Last Amuria TLT - Work and Worship

By Anthony:

 

Martin and I just finished leading our last week of TLT in Amuria.  It was bittersweet, knowing it was our last TLT as a group, but everyone felt relief and a sense of accomplishment for finally completing all 6 manuals.  During the discussions, the pastors raised so many good questions, and I realized I could spend many more years here teaching these same pastors.  But TLT has given them basic skills in pastoring, and a good biblical foundation to build on as they continue to grow and learn.  My favorite testimony about TLT that I've heard many times in different ways from pastors in all the TLT groups is this: "Before TLT we were just playing games trying to pastor."  "Now that we've done TLT, we no longer feel like we are just gambling as pastors."

 

My last training in Amuria proved to be my first time to eat cow intestines and chunks of stomach or rumen.  It wasn't bad!

 

Here is Martin leading below:

 

This last manual is called, "Serving God in Work and Worship."  The idea of the manual is to help people realize that we are to worship God in all of our lives, not only on Sundays.  So the first part of the manual talks about how to glorify God in our daily work, whether farming, business, or pastoring.  Then the rest of the manual is dedicated to learning about the various parts of a worship service - praise, confession, sermon, offerings, blessing, etc.  In TLT we don't just discuss these topics generally, but we get down into details of how to really do these things well in churches, what things we are missing, and what problems we regularly face in the worship times.

The reports this time were encouraging as always.  So many Sunday school teachers have been trained since the last manual, and so many children made happy.

I'll share with you one report just to give you a sense of the different kinds of struggles people face here in Uganda.  Elizabeth's plan was to train up other women's leaders using the apprentice method, meaning she does the ministry alongside with them, giving them chances to also minister, and afterwards she gives feedback and instruction.  After she ministered together to the church with the other ladies, several Christians came up to give her testimonies about how they were touched through the ministry.  One Christian said he had been planning to kill his brother the next week (perhaps over land disputes?), but through the teaching he was convicted and is no longer going to do that.  Another Christian said she was preparing to go to see the witch doctor to find help for some problem, but now she is going to go to God instead.  A third Christian testified that he was planning to poison his brother's family (guns are scarce, so poisoning is the usual method of getting revenge), but he was convicted and has now repented of such a horrible idea.



 

I don't want to make this post too long, but we had SO MANY vigorous and interesting discussions about such a big variety of topics.  When you start reading the Bible together, questions come to mind, and sometimes they are important, even if tangential to the manual and what we are supposed to be discussing.  The questions revealed to me how much teaching is still needed even after these pastors graduate TLT.  Some kinds of knowledge we take for granted.  But as these pastors read the Bible, and try to understand it, and try to literally obey it and take it seriously, interesting questions get raised.  These are topics I addressed:

• Many of them thought that Eden is over in the Middle East, and you can go there and see the tree of life still.
• There is a teaching in the villages (I don't think any of my students believed this though), that the sin of Eve was not eating fruit but having sex with Satan.  Besides just being very incorrect, this idea helps to reinforce the prevalent belief among Christians that sex is shameful even if necessary.
• In talking about how the curse has made work more difficult, it was interesting to learn that all but two of the participants said that pastoring is more difficult than farming.  But perhaps this is partly due to their feeling not trained enough to be pastors, in addition to the fact that they aren't really paid to be pastors.
• We talked about lament, and being honest with God in our prayers and songs, and looked at the Psalms as our examples. 
• Some pastors thought it was sinful to have sex on Saturday, the day before going to church.  So we had to discuss sexuality, a bit about the OT law, and cleanness/uncleanness.
• We discussed circumcision, and I found out that some of the participants believe that circumcision makes you weak and completely impotent.
• We discussed polygamy and if the man has to get rid of a wife when he becomes a Christian.  Polygamy is less common than it used to be, but it still exists in Uganda.  Interestingly, the bishop is very open that he had more than one wife before he got saved, many years ago.  After getting saved, he had one wife leave.  But he took good care of her until she married again.
• We discussed Baptism and the Lord's Supper.  We discussed whether it's okay to use wine, what kind of foods should be used, how often the Lord's Supper should be taken, and who should be allowed to partake and who should not be allowed. 
• We discussed whether you should put someone under church discipline in different scenarios.  For example, what if a young unmarried couple confesses fornication and repents, but the young woman is already pregnant.  Here, most pastors would put the young couple under church discipline to "safeguard the testimony of the church" (that they take sin seriously and don't encourage such behavior).  This lasts for a short time, mostly is just a public statement, and they can keep attending church in the meantime.
• The blessing at the end of a worship service is not a guarantee of riches or good health.
• We talked a lot about religious rituals, everything from kneeling, to making the sign of the cross, to having a cross necklace.  We talked about how they can be good or bad depending on why we do them, and that it's more important that we are living rightly in the rest of our lives.  We discussed how with some rituals we forget their meanings over time and they become ritual only.  Many of these Pentecostal pastors grew up in Catholic churches and have since rejected many rituals for that very reason.  But they learned that many rituals can still be good if done from the heart and for the right reasons.  In the process, we examined many of the rituals and traditions that we use in PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God).  It was very funny when the pastors brought up that too often they say, "Praise God!" or "Hallelujah!" and don't always mean it.  One elderly women's leader in our group said, "we need to stop using praise God as a comma!" Everyone laughed really hard because they know very well that most of them while preaching say "Praise God" in between every sentence. 

