Tea with the Saved Guards

By Anthony:

Some of you may remember that a year and a half ago, our night-guard Julius, became born again, and several of his friends and fellow security guards along with him. We didn't make a blog post at that time, but only talked about it in an email, so for those of you that didn't hear that original story, I'll put it at the bottom of this post.

In January, we had Julius and another of the guards, Jairus, come over for tea so that we could try to encourage them and strengthen them in their faith. Only one of the other guards is still in Soroti but has not continued going to church and went back to his former sinful life. Julius and Jairus have not given up on him though; they keep trying to talk to him. The other guards who got saved have been stationed in other districts around Uganda, so unfortunately we are not in touch with them anymore. We can only hope that they are in touch with new churches where they live now.

Julius and Jairus are the ones we have stayed in best communication with. We confess that we have not been in touch with them as much as we should have. Can you ever really do enough discipleship? But at least we have been able to talk to them regularly in town or by phone. Our friend Martin, who speaks their language (far left in the photo below), has also tried to stay in touch with them to keep on building them in their faith. Next to Martin is Julius, next to him is Jairus' neighbor, then Jairus, then Paul who works for us.

Julius and Jairus have both stayed strong in that neither of them have fallen back into their drinking addiction. They are both praying, reading the Bible, and going to church. During the visit, we had a chance to answer some of their questions about the Bible and pray for them. We are so grateful for Martin and his love and passion to help these men. He even began to teach them some praise songs in their native language.

People always insist that we take photos when we give gifts, thus the photos below.

Both of them have come a long way in English, but Martin was able to translate for us where needed. We discussed a strange cult that moves around Julius' village and tries to chase away demons by yelling and climbing trees around people's homes. Julius was worried because this group said they chased the demons to his home to remain there, and that his wife will have bleeding and health problems when she gives birth. Paul was aware of this group and was able to explain their false teachings to Julius. And we were all able to pray for Julius and teach him about the power that Christ has over demons.

Julius and Jairus have difficulty going to church because of their schedules as night-guards. Most of the English services in town are very early, and they don't know Ateso so it doesn't help them very much to go to the later Ateso services. A couple Sundays ago we took them to Calvary church, a church that is near to where they stay and in which they can go to an English service. Continue to pray for them as they grow in their faith and character.

Martin, a very good mentor to Julius and Jairus:

Original report about the guards who got saved (July 2018):

I am so happy to share more good news with all of you! After our night-guard Julius became born again and committed his life to Christ, he went home and told his sister and his friend. They all stay together, renting a small home in Soroti. Both his sister, Vicki, and his friend, Moses, were interested in learning more about Jesus. Like Julius they had been to church as children, but did not have a relationship with God. I invited Julius to come to our church last Sunday when I was preaching. Not only Julius came, but Vicki and Moses came as well. The service was translated into Ateso and unfortunately Julius does not know either English or Ateso very well, but he was able to understand some of my English and I think his friend Moses was able to translate a bit for him. I preached the gospel, how we are saved not by our good works, but only by grace as a free gift, through faith. After the service, the pastors invited me and my three visitors for some tea. We talked more with them until Vicki and Moses surprised us and said they were ready to also confess their sins and accept Christ as their savior! So together with the pastors, they got on their knees, prayed, and began a relationship with Jesus! Next week the three of them will try out another PAG church that is nearer to their home, and we are in touch with the pastor there. We also gave the two of them an English Bible and gave them all many encouragements to read and keep on growing in their relationships with God (Julius has a Bible we gave him which is in Langi, his language). The whole experience reminded me a bit of the household conversions in the book of Acts. Julius told me a few days ago that Moses and Vicki are reading the book of John and they are all discussing it together.

As if this wasn't already overwhelmingly good as it is, Julius then told us he had another friend who was also interested in becoming a Christian. We agreed to meet with this friend and Julius during the day, with Martin our friend to translate, and with pastor Isaiah from the PAG church near where Julius lives. We all met at our home, but we were surprised when Julius did not bring one friend, but five! They are all fellow night guards at the same company as Julius, and had been his drinking buddies. When they saw the change in his life, and when he shared with each of them about his relationship with Jesus, they all wanted to experience what he had experienced. We talked and shared together as a group for a long time, hearing what they believed, listening to what Julius had told them, and explaining carefully to them the meaning of life, who Jesus is, and how to become born again. In the end, they each wanted to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus and begin a new life! It was overwhelming and wonderful. These new converts, hopefully all 8 of them now, will keep meeting and reading the Bible together as a team, support one another in not going back to alcohol addiction, and go to church together with Martin this Sunday with Pastor Isaiah who led them in prayer yesterday. What a privilege to see how God works, and how he has already used Julius!

