Guest Post #2

By Sara's dad, Mike:

I have many thoughts and feelings about our trip to Uganda to visit Sara and Anthony.  I would like to share 4 things that were the most impactful to me.

1. Seeing Sara and Anthony at work as missionaries was emotional and meaningful.   They are gifted at what they do, and it is clear that they are right where God wants them to be right now.  Having read When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, and Generous Justice by Tim Keller, I could see how Sara and Anthony were very thoughtful in the way they minister to the Ugandans, seeking to help them address material, physical and spiritual poverty.  They respect the culture and behaviors that are consistent with God’s teaching, while addressing those behaviors that lead to brokenness.

2. Sara and Anthony introduced us to many of their Christian friends and work associates.  Everywhere we went, people were praying with and for us.  It is always encouraging to pray with brothers and sisters in Christ, but there is something very special about praying with Christians from another country and culture.   The richness of the prayers offered by our new Ugandan friends will remain fond memories for a long, long time.  It was truly a blessing to spend time in prayer with them.

3. Many people had told me that Ugandans are a beautiful and soft-spoken people.  That was certainly my experience.  I found Ugandans to be gracious, friendly, joyful, generous, hope-filled, God-loving people who seemed to truly live out their faith with actions.  I thank God for the time we spent with so many wonderful people during our stay in Uganda.

4. I have always shared with Sara a great love of nature, especially birds.  It was exciting for me to experience nature in Africa with Sara.  With her expert help, I tried to identify every bird I saw during our stay.  We took “bird walks” in Soroti, and also at Murchison Falls National Park.  We also went on a boat ride and game drives where we saw God’s amazing creatures on land, water and in the air.  I praise God for the beauty and wonder of His creation, and I am thankful for the opportunity I had to see part of the natural world in Uganda with Sara, Anthony, and Nancy.

Guest Post #1

By Sara's mom, Nancy:

We recently returned from a two-week visit to Uganda to see Sara and Anthony. We saw so much of Uganda, thanks to their willingness to drive us around.  It was a five hour drive for them to come to Kampala to pick us up.  From Kampala, we crossed the Nile in Jinja and visited Mbale, seeing where they lived and worked five years ago. They planned a nice variety of things for us to do and see in Soroti, as well as visits to remote villages that Sara and Anthony work in.  We also took time to relax and have fun together, and celebrate both of their birthdays by being tourists for a few days at Murchison Falls National Park.

The best part of the trip was just being able to participate in their daily life.  Now I have a better understanding of who their neighbors are and what they see when they walk out their door.  We walked the dog around the neighborhood, washed our clothes in a plastic bucket and hung them on the line to dry, we collected eggs from the hens, and helped bring Sara’s beloved goats into the barn in the evenings.  We attended their local church one Sunday, and tried lots of new foods, including fried termites!

One of the highlights for me on this trip was seeing Sara’s joy living in an agricultural area.  In case you didn’t know, she was not raised on a farm! She grew up in town, and we had a small garden and a dog. But now, she seems right at home raising chickens, guinea hens, rabbits and goats. She and Anthony seem to have adapted well to the culture, and have mastered some phrases in the local language, which pleased the people in the churches we attended.

I enjoyed meeting so many of their Ugandan friends and co-workers.  It was nice to spend time with them and hear their stories. One day, their friends, Tom and Agnes, came to their house to deliver local Ugandan produce for Sara and Anthony since they were entertaining company in their home.  It was fun to visit with them over snacks and tea, and listen to stories of how the TLT training has impacted their lives and how much they care about Sara and Anthony.  As a mother, those connections were important to me, to meet their friends and see how they are valued there.

It was a blessing to hear Anthony preach a sermon in a village church, and to watch our daughter teach a Biblical farming lesson to a local church group.  And then we spent a day in a remote village watching her teach cake baking.  Even though we had read about this on the blog, we did not realize that a big part of this lesson to men and women in the villages was explaining American measuring methods. Sara helped them make their own measuring cup with a plastic cup, a knife to mark lines, and a photocopied ruler.  Some women had walked an hour and a half to attend the baking training.  By the end of the day, the attendees were working as a team, building the fire, mixing, measuring and making three steamed cakes out of local ingredients. They had been empowered with a skill they had not had before and they seemed to enjoy the whole process.

 

This was my first visit to Uganda, and to Africa.  Besides participating in their mission work, we took a few days to vacation at Murchison Falls National Park.  We enjoyed a nature hike and safari drive, seeing lots of hippos, giraffes and warthogs.  There was lots of bird watching and bird identification, a hobby that Mike and Sara shared as Sara grew up in Michigan.  Even Anthony and I, the non-birders, were able to identify the Abysinian Roller by the end of the week!

 

 

As hard as it is to release our children to the mission field, this trip was God’s gift to us to see how He has uniquely gifted Sara and Anthony, and placed them where He wants them.  God showed us that they are not ours, but His, and He has work for them to do; at this time, it happens to be in Africa.

We celebrated Sara’s 31st birthday while we were there.  When our children are born, we do not know where God will lead them, but I must say that I could never have imagined as we celebrated all those childhood birthdays in our home, that one day we would be with her in Africa on her birthday so many years later.

