Word and Seed in Uganda: Baby Chameleons and Ululating Videos

By Anthony:

So this is another random pictures post, but I wanted a unique title. First, I'll share some pictures from when Rev. Tim Gamston visited for the Galatians Preaching Conference.

We visited a rural church together. Here is a video from the worship time.

I also asked if I could capture some of the ladies ululating on video so that you could hear it:

Here is Tim being given a chicken. If you visit us, prepare yourself to hold a live chicken.

Here is a video of the church members posing for a photo outside:

We visited the pastor's home. His name is Julius; Sara and I taught him in 2009 at Pentecostal Theological College.

We were given a concert by one of the church members. He is singing about Jesus being our pilot (meaning that he is our way to eternal life and Heaven).

Tim and I also got to go to Murchison Falls National Park together. We took the hike to the top of the falls which I had never done before. It was worth it!

Later in the year we had some visitors come from one of our supporting churches, Calvary CRC in Minnesota. They were on a World Renew trip but were able to spend a couple days with us which was a big encouragement! We are thankful for Randy and Leon. We introduced them to various church leaders and farmers we work with as well as to TLT facilitators.

More recently we had a team come from Resonate Global Mission to do a country evaluation in Uganda of our ministries and partners here. We didn't capture a larger photo of the whole team, but we were blessed by their visit and felt very encouraged and affirmed in the work we are doing. It was a nice time to catch up with these visitors who are also our friends. Here is a photo at the Source of the Nile River of our regional team leader Mike Ribbens, and Albert Strydhorst who I worked with on TLT for many years.

On the theme of visitors, we also had a last visit by our friend Jilanne who was a short-term missionary with Resonate Global Mission in Kampala but finished her two year term and is now back in the USA. That was sad for us. We really appreciated having her around!

The last visitor I'll share about is our friend Nathaniel who just finished his time with the Peace Corps in Uganda for two years. It's also sad that he is leaving! Before he goes back to the US, he decided to have an adventure and walk from his home in Kitgum to us in Soroti, and then on to Kenya, all on foot. Ugandans can't imagine someone doing this for fun, so he gets many offers of discounted motorcycle rides! Haha. When he reached our house he was exhausted:

Here are some of the roads he walked on:

Now on to the chameleons. You remember that we had put a lot of them in our yard. Well apparently they are having babies.

A friend also brought a turtle for my pond:

I'm not going to share about it here, but ask me over email if you are interested in hearing about a monitor lizard.

I continue to enjoy fishing in my pond:

The fish are too stubborn most of the time to bite my hooks, so I have been mastering a cast net:

The pond recently got as full as it can get due to the rain, though the sides aren't level.

I have experimented with some large gill nets as well. They work decently for the tilapia but more work to untangle unlike the cast net.

Here are catfish I caught, and one of them I cooked:

What we really like though are the tilapia. I will share with you our favorite recipe as well.

I didn't plan this, but it's become a bit of a demonstration pond, as many pastors, visitors, and kids want to learn about raising fish.

Life is not all baby chameleons and fishing. Sometimes life throws us challenges too. We just passed through a really trying time of about three weeks where it felt like everything was breaking down. When you consider that it can take rescheduling with a technician several times before something gets fixed, due to people not showing up the whole day, it makes things time consuming and tiring.

First, one of our solar batteries went bad, and we needed to order new equipment. At the same time, the power grid in our area is having problems with low voltage (that can harm electronics), and it seems the power company has refused to fix it (for many months now). It was unfortunate that they happened right when we had to wait for our new batteries. Around the same time, we had to dig up hundreds of feet in our yard to find where our water pipe was leaking, since our tank kept running out of water. We found it and fixed it. Then two weeks later, we had to dig again to find a second leak. During this same time, we were having unstable internet. In addition, we discovered one of the staff at the internet company must have been stealing our internet data, but we have since called them on it, and there is no more issue. Further, a speeding vehicle passed us on the road and a rock cracked our windshield and we had to work with the insurance and garage to get it all fixed, which was a long process of paperwork. Then I had to travel to lead a training. Upon arriving, I discovered our projector was broken. Then the vehicle wiring was also broken, and I had to get a mechanic to come and work on the vehicle for two days of the training.

This is a bit abnormal. Life is not normally quite this chaotic. But God gave us strength to push through and still get our work done during this time. And he also provided people to fix almost all of these problems! I can't tell you how thankful we are for solar. We would have been basically without power for months straight without our solar.

Here is a video of a cool plant (mimosa pudica aka sensitive plant) that grows around Uganda:

Here is a lizard I rescued after it got stuck in our fence:

At church one day we had a surprise when the women had baked a cake. They called Sara up to the front because she was the one who taught them.

At certain times of years we get tons of fruit. Look at all the mangoes on the ground by the morning. Some days we fill 3-4 wheelbarrows with mangoes. Many we throw into the compost if they break on the ground. Others we give to friends, or to people at the shops in our trading center, or to the patients at medical clinics.

I still preach occasionally. Here is me preaching at one of the churches near Soroti:

I worked with a carpenter to set up an axe throwing target in our yard. We also use it for archery with local bows and arrows and for throwing knives. It's a great way to unwind! I used it with our friend Nathaniel.

We meet a few times a year with the bishop's group and their wives. Each time we teach on something different or facilitate an intentional discussion. Sara and I have been doing this together, along with our colleague Stephen.

I also meet once a month with the Pastor's Book Group. The discussions are very engaging. Most people cannot have 100% perfect attendance, but if we are all there we are about 35 people.

Plants grow quickly here. The joke is that if you can grow a tree just by poking a stick into the ground. We transplanted a banana sucker to a new area of the yard one day, and this picture shows how much the banana tree grew in the space of about 8 hours (the green part that shot up).

Our day guard Paul feeding the chickens, ducks, and pigeons in the video below. The pigeons are free range but they don't fly too far from the home because they know where food and safety are.

Sara with her friend Jane (and her daughter) who she meets with every week. Jane and Sara do a lot of teaching to church groups together.