Lots of Functions!

By Anthony:

This is a random photo post, but most of the photos are from different weddings, burials, visits and functions we went to in the past few months. Play this nice song below first! You can listen to it while looking at the rest of the post. It is a Roman Catholic choir singing at a burial that Sara went to. It was the mother of our friend who died. She was Catholic but our friend is a Pentecostal bishop, so there was a nice mix of Pentecostals and Catholics at the burial and our Pentecostal friends said that they really loved the rich music and theological lyrics from the Catholic songs.

-->  Choir Song  <--

Next I'll share some animal photos from our time in South Africa that didn't make it into Sara's post. This was a Drakensburg dwarf chameleon we found on the hotel grounds.

Also on our hotel grounds, where we were all walking in barefoot playing volleyball and badminton, was this little guy, a rinkhals. It looks like a cobra but actually isn't quite a true cobra. This one is a baby but still lethal. Like many species of cobras, it also spits venom. This one was only about a foot long. We are thankful no one stepped on it.

Still in South Africa, we saw a few of these amazing grasshoppers.

Here is a picture of us enjoying our huge avocados from the tree in our yard.

 

We attended the traditional wedding (called an introduction) of our colleague Stephen's son, Andrew. The church wedding was a week later. In the traditional wedding there is a lot of dancing and it takes most of the day. The issue of brideprice is sorted out either before or during the ceremony. Additionally, there are gifts given to the parents and the clan of the bride. We find these events interesting to watch, but they are tiring because we have to wear ear plugs the whole time due to the crazy loud speakers which are ubiquitous in Uganda and because we are always inevitably one of the centers of attention.

During the ceremony there are a lot of games consisting of the groom's clan or the groom himself trying to look through a line up of ladies to see if he can find who his bride is. Somehow Sara got roped into joining one of these games, but unfortunately Sara and I don't know how to dance as naturally as our Ugandan friends! Sara earned us some cultural brownie points though. People were so happy, especially when she knelt down with the rest of the ladies.

 

This is a video from Andrew's wedding at church in Soroti. It took 30-45 minutes for the bride to make it from the back of the church to the front!

Our dogs found a family of hedgehogs in our yard. We safely moved them outside.

A beautiful butterfly I found:

Here is a church service we visited in Amuria where I preached and Sara taught an inductive Bible study method. 

It was our pastor friend Robert Okello who we were visiting. Here is him and his wife with us.

 

We had a weird vehicle problem recently. The lock got messed up and my key got stuck in the door in town and I couldn't remove it. So Sara guarded the vehicle while I went home to get another key and then take the vehicle to the mechanic. They had to take the whole door apart to fix it.

Here is a video of us hiking in Mt. Elgon. It's nearly impossible to hike in Uganda without having an armed guard present. It seems really unnecessary as there are almost no big animals in Mt. Elgon National Park, but it does provide jobs for people. It was a pleasant surprise that even as a Muslim, our guide was happy to talk to us the whole time about the differences between being a Christian and a Muslim and he was interested to learn more about Jesus from us.

Weddings here are a really big deal. Here is our friend Moses, who translates for me on the radio, having his upcoming wedding being announced in church. This is simply a pre-wedding announcement, and a chance to see his fiancée, Faith. But 30 ladies marched Faith in and maybe 20 men marched Moses in. Cheering is normal, but there was a lot of extra cheering for Moses since he serves our church in many ways and people know him well.

We visited the parents of our own church pastor, Egonu, in the village. I also help coach him regarding preaching. This is an awkward picture because I was trying to get him to point to the middle of the flower. His brother designed this grass-thatched hut and in the middle of the flower is a speaker for the radio. So they can sit on the little veranda and enjoy listening to music.

Inside one of the huts:

The roof makes a convenient shelf for everyday items:

Our local church had a big farewell celebration to our pastor, Joseph, who had served there for 20 years. He was promoted to be an assembly pastor now in a different area of the district. There were lots of gifts given including cows and goats.

These are the ladies of our church doing this dance:

A giant toad I found in our yard:

One of Sara's cute baby rabbits:

Last, here is Beorn. No, he is not in time-out. He found the bench there and thought it a nice place to hide out!

Preaching Training for TLT Facilitators

By Anthony:

The highlight of April for me was a preaching refresher training in Soroti for TLT facilitators from all corners of Uganda. We had 40 leaders at the training, most of them pastors. They represented five different denominations. The goal of the training was to review together the Biblical Preaching TLT manual, but also to go deeper into preaching techniques. This manual is the hardest and most technical of the TLT manuals. Most TLT participants in Uganda who go through it only once do not put much of it into practice. But I have found that with opportunity to review the manual, pastors really start to understand it and internalize it, and are able to begin using the Bible study method and preaching structure which it teaches. I did all the teaching this time and Stephen planned and organized all the logistics, materials, and communications.

Stephen also made the best use of the time by having all the TLT coordination team leaders from the different regions of Uganda come a day early so that he could encourage them, and help them with their challenges of starting new groups and writing training reports. Here is Stephen in the front talking to the group.

