Kotido TLT Workshop and Graduation

By Anthony:

It was a great pleasure to travel to Kotido in Karamoja at the end of January with co-facilitator George William, to lead a facilitation workshop and celebrate a TLT graduation. Sara came as well in order to teach a group of women about fireless cookers, agriculture, nutrition, and Bible studies. 

By the time this TLT group finished, it was down to only 6 people. The rest had difficulty continuing to travel for the trainings (Karamoja is a huge region with long distances between towns). But these 6 participants were really active and committed and God has used them in big ways through TLT.

In the facilitation workshop, they learned how to teach and facilitate groups. Through a lot of practice they were able to become experts in helping people to make TLT action plans. We also helped the participants to form themselves into a training team so that they can start new TLT groups and teach others. They made plans to start new groups in their region and we encouraged them and prayed over their plans.

Here are some testimonies they shared during the workshop discussions:

• Defelix shared that TLT has ensured that their church is now adhering to financial ethics in how they handle the church's money. There is transparency and accountability.
• Jimmy shared that the Biblical Preaching manual helped him so much to be able to preach to his home cell group during the covid-19 lockdowns in 2020.
• Jacob shared that the Harm to Harmony manual helped him to work for reconciliation in broken families of his church and he saw a lot of transformation in those families.

After the two day workshop, we had their TLT graduation during the Sunday morning church worship service at Kotido PAG church. Here are some video testimonies we recorded on the graduation day that they said we could share with you. I found them extremely encouraging!

Jacob Lochul Testimony:

Narereng Lucy Testimony 1:

Narereng Lucy Testimony 2:

Okello Emmanuel Testimony 1:

Okello Emmanuel Testimony 2:

Amadi Desmy Testimony:

I preached during the graduation and talked about servant leadership: following the example of Jesus who washed his disciples' feet and died for our salvation. I explained that we wanted to wash the graduates' feet so that they will never forget to be servant leaders, and to pass on what they have learned in TLT to others.

This is a video of the foot-washing. You can see me laughing in it. We were surprised and delighted when one of the church members wanted to also serve the graduates by putting their socks back on for them!

This is a video of Jimmy, one of the graduates, and some family members and friends singing a song that he wrote.

More pictures of the graduates:

After the graduation we and the graduates had lunch with a big group of pastors, deacons, and ministry leaders from the church. Part of hospitality in their culture in Karamoja is to make sure that "visitors go home with the culture" by being dressed according to their cultural traditions. My attire would be more traditionally authentic if I didn't have anything on underneath. Sara's attire is also a more modern version of the women's traditional attire. We truly felt very loved and honored. We hope we will have future times to visit them for more fellowship together.

This is my co-facilitator, George William:

The Donated Books Made it to Uganda!

By Anthony:

Back in 2019, I started fundraising from churches and individuals in order to pay for the shipping to send a container of donated books from the USA over to Uganda to help the church leaders here. I am so grateful that the books finally arrived at the PAG National Office in Kampala! I praise the Lord for that, and I once again thank all of you who contributed to make this project a success! 

Some of the books were donated by several of our supporting churches. The rest of the books were donated by Christian Resources International based in Michigan, which is also the organization which managed the entire shipping project. CRI not only donated thousands upon thousands of books, but they also helped us with some of the additional costs which came up. PAG Uganda also paid a considerable contribution for the taxes and other import fees when the container finally arrived. I consider all the different people involved in this project and find it amazing how it all came together.

In the boxes, the most important items are the commentaries and other theological resources which will go to pastors and church leaders all over the country. Those kinds of books are very hard to obtain within Uganda, even for those with financial resources. Also included in the shipment are Bibles - there are actually some church leaders who don't own a Bible, so they will be greatly helped. There are also many Christian books of all kinds - books on leadership, worship, counseling, youth ministry, and so much more. There are some random books, like non-fiction or novels, and PAG will probably end up giving many of those books to PAG owned primary and secondary schools around the country. Some books will also go to their theological schools. But the majority of the books will be given out directly to church leaders in each of the PAG pastorates. PAG has over 6000 churches throughout the country.

The books just arrived and so they are packed in the office for now where they will be carefully sorted and then transported to the church leaders.

This was not a small project for anyone involved. It takes a great deal of paperwork and logistics to send a container across the world. The CRI staff and PAG staff really worked hard to make it happen. To celebrate the occasion, we took some pictures of me and the top leaders of PAG who are very grateful for the books. There will be more pictures and testimonies coming later that I will put on the blog as the books are given out.

 

Garden Progress

 By Sara:

Although the dry season is upon us, there are still things surviving in my garden.  Here is a lot of cassava and sweet potatoes:

There are green peppers:

My strawberry plants are very small but still hanging on:

 

I've been able to enjoy about 4 tiny strawberries (tiny but very tasty):

Ginger and parsley:

Papayas:

Avocado - we only got 3 of them last year, but this year, there's a bumper crop!

Matooke (cooking bananas, similar to plantains):

Pictures - December and January

By Sara:

Christmas is usually the last time we see rain until March or April of the next year, but this year, both on Christmas and New Year's, we had some seriously heavy rain, including a full rainbow on Christmas:

  

Our traditional Christmas decorations and Advent candle lighting:

 

  

 

 

 

A little bit of Christmas baking/art:

 

 

 

The Millennium Falcon and a TIE fighter, in case you don't know.

 

 

 

Christmas tree breadsticks:

 

 

 

My traditional Christmas sweet roll which is supposed to be a wreath, but won't fit in my small oven in one piece, so it becomes two Cs:

 

 

I had a Christmas "end of the year" party with the youth from the Bible study group.  They did some creative cookie decorating, baked a cake, and drank lots of passionfruit juice.  It was their first experience decorating Christmas cookies (and eating them) and fun was had by all.  There was lots of sugar involved so they might have had trouble sleeping that night!

 

 

Some of the beautiful scenery around Soroti:

A bit of silliness with our dogs.  First, weighing Beorn with a luggage hand scale:

 

 

And the dogs sneaking inside when the front door wasn't latched:

Good information to know (100,000 shillings = about $30):

Ummmm...

Ugandans are much more realistic than Americans with their mannequins:

 A bus park in Mbale:

In December, we had the opportunity to go to Jinja for a retreat.  It was a restful time of prayer, reflection, and meditation on our work and lives.

Among other things, we enjoyed the hammock and the bathroom: