, and Malawi. We had participants from other French speaking West African countries as well but they found it hard to do the training in English. (Getting the curriculum translated into French is an upcoming project).

The participants were mostly development workers, pastors, teachers, or missionaries. We did not advertise the training publicly, but targeted particular leaders who had expressed interest in HWHIA, or who were recommended by our Resonate partner churches and institutions. We especially wanted leaders who would be qualified and in a position to teach others the curriculum themselves.

We met twice a week for 2-3 hours per session for 10 weeks. The training was successful as you will see from the testimonies. However, the training had its share of challenges. Some people attended inconsistently, people dropped off Zoom regularly (including us as facilitators) due to power outages and internet outages, we were limited in time, and you lose a lot of rich discussion when a training is on Zoom and not face to face. Over the last week or two our power in Soroti has been pretty good, but for about 3-4 weeks we had a bad stretch of the power going out for about 4-5 hours every single day. 

Those who missed lessons because of internet problems or family challenges had to do assignments for the lessons they missed and watch the recordings. Around 30 people are receiving the certificate for completing the course. I don't have any training pictures to show as it was a zoom training, but I do have testimonies to share with some photos the participants gave me of themselves.

David Fugoyo: "I got the news about this training from the Gospel Coalition Africa, and I was not very sure I was going to commit myself until the end, but I want really to thank God in the first place that I have attended every single lesson without missing any of them. And the other thing is our two facilitators, Anthony and Jonny, you are amazing, in the way that you communicate the truth, you know, in a very simple easy way. It has really helped us. ... With emphasis on those who are materially disadvantaged, to see them, how do we see them, how should we love them, how should we involve them in everything we are doing for them, actually we should not be doing it for them, but with them. I'm repeating these words so that you know they will remain with me. This training will do much in this continent. It will be there in our pulpits. It will be there in our classrooms."

Jeanine Ayivi & Kwasi Ayivi:  Translated from French: "I want to thank God for taking us through the course. I thank Anthony and Jonny for their facilitation. It has been very good. Since 1977, I have been doing development work with communities. And I can say that for me as well as the communities, there has been a lot of hurt. Because there were many things I didn't know. And so this training has opened our eyes and helped us so that we can continue working without hurting any people. In the church we have been working with, I can also see there has been a lot of hurt. With the training I have received, I believe we have been given the opportunity to train other church leaders so that together we can work without hurting those who are to receive help from us. Thank you Chalmers. Thank you Brian Fikkert for thinking of such a program. And may the Lord bless all of us."   "The next step is to sensitize the Churches, lead them to understand their place and their role in the community and to engage with the poor."

Muhindo Vitale: "Regarding these lessons, I am really excited and I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Mr. Anthony and Jonny for their patience and how also they were facilitating as really I appreciate it. God bless you. Secondly, I've gained much more detail in this training specifically for myself in our work in the DRC. All those insights that we have learned through this material we are living in that condition. I am a facilitator in a critical situation in the environment of the DRC. We are working in peace building, in a religious based organization. And really I have already used some of the insight from this module. Thank you very much."

Samuel Onyait:  "As we come to the end of this training, “Helping without Hurting in Africa,” I want to make a number of remarks. First, I am thankful to the facilitators for guiding us very well. Facilitating a training before such a diverse audience from different regions of Africa and beyond can be challenging because we are not only distant from one another geographically, but also culturally diverse. I attribute this to the commitment and humility of the facilitators as well as their ability to communicate effectively. Because of these, they have been able to share hard truths without courting controversy or losing the audience. That for me is a great example to emulate. You've not only taught using words, but also through example, the kind of character that you've displayed. I'm so appreciative. 

Secondly, I want to appreciate my fellow students. I have not been able to see everyone's face, but I have heard people's voices. And I feel part of a family that has been meeting on this platform for several weeks. I feel bound to this family. I feel so blessed that I was able to be part of this family. And I really believe God is calling us to something important for Africa at this point in time. One of my pastors once said, “Whenever God wants to get something done, he rallies his people from different parts of the world, he stirs them up and gives them a task/vision to accomplish.” He commissions them. And I think this is exactly what God has done to us through this training. I appreciate the words of wisdom from colleagues from West Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, and other parts of the world that have participated. Your words of wisdom will stick. 

Lastly, what this course has done for me is to wake me up from the kind of slumber I was getting into, challenging me that there is more that you can do, for the sake of the poor in Africa. You know when you see poverty over and over and little changes, it tends to breed a sense of helplessness and capitulation. We have so many poor in Africa and the challenge of getting used and giving up is real. I think that's what I was getting into, but this course has helped wake me up, to say no to slumber, to say no to folding hands, and get busy doing something for the sake of those who are disadvantaged. This for me is a new call and I appreciate the call."