We not only wanted the pastors to really learn the preaching material well so that their own preaching improves, but we also wanted to equip them as TLT facilitators so that they can comfortably lead this TLT manual in their respective locations.

I taught from 8:30 to 5:00 each day for four days. It was a tightly packed schedule but we managed to complete everything. We reviewed the manual, and then I taught extra sessions on topics like making good introductions, conclusions, how to use illustrations, choosing a text, etc. We had practical exercises on many of these sub-topics as well. There were both large group and small group exercises.

One of the things we practiced over and over was working through the ten steps outlined in the TLT manual to really master and understand a biblical text well. These 10 steps are summarized under 3 headings in the manual - Preach the Text, Preach the Gospel, and Preach for Kingdom Change. The pastors admitted that these 10 steps feel like a lot of work because they take 1-5 hours to get through. They confessed that often they are so over-committed that they rush to put a sermon together on Saturday night (or even Sunday morning). But they committed themselves to really following this method so that they don't preach their own ideas, but really understand God's message in particular scripture texts.

Here are the 10 steps in summary form.

STEP 1 - Choose a unit of text from the Bible.

STEP 2 - Find the main idea in the text and write it down.

STEP 3 - Understand the main idea by summarizing the verses.

STEP 4 – Write down what God is doing in the text.

STEP 5 – Read the verses or chapters that come before your text and those that come after.

STEP 6 – Think about how the text is related to God’s work throughout the Bible. (Ask how your text relates to Jesus as well)

STEP 7 – What is the problem in the text?

STEP 8 – Do we have that same problem today?

STEP 9 – How does God’s grace bring Kingdom Change in the text?

What was God calling his people of that time to do in this passage in response to his grace?

STEP 10 - How does God’s grace bring Kingdom Change today?

What is God calling us to do in response to his grace?

Another benefit of this training is that I'm trying to lead less of the regular TLT trainings myself and focus my work more on equipping the facilitators, and moving into other areas of ministry such as leading Helping without Hurting in Africa trainings. This extra refresher training was a good way to equip the facilitators so that Stephen has many different capable people to call on to lead the TLT preaching trainings besides me.

Something new I did this time was to show preaching videos that we then discussed. Although some of the videos did not perfectly fit the Ugandan context in terms of figures of speech used, the feedback was really positive and the videos provided good learning and reflection. I showed videos I found on Youtube, but also videos from Calvin Seminary's Center for Excellence in Preaching, and also some of John Piper's preaching videos.

The pastors had to write some of their sermons in small groups, but then everyone also had to write their own individual assigned sermon. We decided to preach 15 minute sermons instead of 45 minute sermons so more people could get an opportunity to preach and be evaluated by the group. We were able to at least hear the main points and determine whether they fit with the text. I think we managed to hear around 8 different sermons.

Another highlight of this training was that our Resonate colleague, Kaka, from Nairobi, was able to join us for the whole week. It was a delight to have him. Slowly but surely we are strengthening our TLT work as a region, and learning from one another. In the photo below you can see Kaka with Stephen. He came a couple days early and preached in Stephen's church on Sunday as well. 

Thank you to those who have financially supported our TLT work in Uganda! Please continue to pray for these TLT facilitators that they can put in practice what they learn and also teach others!

The Prosperity Gospel and Homosexuality

By Anthony:

Synod is approaching in the Christian Reformed Church in the month of June. This is a unique Synod in that the delegates have three years of material to work through due to the pandemic cancellations. They are also addressing the Human Sexuality Report which tackles difficult issues such as homosexuality and transgenderism. Many CRC leaders have been writing articles to think through these topics together, and I have written one as well. In my article I review a documentary on Netflix, but in the process look in detail at some different views about homosexuality and their connections with the prosperity gospel. I would love for you to read it, and also I request that you pray for wisdom and guidance for the delegates at Synod.

Reflections on Netflix's Pray Away

Resonate Team Retreat

 By Sara:

Thank you all for praying for us and supporting our East and Southern Africa team this March as we were able to go on our first team retreat in three years!  We all went to South Africa, near the border of Lesotho.  It was a great time of fellowship, getting to know each other in person, and resting and having fun together.  The Uganda team got to experience Uganda airlines to get to and from South Africa:

We were all overwhelmed by how good the roads we traveled on in South Africa were:

The retreat was in a beautiful place and we enjoyed good weather for the whole time we were there, which was great since we got to spend lots of time outside:

 Many of us went on hikes, including one to see cave paintings which are 200-300 years old!

There were lots of fearless bushbuck around the grounds of the hotel:

We discovered that Stephen is an excellent volleyball player.  In fact, he's pretty scary when he runs up to the net to spike the ball! 😀

We didn't spend all out time outside; there was an art activity, which was actually a really good way to get to know each other better and hear stories about our backgrounds and relationships we value.

Here is our whole team, plus some family members.  Not everyone was able to come with their spouse, but it was wonderful to have the spouses who were available to join us.  We have team members from Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, and South Africa: