Baking in Soroti

By Sara:

I've been having fun teaching a local business man named Isaac some new baking recipes and techniques.  He owns a café and a copy shop.  Anthony and I go to his copy shop quite often to make copies of our training materials.  When I went their to get copies of my baking instructions and recipes, Isaac was really interested and asked if he could make a copy for himself to try out in his café.  Later, when Anthony was making copies for TLT, Isaac asked him if he thought I'd be willing to come in to the café and bake some of those things with him and his staff so he can add new things to his café menu.  And so I did.  I've gone in a couple of times and we have tried out a bunch of different recipes.  Isaac is very motivated and excited about perfecting the recipes now that he knows generally how they go.  He likes making new things and having people try them (he always sends one of the things we bake home with me for Anthony to taste!)

Together, we made steamed cassava cake, steamed yeast bread, (American) biscuits on a frying pan, and fried cassava doughnuts.

Since he has a cafe, Isaac has these fancy deep fryers.  It is very convenient for making doughnuts.

The cassava doughnuts turned out really well and everyone enjoyed them.  Cassava cake was also a favorite.  Apparently the staff kept going to the kitchen all day and sneaking bites of the cake!

I got to learn from Isaac too.  He showed me how he makes his excellent chapatti.

And then we used the same frying pan to make flour tortillas.  Isaac is a natural when it comes to baking.  Tortillas are especially easy because they use a similar technique to chapatti.

Recently, I also did a baking training at Soroti PAG with our friend Agnes.  As always, homemade cakes are enjoyed by all.

10 things I love about my Ugandan pastor friends

By Anthony:

1.  They pray continually.  They pray when we start driving in the car, and pray again before we get out of the car.  They pray to begin the day, and pray to end the day.  They pray before every meal and before tea.  They lead overnight prayer times at church.  They lead days of prayer and fasting.  If you share a burden with them, they will pray for you immediately.  They pray long and loud at church.  They spend a lot of time talking to God and praising his name.

2.  They are always ready to share the Gospel, any time, any place, wherever they go.  Just last week during my training, some of the pastors were staying with me at the same guest house.  During their rest time after a very long day, they still found time to lead a young woman to Christ who worked there.

3.  They sacrifice.  Their lives look more like the apostle Paul's than like mine.  Like Paul, they know hunger, sleepless nights, thirst, and know what it is like to have little money.  They don't get supported by their churches very much (most get about $2 a month from the church), and have to work in their gardens to support their families in addition to serving as pastors.  Relatives sometimes call them "fools" for going to Bible college or serving as a pastor.  I have not known sacrifice compared to these pastors.

4.  They are tender with their families.  Family relationships in Uganda are sometimes hard to hear about.  There is a lot of domestic abuse.  There are a lot of marriages that are mainly functional.  There is rampant alcoholism and sexual infidelity tearing up families.  But when we see our pastors with their families, we see love in actions of service, and tender affectionate love through words and touch.  We see them take time to talk and play with their children.

5.  They laugh easily.  Their lives are full of joy and it is contagious.  Their smiles are quick and easy and genuine.  They tell jokes and have a good time.  They love laughter.

6.  They are eager to learn.  While it's true that some pastors out in the village don't see training as necessary, the pastors I know are very eager to learn.  They sacrifice to come to trainings and eat up the new knowledge.  When they go home from trainings, they take their notes with them.  For these pastors friends their rest every evening is not to play games like I do, but to read the Bible and read over their notes.

7.  They are humble.  At least with me, pastors here are so humble.  They are willing to listen and learn from me, a young man only 30 years old.  Even old wazee (old men) are willing to ask me questions and listen to me as if I was their elder and mentor.  Of course I am learning from them as well.  But it takes great humility, (especially in this culture where old age is respected), for them to give me such respect as a younger person.

8.  They are hospitable.  I can't count the number of pastor's homes I've been invited to.  Always they are so welcoming, along with their wives and children.  They serve us, feed us great food, and make sure we are comfortable.  And of course they have to sacrifice a great amount financially in order to do all of this, possibly even borrowing money from neighbors to host us.  But they act like it is all so natural and like it costs them nothing.

9.  They love their communities.  They do not just preach, but they act.  They reach out in love to people in their churches and communities.  They go and pray for the sick, they visit those in jail and comfort them.  They build new homes for widows.  They give food to the poor.  They counsel broken families.  They work for community reconciliation.  And much more.

10.  They love God.  This one is most important, but I believe #1-9 give evidence of this, so I will end there.

Of course these pastors are not perfect, and I haven't shared with you about their weaknesses (if only they could come to trainings on time!).  But in all seriousness, sometimes I look at my life and feel like a pagan compared to them.  They inspire me to take life more seriously, love God more intimately and passionately, and sacrifice to follow Jesus.

Emmanuel and Joyce's Demonstration Garden

Another friend of ours, named Emmanuel, who works for PAG in Soroti, and his wife Joyce, wanted to start a demonstration kitchen garden in their compound during the dry season.  Emmanuel discussed this with Eric, from Pennsylvania, who is working at Pentecostal Theological College in Mbale (where we used to work) and Eric agreed to come to Soroti to help Emmanuel and Joyce start it up.  I joined them too since I never pass up an opportunity to do some gardening!