Concerning next steps that Sam will take:  

"This has been an opportunity like no other. First, it has been my first opportunity to train together with other Christian leaders from across Africa on the subject of development and helping the poor. I wish I could stay in touch with all these people so as to continue championing the cause of the poor now that this group is equipped. Second, on my own initiative I plan to start a platform that can make it possible for me to work with church leaders and ordinary Christians to implement what I have learnt. I will be an agent of transformational development and defeat systemic poverty."

Katta Linda: "I have been blessed through this course and I believe by the help of God to change the community around me. I appreciate our dear facilitators Anthony, Jonny and Simon for the work greatly done. May God bless you all and give you more wisdom and knowledge in other trainings so that you continue to be a blessing to other groups."

I am so grateful to have reached the climax of the course, and it has been a real good moment to have this training. It came at the right time. Majorly, this course has really opened up my mind. The way I have been doing things has really changed basing on the types of poverty we looked at. I looked at how we were not using the available resources that we had. I could not look at it as a big thing, but after the lessons, it really showed me that there are resources that we have to access, that people are not poor because they don't have. The poverty we only looked at before, we knew it was having no money, but it really opened my mind and whenever I am in the community I have been trying now to sensitize people on the resources that they have and how they can utilize them. It has really been a good training. It has not only worked at my workplace, but I'm trying to implement it, and really I appreciate."

Jimmy Okello: "This training has helped me to understand what poverty is. I was only aware of a few aspects of poverty but the training has helped me to get a broader understanding of it and also how to address poverty biblically. I have learnt how to help poor people without creating dependency syndrome in them. I look forward to helping people better and to share the same with our church."

Jerry Adodo: "This training was so timely and useful for me in this sense that I was in a process of redefining the vision, mission, actions and activities of our Association and focusing on poverty alleviation strategies to benefit the youth and elderly people….things to do and things to avoid is much clearer as I’ve come to see some of the pitfalls of some of our previous initiatives for youth…I am so grateful….I am working on a series of teachings at church to teach through the lessons." "You have been amazing teachers! I so much appreciated you facilitation, your deep and strong mastery of the curriculum, your various experiences and your patience and love demonstrated all through this course!"

David Craig: "I have greatly appreciated this training as it was so wholistic. I love it!...I liked training with African colleagues as a foreigner so I can learn more about where I live and work. Thank you for all your work, Jonny and Anthony." "I want to appreciate these lessons that we have been learning. I think as a foreigner in Africa, I have really appreciated hearing the African viewpoints which has really been so enriching to me. I was aware of a lot of the material previously, the Helping Without Hurting material, and so it wasn't all new to me, but I really love the things being taught through the Chalmers Center. I really appreciate it and I think it is very very worthwhile and so I think it needs to be dissemated more. I want to help my colleagues, for instance, my missionary colleagues, and my colleagues in the locally initiated sponsorship program I am working with here (in Uganda). I think it is very crucial to work through these issues. So I will be definitely pushing that in my team and asking questions as much as possible, and try to teach others as I have been over the years. I think if they could do this training themselves, that would be excellent."

Nombulelo Ndandani: "Let me take this opportunity to thank you both Anthony and Jonny. This course really open my eyes, it makes me grow religiously and spiritually, my relationship with God. It also helped me with my family. They say they can see change in me ever since I attended the course. It also strengthened my relationship with my family..... It really did help me, I’m so grateful for this opportunity. A lot of people will benefit through me as I plan to share the knowledge I learned on this course."

Nombulelo on her next steps to take after the training:

• "First step will be to go through the manual to understand and gain more knowledge with the content and the objectives of the course.
• The goal of the course and vision so that I can be able to share with my colleagues and do train other people in my community.
• Do introspection on myself on the mistakes I did before I attend the training.
• Develop community projects with assessment and engagement leaders and gate keepers.
• Start to implement the course first with my colleagues and outreach workers.
• Implement the training in different communities, especially in homeless communities around the city of Pretoria."

John Njuguna: "This training has been an eye opener as one of us had earlier said. What we have been talking is not new, but it came to us in quite a very new dimension, an eye opener, it has been really helpful to me. There was a time I shared that we had a challenge about how to go about helping students who needed school fees. Actually out of this training, we now have a team that is putting down a system in which we shall be able to see who we will be able to help and not just a one time, but actually today we were discussing with the team that, if we get a student that wants to join maybe the high school, we journey with them for the next 8 years of their education, and that will mark a real impact into their lives. 

