April 7, 2013

Hello everyone, 

Lyle here. Time is continuing to fly by here at New Hope. It is hard to believe that we only have about seven weeks left. How are all of you? We will be in Kampala for a very short time, then off to the States! 

Since our last blog we have continued to look at: parenting in the context of fathering, mothering, and family; the biblical doctrine of adoption; God as Father; marriage, manhood, and womanhood; and  singleness. All looked at from a biblical perspective, while at the same time looking at our cultural filters and how they effect our worldview. Take all of that and roll it together and that brings us to one of our current homework assignments; writing up our vision statements for biblical manhood (or womanhood), marriage, singleness, and family. Quite a daunting task to take so much and prayerfully encapsulate it all into a few paragraphs. In addition we have been looking at spiritual warfare, suffering as a normal part of Christian life, and have spent more time on biblical counseling.

             Our classroom at New Hope

Our time outside the classroom has been just as busy. We have spent time with our family here at New Hope - Pacific Family; we continue to get to know those at the institute better; we have spent time working in the gardens; and we have tried our hand at ox-plowing! The most memorable thing, however, has been the privilege of having been around for the birth of Uncle Ronald's, a teacher at New Hope's Vocational Institute, and Aunt Rebecca's first child! Uncle Ronald and Aunt Rebecca are fellow students here at New Hope. We had just returned from a trip to Kampala when we got the call, "It's time, can you come pick us up?" I think we had been home for just a couple of hours! They are the proud parents of a wonderful healthy baby boy, Frank. Ingrid got to be in the delivery room part of the time and is now a wonderful Jajja (grandmother). It was such a blessing to see how Uncle Ronald was involved in a very counter-cultural way, taking what he had learned here at the institute and putting it into practice. He modeled biblical manhood, not cultural!





                                 


      Left and Below - Ox-Plowing at New Hope






























Left -Uncle Ronald and Aunt Rebecca with Frank
Bottom - Ingrid with Frank

     
    






      Visiting the farming project outside of Jinja

Easter weekend was packed full! We went to Kampala for a couple of nights and then off to Jinja for a couple of nights. While in Kampala we spent time with AIM Central Region staff, some of the staff at Matoke Inn, and we were able to visit one of the daughters from Pacific Family who is going to college in Kampala. In Jinja we visited Walukuba Community Baptist Church and went to see their agricultural project. For those who don't know, WCBC has a farming project to benefit widows and orphans in their community and there was a donor from Washington who was able through us, to match dollar for dollar the church's investment into this project. We were able to go and see first hand what is going on and hear more about their vision. They currently have five acres of corn, but as time goes by they hope to have up to 30 acres of purchased land, rather then the five acres of leased land they currently farm. Please pray for them and this project. The Lord is blessing the fields with rain and the crop is already coming up, but so are the weeds. Workers are needed to help hoe the fields. All the work in the fields is done by hand except the plowing. Even then, oxen teams are what is used for plowing.

Traditional medicine (witchcraft) is very prominent in Uganda. Here is an advertisement we saw on the side of the road outside of Jinja. According to the Pastors we were with this is an advertisement for a witchdoctor. We have learned that each witchdoctor is supposed to have an expertise in a specific field, that is, he or she may appease the the spirits of fertility, while another may specialize in curses of your enemies, and yet another may specialize in breaking curses. You get the idea. There can be a witchdoctor for many many different things. The witchdoctor will tell you what you need to do, which always includes payment to them in some form, in order to accomplish whatever it is that you originally came to them for. These beliefs are so deep that you will even see this carried over into churches. You go to this pastor for prayer for a certain thing and another pastor for prayer for something else and payment is always part of the interaction.

We saw these storks on a golf course in Jinja. I think they stand about 4-5 feet tall!

Plans with AIM to become full time missionaries with them, continue to move forward as well as us going to Karamoja with them upon our return to Uganda. Our Lord knows exactly what this will look like and how it will work out. He is writing the story a line or two at a time and how exciting it is to see it unfold, knowing we really have nothing to do with it, and what's more, our Lord is giving us the privilege of being part of the story!! All the glory is His!

Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we finalize things and book flights - that we will listen to the Lord's leading. We are looking forward to seeing all of you and just relaxing a little and spending some time catching up.

Love,

Lyle and Ingrid