MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 06-22-2012

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Hello again! Things are progressing very well here. The annual Uganda Field Conference has come and gone without incident. It’s always pleasant when I go to Kampala and don’t a) have car trouble b) get robbed c) get pulled over by crooked traffic cops, or d) get in a wreck. We got to visit with some friends we don’t see often, and were blessed by J.B. Godfrey’s preaching (veteran missionary from Senegal, West Africa, now Far East Director with BIMI). I also got some needed car repairs done while in the capitol, courtesy of Ssuemko (good friend, and the only mechanic in this country I trust).

The dry season is in effect, which is a blessing, since the road to Nakivale is such an unpredictable morass during the rains. The road crews are moving ahead with the construction much more quickly now that the rains are no longer causing confusion and delay. The roads are still very rough, but at least there’s no mud, and sections of the road are actually quite good. The tarmac will be a huge help to our ministry when it is complete.

I preached my first funeral on the field. Both Jeff Bassett and I were involved. The deceased was one of the first men he baptised from Nakivale, a Christian man, and well known. The service went very well. Everyone got multiple, clear presentations of the gospel. It was nice for a change not to have to listen to heathen Anglican bishops drone on forever about nothing, and then have to watch their heartbreaking, vain burial rituals for a person you’re pretty sure died without Christ. It was altogether different, preaching the funeral of a saved man. The custom here is that during the burial, you take up a collection for the benefit of the surviving family, in this case, a widow and her children. WHILE WE WERE BURYING HER HUSBAND’S BODY, some worthless individual went into the house and stole the 700,000 shillings the people gave for her help (about $350). These people are poor. That they were able to raise this sum was quite a feat. And the miserable pile of offal stole it. That was her livelihood so she could care for her children, and pay for her husband’s medical bills, and instead, it goes to help some drunk buy more Bell beer. My blood boils just thinking about it. Personally, I’m praying God strikes the guy down with extreme prejudice. You don’t fool with widows and fatherless. It’s in the Bible. Pray God supplies her needs following this wicked theft.

In other news, we got a tenant (again) for our property in America. I almost hesitate to say anything, because now she’ll probably lose her job, the house will burn down, and a horde of starving weasels will carry off everything that remains. So, as of this precise moment, we have a tenant, a deposit has been made, and she’ll be moving in July 1. We will actually be able to save money! What a concept! This is fortuitous, because we are taking a furlough in March of next year. I have to be able to get some money saved to prepare for this, but the house was eating all our extra funds. Happily, this is (currently) no longer the case. Pray I have good success scheduling meetings. In addition to the supporting churches I need to visit while in America, I also need to get into new churches to try and raise some more support. We came here undersupported, and in the interim, have had another child, plus the cost of living has increased. Pray I can get the meetings and the extra support we need.

Project Libris, our library project, is doing very well. I’ve heard from multiple churches who are sending us books to bring back to the refugee camp for a library. Pray we’ll have plenty of books, and the funds to get a container and ship it here.

We have been attempting to find a better house. I have looked at several in Mbarara. There is a house not far from where we live that would be perfect. It is still being built, but is nearly finished, and will be within the next six months. We’d be getting a new house, in other words. However, the yard is too small for a family with 6 children. I noticed that there was an adjoining piece of property that would more than adequately increase the size of the yard. I informed our potential landlady of our desire for a larger yard, and asked if she had ever considered buying the land to increase the size of the compound. She had, but the muzeyi (elder man) who owned it had refused to sell in the past. I sent Osbert to his village to negotiate, and he agreed to sell, but at an outrageous price. I sent a broker friend of his to counter, and he reduced his price, but it was still too high. Today, our landlady made her final offer, a very reasonable price. I sent a modest gift of sugar, salt, cooking oil, bread, margarine, and laundry soap (all hard to get in the village) to the gentleman, along with Osbert and the broker to put the screws to the guy. I have made it clear to the landlady that unless she gets the land, I will not take the house because the land is too small for my family. Please pray he agrees to her price so we can take the steps necessary to secure this house. We’d have a much better place, in a much nicer, quieter neighborhood, with a wall, not a breachable bush and fence, and get a good landlady in the bargain. We feel this is God’s best, and are praying hard that we get the outcome we need from this negotiation.

Thank you for all your prayers!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 04-30-2012

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Greetings! We had a great trip down to Rwanda. We stopped in at Kabale near the border for lunch, then made the border crossing without a hitch. You drive from Mbarara about two-and-a-half hours to the border, and then it’s about 80 km from the border to the capitol city of Kigali. Driving through the mountains to Kigali is beautiful.

Kigali

You drive on the right, like America, and the roads are in pristine condition (unlike Uganda’s roads, which are more like something from a post-nuclear landscape). You wind through the mountains on your way there, and it reminded me quite a bit of traveling through West Virginia. They call Rwanda the land of a thousand hills, and that it is. I don’t think there’s a flat place anywhere in the whole country. We drove from the northern border to the southern border in a little over 4 hours, on excellent roads the whole way. This country, about the size of Maryland, has a population of 11,689,696, of which 900,000 live and work in Kigali (the actual state of Maryland has a population of 5,828,289). AIDS here has had a catastrophic effect, much like everywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1994, as you know, the Hutu Power movement launched a program of state-sponsored genocide in which a million Tutsi tribesman (three quarters of the Tutsi tribe), men, women, children, even babies, were brutally murdered over the course of 100 days. We visited one of the largest mass graves, now a memorial and flower garden in Kigali, where over 250,000 Tutsi are buried. It was heartbreaking.

Nevertheless, the Rwandans have sought to bring unity and order to their society, and have crafted one of the most stable, orderly, clean, and efficient little African republics I have ever seen. Political corruption is nearly unheard of in Rwanda. Rule of law is enforced, and public monies are spent on their intended purpose, to dramatic effect. Cost of living is higher than Uganda, but a missionary could factor that in when raising support.

We spent a few days visiting with Gregg and Angela Schoof, FBMI missionaries who have been working in Kigali for 9 years. To my knowledge, they are the only Baptist missionaries in the entire country. Gregg began and maintains a Christian radio station here, which is reaching the entire city and beyond with the Gospel. Pray for laborers who can come and assist him. I’ll be taking my family down there for a visit soon so my six kids can play with his six kids (they were a hoot).

We had very productive meetings with the government officials who have authority to authorize new religious organizations within Rwanda. Their Parliament will be enacting legislation soon that will regulate this process. Pray this goes smoothly, and that BIMI will obtain the necessary permission to gain legal status in Rwanda. We have missionaries in the pipeline already, called of God to Rwanda and raising support to go there. We need more. Pray for laborers for this marvelous country.

We drove down to Butare, the second largest city in Rwanda. It is a university town up in the mountains about 30 km from the Burundi border. It was a beautiful, active place. I would go there in a heartbeat if God so desired. You could have ongoing ministry in the university to the 15,000 or so students there, who will become the professionals and leaders of their country. You could have an influence that ripples outward for decades to come. Additionally, it’s close to Burundi, so you could have a cross-border ministry to that country just like we do here in Mbarara. I intend to learn Kinyarwanda also, which I already need in the refugee camp. This will give me the ability to communicate there, and in Rwanda with any ministries we find ourselves involved.

Since we were so close, we decided to drop down into Burundi and visit the capitol city, Bujumbura. It is situated on the north shore of Lake Tanganyika, the world’s longest freshwater lake (420 miles long). We ate fresh mukeke (fish) at a dockside restaurant for lunch while hippos snoozed and grunted to each other nearby. On the way through the mountains, we observed this curious phenomenon: Klingons.

KlingonsPublic Transportation

As trucks would approach turns while climbing the mountains and slow down, pedestrians and/or cyclists would latch on to the back and ride the trucks all the way up the mountain and down the other side. This explains why all the males in Burundi have right arms that are six inches longer than the left (kidding!). On the downhill slope, they’d be zipping along at 80 or 100 km/h, with vehicles right behind them. Crazy, and kind of cool.

 

It takes two-and-a-half hours to make your way through the mountains, and then suddenly, it levels out into the Great Rift Valley and Bujumbura spread out below like a postcard. Awesome place. Again, another nation that needs laborers, for the harvest is ready. Pray the LORD will summon laborers here also.