Praying for action plans:

The action plans this time mostly involve training others in this manual about work and worship, especially the worship leaders.  Others want to help their Christians take joy in their daily farm work, or see an increase in the offerings given in their churches.  One pastor hopes to see that all of his Christians stop working on Sundays and rest instead.   Please pray for these pastors as they try to carry out their plans.

Building an Oven With Betty

I have really enjoyed working with a small group of women in Soroti to teach them on various skills they are interested in.  We have done baking of different kinds and making soap.  After teaching them about using my clay oven, some of them wanted to build their own oven at home.  Just recently, we built the first one at Betty's house.  Her husband did an amazing job building the base.  His looks so much more beautiful than the one I built!

While he was building the base, we ladies had tea.  Betty prepared us the biscuits I had taught them to bake on a frying pan.  This is the first time anyone has prepared something for me from one of my recipes and I can't tell you how much joy it gave me!

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was covered in clay and sand, and I didn't want to get it all over the camera, but here's the whole group working on the oven.

WHH Kabale and Thoughts on Helping the Poor

By Anthony:

Recently, as Sara traveled to Arua for the ECHO conference, I traveled to Kabale to lead a When Helping Hurts Training.  Sara had 2 days of driving each way, and so did I.  We went together to Kampala then she went all the way to the North-western corner of Uganda, while I went all the way to the South-western corner.  To make the travel more tolerable we treated ourselves to a nice dessert.  Now you have proof that we don't live only on termites and maize.  (We were travelling with some World Renew colleagues).

 

 

This training was a bit tougher for me.  Besides being tired from so much driving, I was extremely cold in Kabale!  They live in the hills/mountains and in my room it was around 63 degrees during the day (not a heated room) and colder than that at night.  I wasn't warm enough even with my fleece!  February in the US is going to be a rude awakening.  In addition to being cold, I had a cold.  It's not fun to lead a training when your body just wants to sleep and you blow your nose all day.  But God gave me strength and it was a successful training.

 

Here is a video of worship:

 

Every day when I looked at the participants I chuckled a bit.  I was in Uganda, and yet everyone was wearing sweaters, coats, and scarves.  It's what I would imagine Soroti would be like in winter if we had the seasons of the US.

I had to change some of the examples in my training manual.  In the manual we discuss how we would appropriately offer help for a famine in Karamoja (the region next to Teso where we live).  So for this training in Kabale we discussed how the local churches might help the Batwa people, using principles we learn in the training.  The Batwa are pygmies and live nearby in the Kabale area and are perhaps one of the most marginalized peoples in Uganda.  They are by tradition a forest dwelling people, but they were evicted from their lands when the government created a National Park, the Bwindi Impenetrable forest.  They suffer regular discrimination and oppression and their rights are not recognized.  I learned from the pastors that some NGO's and missionaries work with the Batwa people.  Honestly I haven't researched what projects the NGO's are doing there so I cannot make a true judgment.  But the pastors told me that much of the work is being done without really partnering with the people and consulting them for their ideas.  For example, they said that an organization built for the Batwa a bunch of houses, but the people didn't want houses built like that (with metal roofs) so they don't live in them but use them as kitchens and storage rooms.  If this it true, it is another reminder to all of us that it is so important that we work WITH the people we are helping and get their ideas and wisdom!  We don't just go out and start doing stuff for them when they weren't involved at all in our planning meetings, whether they are a tribe in Africa, or the poor family in our church who needs help.

