Theological Famine Relief

By Anthony:

I have a great program to recommend to other missionaries and to short term trips from churches back in the USA and Canada.  It is called "Theological Famine Relief" and it is a program from one of my favorite organizations, "The Gospel Coalition."  The Gospel Coalition (TGC) publishes insightful articles all the time that you probably see me sharing on facebook.  If you've never heard of TGC, then read their "about page" here. 

This program is not to provide food for real famines, but to provide theology books for those places in which there is a scarcity of books and theological training.  Here is the webpage.  They give books to missionaries to distribute to pastors in other countries.  The books are new in two senses: 1. Recently published, 2. New, not used.   They are good books written by good authors, ones that I want to read myself, not old cast-offs. 

I was able to get several BOXES of books from TGC, and I paid nothing.  Normally you just pay for shipping, but they gave me a shipping scholarship as well and so they were shipped to Sara's church, Midland Evangelical Free Church, for free.  I am so grateful for this generosity.  Sara's church was sending a short term team to Uganda and we had the chance to visit them, so they took all 66 pounds of books with them for us!  Thank you again MEFC Gulu Team!

I was able to give these books to central locations in the pastorates we work in.  This way leaders visiting the pastorate offices can use them to study from, but hopefully they will all succeed in creating a library-like system so pastors can borrow the books to take home, read, and then take back.  They were all very happy to receive the books, and here are a few pictures.

The Lord's Supper

By Sara:

Somehow, despite attending church every week that we are not traveling, we have managed to spend about two and a half years total in Uganda without ever celebrating the Lord's Supper in church!  The few times we heard that it was going to happen, we ended up being somewhere else that week.

Finally, we happened to be around on a Sunday that the Lord's Supper was celebrated at our church in Soroti.  We thought you might enjoy seeing what that is like in the Pentecostal church in Uganda.

There were these little biscuits and some kind of not-grape-juice. 

Here, the "disposable" cups are saved, washed, and re-used the next time.  The ushers were preparing for the second service.

We are thankful for the opportunity to be with our Ugandan brothers and sisters in Christ to remember together Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and the sacrifice he made for us.

Mental Exercise to Refocus your life on God

By Anthony:

This post might seem a little silly when you start reading what I am proposing.  But if you take it seriously, it can actually be very helpful.  I can't make any promises that it will help you, but I can say this little mental exercise has worked well for me.  (I am totally open to criticisms about it too!)

Back in high school, someone told me he sometimes imagines that he is the only person that truly exists, and everyone else in the world is placed there by God to interact with his life even though they aren't real.  So if you try this, you are to imagine that God created the world just for you, and that he died just for you, and that he is watching just you as live through life, make decisions, and go through the process of sanctification.  While you are distracted and comparing yourself to other people saying, "at least I'm doing better then them," in this exercise it's just you, and God and all his angels are watching you, seeing what you will make of this life he has given you.  If you really do this, it's rather intimidating.

Obviously this is not true and there are ethical dilemmas in imagining a God who would do this.  But if you stop and just imagine it, what happens is you imagine God's entire focus being solely on you and every little thing you have done in your life and every day.  It surely causes you to reevaluate just about everything in your life.  If you've been indulging in secret addictive sins, or wasting much time, this little mental exercise can snap you back into reality.

When I have forced myself to think this through, it has produced profound feelings of God looking right through me, knowing my every thought.  It produced profound feelings of regret and guilt thinking of God being displeased when I've done wrong, because his whole focus is on me!  It can even produce great joy thinking of God taking delight that we have confessed our sins and trusted in Jesus' dying for us, and God taking delight in that we enjoy fellowship with him.

The point is that after the exercise, when you remind yourself that this is just imagination and not true, and everyone else actually exists, and the whole world doesn't revolve around you, and God is looking at everyone and not only you, even then you realize the very true and powerful theological point.  The point is that God is big enough to still completely focus on you while he completely focuses on everyone else as well.  God is that big.  He knows about everything that everyone is doing while at the same time knowing exactly what you are doing, and he is watching you with expectation.

Doing this has helped me at times to take life more seriously and strive to live for God more fully.  It has also helped me to have a better appreciation of God's presence with me.  That he is truly with me all the time, and so intimately that it is as if no one else exists.  He is able to be that intimate with me even though he is intimately with other people all over the world as well. 

KIDO Conservation Agriculture Training

One of the Ugandan partner organizations that we work with, KIDO, did a training for community motivators earlier this year about conservation agriculture.  These community motivators are going to be the ones helping with KIDO's work in their own communities.  So this training was to help them gain skills and knowledge that they will pass on to the groups they work with at home.

There were activities and also indoor lecture.  One of the activities was starting a demonstration plot.

They also got to see the demonstration of how covering the soil helps to prevent soil erosion.

I talked about the different kinds of plants they can use as green manures and cover crops in their gardens to help protect and improve the soil.

I also gave some practical ideas for how they can do conservation agriculture.  Part of this involved going outside and trying out different options for reducing tillage.  For example, using a dibble stick:

And digging planting stations.