So the various aspects of the discussion, the stories that we have been hearing, the many discussions from my fellow participants, it has been very impactful and quite an eye opener into what we are able to do in our various capacities. So as I had shared earlier, I already have a work plan, that I have set in place, for the next two months to see how we can be impactful to our society, and I believe that is one of the things as a pastor that we are called as a church to do. But not I alone, but to help bring more people on board, so that they can see the potential that they have to alleviate the suffering that is within our communities. So I'm really grateful to Anthony and Jonny, you are an inspiration to this generation. Thank you so much."

Joseph Antwi: "The things which have been shared I wouldn't say have been entirely new. But the angle from which the information has come has been very challenging. And so one of the first things I thought of doing, and I think I asked the question very early on in the training, was how to get members of my team to go through the same kind of training, because we work essentially with materially poor people, using the church centered savings groups. And I realize that there is a lot we would need to, not to change in the way we do things, but in our thinking. Because the training opened my eyes to the wrong ways of handling the poor, imposing on them, instead of helping them to liberate themselves and see the possibility of the material poverty that they are in. So that has been a real shake up for me."

Francis Ichol: "This training has helped me to change the way I and my family on how we support materially poor people. This training will also help our programming in our organization to consider the principles learned in this training."

"I want to thank God for the opportunity to go through this training. I think it has been really greatly helpful. I want to thank you Jonny and Anthony for taking us through this course. I am quite familiar with the CCMP process, Church and Community Mobilization Process. I thought it was the best approach to help materially poor communities. But this course has blended my thinking and the gaps that I see in the CCMP process. And I think it is quite timely to us. Church Action for Relief and Holistic Development is a new organization which we have been trying to seek how to cause impact to the community. So this training has been really helpful to us, and we are already incorporating it into our programming, but we also want to design a program on how we can pick up these principles and put them in our day to day activities. 

The training has also opened us, I work as one of the church leaders, it gave me opportunities to see the gaps that are in our leadership, the gaps that are in the way that we as a Church have been helping the materially poor people. And I think we are going to bring this to action plans in our committees so that as we go out, I think we need to take caution on how we have been supporting the poor, but also our approaches. So I'm really very grateful for the process, we look forward to further out this training if there are opportunities ahead. We want to be in a better position to help others to be equipped, but also to help others to have this knowledge that we have got from this training. We are grateful and we want to ask God to bless you and continue giving you deeper insight in this process."

Moses Odel: "I appreciated the training on types of poverty...that really opened up my mind to understand what poverty truly is and how debilitating it can become especially without a relationship with God...that is the ultimate poverty of a soul."

"One personal change is how I will help people change. How I intervene in helping people needs a pause. Also being careful to listen to people rather than rush into help. Repentance of the many mistakes made in the past and present. The other is about fighting poverty through reconciliation by focusing on the broken people...this is key especially in the North but also in the East of Uganda where war has ravaged and destroyed relationships and community pride etc."

"Obviously I would recommend the training especially for pastors because they deal with larger communities and their reach and influence is strong. I'd also recommend it for political leaders especially with the hope that true leadership that cares for poverty alleviation can be espoused and become a blessing to our corrupt leadership but also bring about transformation and transferring of a godly response towards poverty of all forms."

"This training has opened my eyes first of all to understand in depth what poverty really is and how interconnected the different types of poverty are to spiritual poverty, unlike what I have been taught in Economics or social development. Secondly this training is challenging me to tear down perceptions about poor people especially my own approach to their predicament (the God Complex) and simply ask like Jesus would often ask even when it was obvious - what can I do for you...rather than do what I think the poor need. Thirdly this training needs to be at the forefront of fighting the false prosperity Gospel and revealing to both genuine church leaders who teach falsehood and also the false teachers - the truth about poverty, work and Gospel true prosperity

Nico Koech: "This training has been an eye opener. I want to say that I have learned a lot. There are many things that I've been tackling before especially in my program that deals with development and issues of rehabilitation and even relief....Through this training, I have learned how to approach, because for many years, there are communities that have been given relief for many years, and through these lessons I have realized that some of these communities need rehabilitation, and some need development in order to change their lives and situations. Because I have learned that giving them relief, relief, relief, that these people will not change, I will have not helped them. Through this, I think I have learned a lot....I really appreciate for this training. It has been so helpful to me."

Kakarioba Bosire: "Special thanks to Anthony and Jonny for making an online training interesting and captivating to a level where one does not notice the time one has spent on the zoom."