After we finished setting up the garden and planting, we visited someone else from PAG who is raising tilapia and catfish in fish ponds.  It was really interesting!  She has quite the system going and said that she likes to relax by going to feed the fish if she is feeling stressed. 

Living with Beggars

As many of you know, we lived in Uganda for a year during 2009-2010.  That was the first time we had to struggle with how to daily live in the presence of very needy beggars.  I'm not talking about the children or adults who every day ask us to give them money, or demand that we give them our bicycles, or to give them our dog, Caleb, when they see us taking a walk with him.  I'm talking about the people truly in need, the beggars who sit around on the street or in the market.  These are people who are asking for help not only from mzungus, but also from fellow Ugandans.  Some of them are sick, or have bleeding injuries.  Some of them are missing fingers (or all of their fingers) or legs.  Likely some of these are injuries from contact with the Lord's Resistance Army in the past.  Most of them are very elderly and hobble around weakly.  Apparently (according to merchants at the market) the beggars have families they go home to at night, but they don't seem to be taken care of very well.  Here is a photo of our Soroti market where we go shopping and see beggars each week.

Back in 2009, it was easy to say "no" to the rude people who would demand we give them money even though they were not poor.  But with the beggars we were confused about what to do, especially while reading books about dependency on mzungus.  Largely, we ignored the beggars.  I'm not sure how to feel about this.  On the one hand, we couldn't give to every beggar, we didn't have time to talk to every beggar, and most of the beggars we couldn't speak to at all because we didn't know their language.  On the other hand, I have a very painful memory of eating ice cream outside of a supermarket in Mbale, while right near us was a beggar begging for food, and we did nothing but ignore him uncomfortably.  It was not the exactly the same, but it felt too much like the rich man who did not care about Lazarus (Luke 16).  I repent that we never even tried to help some of these beggars.  Thank you Lord Jesus for giving us grace and mercy!

In the past 5 years preparing to come back to Uganda, we have received advice and ideas from others and made a  commitment to ourselves to better care for beggars.  We still try to avoid giving foolishly and creating dependency, but we want to recognize the humanity of beggars and care for them in some way.

We decided to give food to beggars we see in the market each time we go shopping.  We give healthy, ready-to-eat food, direct from the market.  Honestly, it probably does not accomplish that much, but we hope that if we and other Ugandans give in this way we can at least sustain these elderly beggars to have food and drink for each day.  While giving in this way is not a long term solution, it makes me feel better than ignoring them.  And it is much better than giving money which could be spent on alcohol (Uganda is one of the leading countries in the world for alcoholism). 

I also feel that by speaking to them, it helps to restore some of their dignity.  They may struggle with shame, and feeling worthless, and there are inferiority-superiority dynamics between Ugandans and mzungus.   When we give food to the beggars we shake their hands, and speak our little bit of Ateso by going through a series of greetings, and then telling them, "God bless you."  A few Ugandans have seen us do this and thanked us for what we've done.  I had fun with one old lady beggar, who turned out to be a Pentecostal Christian and we enjoyed a whole series of "Praise God" and "Amen" just like we would do in church.

Giving food takes just a few minutes, but even this can be annoying when you just want to get your shopping done quickly and go home.  I'm just being honest about my sinful nature.  But overcoming poverty takes more than a few minutes.  I'm sorry to say I've only got over my sinful laziness one time in order to have an actual conversation with a beggar.  But that one time was fruitful.

It started by talking to a merchant selling potatoes near the beggars and I asked him what they do to help the beggars.  We had a good time discussing, and I asked him if he could give the beggar near us, an old man, a job selling potatoes with him.  The merchant could not do so.  But I said, "surely this man is able to do some kind of work.  Does he have any skills?  How can we find work for him so he doesn't have to beg?"   The merchant said actually the man knows how to make rope using old bags.  Bags like in this photo:

The merchant once in a while gives him old tattered bags that are no longer useable and he has made ropes from those.  But most people aren't jumping to give bags away.  So the merchant led Sara and me to a place selling second hand-bags and we bought a bunch for 3,000 shillings (which is about $1.20).  We were able to talk to the beggar through the translation of the merchant.  I affirmed his value as created by God, and affirmed that God had given him skills, even the amazing skill of making rope that I don't know how to do.  He agreed to use the bags to make ropes to hopefully start earning more for himself.  All of us want something meaningful to do in God's world rather than having to beg, so I hope he finds joy in his work.  My calculations are rough but I think he may have been able to make about 18,000 shillings through those bags and ropes, and hopefully he used some of the money to buy more bags to make more ropes.

We were hoping this man would not have to go back to begging again.  A week or two later, we went back to the market and I went looking for him.  He was not in his spot.  I talked to our merchant friend who said he has not been begging and instead was going around selling his ropes.  But unfortunately, weeks after that, Sara has seen him begging again.  Maybe we will have to go and talk to him and see what other solutions we can come up with.  I'm still glad we did what we did, but it seems it was still not a long-term solution.  If you have suggestions, be sure to let us know.

Life here is complicated, especially when it comes to poverty and money.  We definitely don't do everything perfectly and have ignored and shown frustration to plenty of poor people.  We need Jesus to help us be loving and patient each day.  Pray for us about this.  But we are grateful that God has been transforming our hearts and minds, giving us wisdom and desire to help more than we have done before.