Bujumburu

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a very positive, blessedly uneventful (thank you for praying) five day tour of some of the other Great Lakes nations in East Africa. The fields are prime, the area is stable, and the whole region is wide open for missionaries. Pray God will send many laborers, so many more in East Africa may be saved.

Pray for us here. We are having difficulties with our landlady. She is being stubborn, not wanting to honor our 5-year contract, which fixes the cost of rent for the whole period. She also does not wish to allow us to take the cost off of the rent for the many, many improvements which were necessary to complete her rough, ugly, undeveloped property. In two years, we have made it into a park. However, as do many Ugandans, she is suffering from MIM, or Money Induced Madness. The dollar signs in her eyes are distorting her sense of reality. Honestly, how many tenants come into a place and progressively and consistently improve it in every way? Certainly none I’ve ever had in our place in America. So, instead of simply being able to come to an amicable arrangement like two adults, she’s being childish and petty. Now I’m going to have to get a lawyer and make her see reason. If she will not, we may have to move, which we REALLY don’t want to do. Please pray this can be resolved in a way that benefits us, with minimal complications and cost, and allows us to remain here.

In addition (because, you know, we can’t have just a few problems), the tenant who was going to rent our place in the States lost her job (naturally), and cannot rent our home. This means we are continuing to have to pay for two houses, one here and one there. We cannot long continue doing this. We are going to reach the point where we can no longer afford to live here if it does. Please pray we will either get the house sold, or find a reliable, gainfully employed tenant within the month.

God bless you!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 04-15-2012

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Greetings from sunny Uganda! Things are progressing well here in Africa. We baptized 12 at our Easter service last week. We have 4 preaching points going, divided between the Bassetts and us. Construction is nearly finished on the Juru building. Classes at Sangano are going well. I am continuing Genesis, Jeff has finished Biblical Leadership, and we'll be commencing Bible Study Methods next.

We said our goodbyes to our good friends the Trachts last week. They are going back to the US for furlough, so we have to make do without our friends for nine months. It was awfully hard on the kids. The Tracht kids are over so much they're practically Huckabees by now. Shortly before their departure, we had them over to spend the night, and the whole gang camped outside. They had a blast. Our prayers are with them as they visit America, check in with their churches, and raise some more support.

Good news, unless a tornado destroys our house at the last minute, we now have a tenant! The last of the repairs were completed and we changed to a different property manager. Our new renter moves in next month. This will GREATLY ease our financial burden, and free up funds for other more useful things, rather than a house we cannot sell and are not using.

StuckToday was high adventure. The actual church service and Sunday School went great. We took some time to visit with some of the church folks afterwards. It had been raining all night and all morning, so the roads were pretty sloppy going out to Nakivale. They were worse coming home. The road crews have been making excellent progress, but the construction has disturbed the road surface temporarily, which results in swampy conditions. The worst choke point is on the pass crossing the mountain. A truck had gotten stuck in the road, leaving a narrow section barely greater than a car's width to get by. Another small car had gotten stuck in the middle of the road on the approach, so I was going to pass him and go on by. That's when my four-wheel drive beast got well and truly stuck. What's worse, I was dangerously near to the edge of a six foot embankment, which would have tumbled the car down the mountainside had we gone over it. Every time I tried to go forward or backwards, the car would start sliding sideways towards the drop-off. I had everybody get out of the car and go stand on the other side of the road. I figure pneumonia is way easier to cure than death-from-rolling-down-the-mountain-in-a-car. Drowned Rats

Needless to say, I parked it 'til I could get a crew to help dig us out. Fortunately, there was a bunch of guys busy earning money digging out stuck taxis, so they agreed to help us for a nominal fee. They very industriously dug down to drier soil under all the tires, and then gathered around to push, from the side near the embankment and from the rear. After a couple times of moving forward, getting stuck again, and dug out, we finally went skidding and sliding around the truck and on to more stable ground.Praise the LORD, we made it home alive! The driver of the truck that was causing the blockage very generously allowed the children to come sit in the cab so they wouldn't have to stand in the rain. Anna was outside taking pictures. Apart from getting wet, cold, and quite muddy, we are none the worse for wear.