The Problem of Sports Betting in Uganda

By Anthony:

Here is a documentary (about 50 minutes long) about the problem of sports betting that is rampant in Uganda. Sports betting comes up in all of my TLT groups as pastors try to think about how to help youth find jobs and how to help youth overcome the addiction of sports betting. It's really a kind of epidemic in the country which is making poor people even poorer and sometimes dividing families. Pray for church leaders as they try to confront this issue and pastorally care for their youth.

The documentary also shows some really cool views of Kampala, so you can get a sense of what things really look like in Uganda in the big cities.

Pallisa Youth Conference

By Sara:

In early January, I was invited to speak at a youth conference in Pallisa, about an hour and a half from Soroti.  I have done some work there before and they asked if I could come share with the youth something about agriculture.  I agreed to do this and later found out that there were going to be hundreds of youth at the conference...way more than I expected.  But I survived and they were great participants in my training.

There were also some Dutch pastors and youth leaders there who have been involved in these annual youth conferences for some years, in case you're wondering who those other people are in the front row:

It was very hot and not everyone was a youth, so...

I decided to cover the topic of soil during my allotted two hours.  Since I usually teach this to a smaller group of people, I had to be a bit creative about how to do the fun demonstrations about characteristics of soil.  But I had different volunteers come up and help me with each one and then describe to the people in the way back what they observed.

These young people were very willing to interact and answer my questions and between them, they were able to give a lot of scientific definitions and explain things such as what kinds of agricultural practices damage the soil, what plants need to survive, ways to improve and care for soil, and differentiate between organic and inorganic materials.  Afterward, several of the youth, as well as some pastors who were present, came and told me how much they appreciated the visual aids and practical ideas for how they can be better farmers and care for the land God has given them.

Kids everywhere at lunch break:

There was a wonderful choir which performed in between lunch and the next session to call the youth back into the church.

Bible Survey Class and Fireless Cooker

By Sara:

Like Anthony, I also had the opportunity to teach a class for IBS (Inservice Bible School) in Amuria.  My class was an introduction to the Bible in which I was supposed to cover the whole Bible in only three days!  Too much to condense into that short time.  In the past, I have taught Old Testament survey as an entire semester class at Bible colleges, as well as New Testament survey.  It was very painful for me to have to cut out topics and discussion on entire books of the Bible in order to get the material down to 21 hours of teaching time.  Not to mention the need to do translation into Ateso to help some of the students who struggle with English (my friend Betty, who is an excellent translator, came along to assist with this).  Nevertheless, I hope I was able to make it focused enough for the students to get a good foundation for further study and reading the Bible.

On the first day of class, I wanted to get an idea of where these pastors were in their Bible knowledge, so I asked how many of them had read one of the books of the Bible.  Out of the ten students, only three of them had read one whole book.  Of those three, one of them had read the whole New Testament and most of the Old Testament.  I hope this class helped them develop a greater love and appreciation for God's word and to inspire them to read it more.

The students were fun to teach because they were so interested in the material and had lots of questions.  Biblical knowledge is very applicable to real situations which they experience in their churches and communities.  For example, they wanted to know whether a temple is necessary as a place for Christians to come and pray, if it's okay to go to church the day after having sex with your wife, whether artists should be allowed to paint pictures of Jesus, and if you need to be baptized to be saved.

In preparing these lessons and teaching, I loved being reminded myself of what I have learned about and studied in the Bible.  Things such as how the whole Old Testament points us to and teaches us about Jesus (Jesus explains to the disciples on the road to Emmaus how to understand Moses and the prophets speaking about him; anytime the New Testament teaches Christians about the inspiration and importance of Scripture, the original readers would have understood that to mean the Old Testament; etc.), the way we can have hope in suffering since God is in control of all situations and has a good plan he will complete, and the clever way Paul structured his letters to get some of his points across.

The students had heard that I taught different skills to people and asked if I could include one of those lessons in my time with them.  Since we had very limited time for the Bible survey class, which they had come for, I was only able to squeeze in the fireless cooker lesson.  In the evening of the second day, we soaked the beans in water and the next morning, boiled them for 10 minutes and put them into the fireless cooker to keep cooking while we had class.  We all enjoyed tasty beans for lunch that afternoon.

Collecting some firewood and kindling:

The cook adding some tomato, onion, and seasonings:

The fully cooked beans:

One student went home that following weekend and made one for his wife, then cooked her beans using it.  She was very excited it worked and they called me on the phone to let me know about their success!