Prayer time:

One discussion that usually comes up during these trainings is: "is it really okay to say "no" to people when they ask us to give them things?  Didn't Jesus say to give to whoever asks from you?"  This is a really good and important question.  It's one I've wrestled with a lot.  But I am at peace and don't feel guilty when I say usually "no" to people on the street who ask me to give them things.  While there are many Bible passages that command us to be generous, to give to others who lack (1 John 3:16-18, Matthew 5:42), there are also Bible passages that tell us not to give in certain situations (2 Thes. 3, 1 Tim. 5).  Are they at odds?  No. I don't think so.  God wants us to be generous but also to use our minds and wisdom when giving so that we truly help people be who they were created to be.  We have to take all of the Bible passages and apply them at once, not put them at odds together.  Should we always be generous?  Yes.  Should we sometimes not give?  Yes.  Sometimes not giving is the more loving thing to do, but we don't then turn away from the person, we figure out the better way to help them that will usually be more difficult and time consuming.  For example we might help them out of an alcohol addiction, or we might help them find meaningful work to do to earn their own income.  One pastor disagreed with me, and said we should always give when people ask, to obey these Bible passages.  One reason I like these trainings is that we can disagree openly at times, but still remain brothers and sisters in Christ and learn from one another.



As per usual, people had a good time drawing pictures of "community development" and evaluating them with a lot of laughter.  In the photo you can also see some of what I wrote for people during the training on the big pieces of paper.  I'm amazed they can read my terrible writing!

 

 

 

 

I don't remember how it came up, but we discussed the problem of how many NGO's and missionaries pay people to come to trainings.  This creates so much dependency.  What development workers sometimes fail to realize is that doing this is a way to treat poor people as if they are helpless, inferior, powerless and can contribute nothing to their own development.  It's one more way for us to indirectly hit home the false point that they are way different from us, and inferior to us.  This is a big problem all over Uganda (and I'm sure all over much of the world).  The result of this practice is that people go to trainings as their livelihood in some cases, rather than focusing on developing their own gardens or businesses.  It also prevents real development from happening in places where this practice has gone on, for people will no longer attend good trainings, even ones that would benefit them, unless they are not only facilitated to come, but paid for their time while there.  Reflecting on this problem caused me to recently post on facebook:

Please missionaries, NGO's, development organizations, please please stop paying people to come to your trainings. This is happening in so many places even by big organizations that many of you in the US support financially. Such practices are ruining any chance for development and change in Africa. I'm not trying to be harsh, but this is a serious issue that needs to change.  The more we keep treating the poor as helpless and unable to contribute, the more they will listen to us and feel helpless and unable to do anything on their own, thus such practices are keeping people trapped in poverty. It's much more affirming to have someone encourage you that you CAN do something, you can contribute, you can grow and develop. That's when real change begins.

I humbly suggest you do some research on the organizations that you support financially, find out if they are doing this, and please don't support this harmful practice.  In many ways it is the exact opposite of development. Last, in case you are curious, this is how my trainings work (as well as Sara's).   I pay for my own fuel and accommodation and time (well actually YOU pay for those).  The participants pay for their own transport, their manuals, their own feeding, and usually my feeding as well.  It's a true partnership with everyone contributing what they are able to contribute!

Fun Activities With Kathleen

By Sara:

While Kathleen came to visit, we did some other fun activities together that she didn't have room to share about in her guest post.

First of all, we dressed in ridiculous (but safe) clothes for making soap

 
She brought us marshmallows, so we made s'mores over the gas burner on the stove

We put the clay oven to work

Kathleen helped Anthony give Caleb his worm medicine

We took a morning hike up the nearby hill and watched the sun rise while eating breakfast

We also found a chameleon when we took Caleb for a walk, so we brought it home on a stick and put it in the garden

Finally, Kathleen made lots of small children very happy when we were working with farmers in Kaberamaido.

All that to say, I am so thankful for her visit to us!