SlidingTomorrow I will be heading to Rwanda for four or five days with Jeff Bassett and Matt Stensaas. We are taking a survey trip on behalf of BIMI to commence the paperwork necessary to establish an NGO in the country. This will open the country to BIMI missionaries to Rwanda. It's a two-and-a-half hour drive from Mbarara to the border, so it's not a terribly long drive for us here. We are also going to be getting the lay of the land for any future ministry opportunities. Some of our people in Nakivale are from Rwanda, and may return some day to start churches, and we would be helping them get established. Pray for our safety on the road and away from home. Pray for the safety of our families.

 

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 03-26-2012

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Yesterday was an interesting day. Our Sunday began like normal at 6AM. I got the car ready and loaded with some bagoya (the large, yellow sweet bananas you eat uncooked) and some sugar cane from our garden to take out to Djuna, our national pastor. Such things are scarce out at the camp, so I grow things in our garden to take out there. I filled a couple 20L jerry cans with water to take to him as well, because there’s been some problem with the water distribution in the camp lately. As such, the car was quite full. We headed out to the camp at 7AM, but were delayed a bit by road construction. This is awesome! They have been preparing to tarmac the road out to the camp for a year now, and have FINALLY started doing something. They currently have earth movers and bulldozers out cutting a swathe on both sides of the road, thus making the skinny road more than wide enough for two lanes, with room for proper drain ditches on the sides. You have to have drainage, or the rains will tear up the roads. Once completed, we will be able to get out there much quicker, and with a lot less wear and tear on ourselves and the vehicle.

Things progressed like normal, only as we were making our way to the third preaching point at Sangano, we got a flat tire, right out in the middle of the football (soccer) field/town common. Okay, slight delay, I’ll just change the tire. Once I got the tire off and the spare ready to put on I discovered that the rim I had was the WRONG SIZE!! Somebody must have helped themselves to the tire before we bought the car, and it was replaced with a similar rim that does not quite fit our car. Who thinks of checking the spare tire to make sure it’s the right size? After an abbreviated preaching service at Sangano (this is where being instant in season and out season is important) I sent both tires off with Djuna to see if somebody could get the good tire off and put it on the right rim. They finally decided to patch the tire, and put in an inner tube. It then had to be pumped up, by foot, with a foot pump, since no one in the refugee camp has an air compressor. We sat there for three hours, waiting for it to be done. Meanwhile, the kids ran around and played with all the other kids, who very generously shared their bikes and toys with our guys. Children are universal. Even though our guys don’t know Swahili, and the other kids don’t know English, they still managed to play. We gathered quite a crowd. I was kicking myself that I don’t yet know enough Swahili to be useful, because it would be have been a prime opportunity for preaching. It is definitely the right place to have a tent meeting in the future. The church folks came by to keep us company and for moral support, so we managed to have a good time.
Rolling
We headed home at last around 4PM. We were within 4 km of the tarmac leading into Mbarara when the tire went flat again. Sigh. I gave my man Osbert a call, and he came in a vehicle to pick up the family and the two tires. He then went into town to get the good tire put on the right rim. After much confusion and delay, we were finally mobile again by 7:30PM, after dark. I hate driving after dark. It’s really quite dangerous here to do so, because there is little or no ambient light, no street lights, and people out on the roads at all hours in dark clothes and with no apparent fear of vehicles whatsoever. I finally drug my tired body into the house more than twelve hours after I left it Sunday morning. What a day! Still managed to minister though, and just the sight of us calmly waiting and letting our kids rip and play with the kids in the camp probably ministered as much or more than any thing else.Cycling
I sent Osbert out today to trade our two useless rims for one good spare rim to keep this kind of thing from happening again. He even managed to locate a decent used tire of the same type as the other three, so we will be good to go while I save up to replace these tires over the next three or four months. Pray God will supply enough extra where I can prepare to replace the tires in May when we go to the capitol for our annual Field Conference. Pray the tires last until then, because I can’t afford to be replacing tires right now. Pray the ministry will continue to prosper out at the camp. Pray for rain, so the crops will grow well and the people will have enough to eat. Pray the road construction advances quickly and well so we can be liberated from the abuse to our vehicles that the road currently produces.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 02-21-2012