 

Participatory Rural Appraisal

By Sara

One of the things that World Renew has recently done to help some of their partner organizations improve the work that they do, is to train them in Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA).  This is a technique for meeting with and hearing from a community itself about programming to work there, rather than designing a project and then imposing it on the community.

The facilitators for PRA guide the community members to divide themselves into groups (like younger women, older women, younger men, older men, community leaders) and then guide them through various activities that give everyone a better picture of what is going on in the community and what resources are there.  For example, a group may walk in a straight line through the community, taking note of anything that relates to a topic, like food security, then draw a map of that section of the community.  Or they might brainstorm the changes throughout the year and make a calendar that shows how much work, how much food, how much rain, etc. at different times of year.

In one particular training, I sat with the group of younger women and observed the activities that they did.  The first one was to create a map of the places they go to most commonly in the village, looking at which ones they visit the most.  They made a map on the ground and used various items to symbolize each location.  For example, a water bottle represented the well.  They also used different sized sticks to show how often they go there - the twigs meant they went there maybe once a week and the big logs were for places they went to at least once a day.  So you can see below that they go to the well frequently.

Then, they transferred the map onto a piece of paper.  This little kid was very interested in the process.

Then, they made a daily calendar.  This showed the different things they do every day, when they do those things, and for how long.  They organized their daily tasks in a circle, from morning to evening.  Below you can see all the items that symbolize the activities.  For example, they used a hoe to represent garden work, three stones to represent cooking, and a handkerchief for washing clothes.

The next day, the community got back together so each group could share what they had discussed the day before and think about what important issues they need to address in their community.  It was very interesting to compare the daily schedules of the younger men and the younger women.  (note that most of them were married and had children).  You might not be able to see the chart below very well, but this is the daily calendar for the younger men.  They made separate charts for the rainy season and the dry season.  They are busier in the rainy season working in the garden, so they wanted a different chart for that.  Nevertheless, even during the rainy season, they are eating or resting from 11:30am-3pm (during the dry season they can rest from 10am-the end of the day)

The younger women, on the other hand, said that they sometimes have time to rest from 1-1:30pm, but other than that, were busy for the rest of the day.  This difference in workload was definitely an important issue to them and it brought up a lot of discussion among the community.

Below are two activities done by the older men.  The one on the left is a resource map of the community.  It shows where different resources can be found in the community.  The one on the right is the seasonal calendar I talked about before.  It shows things like the amount of rainfall and the amount of work available throughout the different months of the year.

At the end of the presentations, the community seemed satisfied that they had come up with important issues that they face and had some discussion about a few ideas for addressing those issues.  This is a great way, also, for the development organizations to know how to plan their programs to address the needs that actually matter to the community, rather than needs perceived by the organization.

Pray for us to be patient

By Anthony:

At times, I feel ashamed of my character.  I have an incredibly easy life, and yet I get frustrated about very little things.  Just because we are missionaries, we are not perfect.  We are far from it.  There are so many things that Jesus needs to change about our character.  Particularly, I need to learn patience.  Things that have been trying my patience in the last few months:

- People demanding that we give them our dog, or give them money, when they see us walking or see us in town.  Often they demand this rudely without even greeting us first.  What would be extremely offensive to do to another Ugandan, they seem to think is okay to do with us because we are foreigners.  Sometimes we try to communicate how what they say is rude, but it's difficult to do this with love.  Sometimes it's hard to balance turning the other cheek with explaining how someone could speak to us more politely.

- Ants getting into anything and everything not tightly sealed down.  Our one safe place to let food cool, the inside of the microwave, is no longer safe as we found a horde of ants inside it.  We are now used to drinking our filtered water filled with ant carcasses.

- Dusty roads.  As we bicycle to church and a vehicle passes we get smothered in dust.  It's hard to breathe or open your eyes.  The rain delayed this year so the dust got pretty bad.  We had to dust our desks every day.  Thankfully it seems that the rains have finally come.  We heard that the last time it took so long for rain to come during this time of year was 1955 (according to local elderly folks).  So we are hopeful that the rainy season has finally started!
 

- Power outages.  We had a good streak of no power outages for almost 2 months for the holidays!  But now things are back to normal with frequent outages, making it hard to do work on the computer.

- Internet problems.  We used to have a pretty amazing internet connection considering we live in Uganda.  But lately the connection has gotten worse and worse with frequent disconnections.  I've been speaking with the company looking for a solution.

- Water outages.  When the water goes off for over a week, our tank gets empty quickly, and we end up needing to get water from the borehole.  That means bathing with a basin and no shower.

- The heat.  It's now 88 - 91 degrees in our bedroom each night.  We are thankful to have a fan.  But the heat + no power = lots of sweat. 

Sure these things are annoying, but in the scheme of eternity, they are beyond insignificant.  Jesus put up with a heck of a lot worse and he did so with patience and love.  And he calls us to strive to do the same.  The Pauls and Stephens of the world had to put up with more than simple annoyance; they had hunger, persecution, thirst, poverty, and even death.  If they could have patience for those things, surely I can learn to have patience through these minor annoyances.  I need to not let them trouble me, but to say, "Lord, I'm not going to get angry about this power outage, but I'm going to praise you, and thank you for your grace, and instead of whining, I'll go read a book with a flashlight."  Pray for us that we can develop this type of patience!  Thank you!