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Greetings! The rains have returned to Mbarara. It rained all weekend, torrential and constant. When we arose on Saturday morning to begin preparing to head to Nakivale and the first day of our VBS, it was pouring outside. It is always a drag to travel in the rain, because the roads turn to muddy gravy, and you have to fight to keep the vehicle from being sucked into the ditch. This is exacerbated by the legion of dubiously qualified truck drivers hauling goods out to Kabingo. The road is narrow, and it is difficult to pass these guys in good conditions. The danger increases of course on these axel grease roads, but pass them we must, since their motors have been beat to death over successive years of substandard maintenance and they always travel at a snail’s pace. Inevitably, we pass the Bell beer truck on Sundays, hauling beer out to “those ends”, because if there’s one thing impoverished refugees struggling to feed their families need, it’s more alcoholism.

Then there’s the matoke-guys. These are 1-speed steel bicycles, which are never ridden but are used as two-wheeled carts to carry heavy loads, in this case, 6 or 7 stalks of matoke (cooking bananas) 40 to 50 pounds each. As you travel out to Nakivale, there are several large banana farms, growing the staple food here: matoke. It’s sort of like potatoes in the States. They hire these local guys to haul the produce into distribution points, where they are loaded onto trucks and delivered to the towns. The vegetable truck owners buy them from the farmers, and re-sell them at a profit. This is how the rural farmer makes money from his crop. A banana-bike loaded down is as wide as a small car, and as fast as a toddler pushing a walnut up a hill with his nose. So they have to be passed, unless you’re planning on driving at slower than walking speed. This again necessitates trying to keep from being devoured by the mud-filled ditches. What’s really bad is when, inevitably, you need to pass so you don’t have to either run them over or slam on the brakes to keep from running them over, but you meet a vehicle coming the other way. Now you have to simultaneously avoid hitting the knucklehead pushing a bicycle (hitting pedestrians, even though they have no business being in the road, no matter how reckless or idiotic they might be, is automatically the driver’s fault and usually carries a huge fine from their extended family and possibly a jail sentence), getting into a head on collision, and being sucked into the ditch. It’s the vehicular equivalent of juggling chainsaws.

The rain was finally tapering off by the time we reached our destination, so I was able to persuade our translator and fellow Pastor Djuna to make the trip on his boda (motorbike) out to the first stop at Juru. He translates well from English to Swahili, the primary language at that preaching point. There are lots of languages at Nakivale, including Runyankore, Swahili, and Kinyarwanda. I am working on Runyankore, but still need translating, sometimes into all three. We had 150 kids at Juru on the first day, and 54 on Sunday (it was raining, and people here do not like to travel when it’s raining, even in a light rain). It went very well. We handed out some cookies, sang some songs, taught a Bible lesson, colored pictures, and had a review game afterwards which gave them a chance to get candy if they knew the answers. It was great fun. We did the same thing out at Ngarama, where we had 40 the first day and 58 on Sunday. The Bassett’s were out at Sangano and Kabazano (the newest church plant), where they also had lots of kids. Dividing up the points in this way means we can spend more time at each, but not have to spend eight hours doing it.

We gave them the Gospel, some good Bible instruction, and some tasty treats. We are working on teaching them how to sit and listen quietly, a necessary skill when they go to school, and not to mob people trying to give them things (the refugee mentality). Treats have to be earned, and only those who have actually worked to get them may have them (teaching merit-based rewards, rather than everyone expecting to get something simply because they showed up – the tribal mentality). These children are often ignored, and are treated like mongrels. No one has any expectations for them, so they just sort of do whatever they want to. We are attempting to show them some love, positive attention, and teach them useful things in the process.

We do this again next weekend. Once they have their Easter break in April, we can do a standard three-day gig without having to break up the classes. We had to accommodate the school schedule this time, which the government arbitrarily altered.

Pray for the VBS, for the salvation of those who need it, in particular those who don’t typically come to church, or don’t attend a church which preaches the Gospel. Pray for our safety as we travel, and our health. Pray for the translators who help us get the message into multiple languages for the children. Pray the kids will understand and enjoy the Bible clubs.

God bless you!