August 1, 2013

Hello everybody! 

It has been quite a while since we have made a post. We have been in the States since June 1st and we have been moving from one place to the next. We have visited many family and friends so far and have enjoyed every minute of it! We have been in Washington State and Montana. While in Washington Ingrid had a surgery, which went very well. She is recovering as expected, but it will be the end of September before all physical restrictions are lifted. Thank you all for your deep concern and your prayers for her! As I am typing we are in Wyoming on our way Colorado.  From there we go back to Montana for a few days and then back to Washington for a few more days; then we head off for Peachtree, Georgia, where we will be attending Candidate Week with African Inland Missions (AIM). It is during this time when AIM will make the decision whether we will be full time missionaries with them. After Peachtree we go to California and then on to North Carolina to attend a Missionary Medical Intensive course. Before attending we have a lot of preparation and studying to fit into our already busy schedule. We would very much appreciate your prayers for our time at Peachtree and our preparation for our class in North Carolina, as well as all of the travels we still have ahead of us. After we leave North Caroline we will be going to Alaska. In between all of this traveling we will be back and forth between Washington and Montana a couple of times. Someone asked Ingrid if we were enjoying our "vacation in the States?" Yes we are enjoying our time, but I would not call it a vacation.

So how are we adjusting to our time here as compared to our time in Uganda? Here is what Ingrid has to say about this:

My time back in the USA has been full of a myriad of adaptions; coming from a place of very basic essentials to the abundance each person here has available to them.  My emotions and heart attitude have vacillated between deep gratefulness for what I have had available here to struggling with a comprehension like never before that the majority world are not able to experience the same comforts and relationships.

Please pray for me as Lyle and I look to returning to Uganda and Karamoja in particular.  I find myself in a battle of resisting holding on to this life here as though I could keep it, instead of joyfully losing my life as I know it, for my Lord Jesus who is worthy of all I can give.

I think what Ingrid said really gets to the heart of the emotions we are feeling. As we look forward to our return to Uganda, we still struggle with the relationships we leave here, but we also know that we will only be truly content if we are where the Lord desires us to be.

We just wanted to take a few moments to update our blog. We will let everyone know what happens at Peachtree and how the Missionary Medical Intensive goes. Thank you so much for your prayers!

Love,

Lyle and Ingrid

May 8, 2013

Lyle here....

These last few weeks have simply been packed full! Sometimes I feel like this Farside comic. It seems like we are being fed from a fire-hose. It has all been so wonderful and we have learned so much, but it is still so much information! We have been doing New and Old Testament Survey; we have been doing hermeneutics and exegesis; we have been looking at how the entire Bible points to Jesus; we have been going through the timeline of the Bible; and we have prepared and preached a short sermon to the rest of the class. We are now in the process of taking an Old Testament narrative and turning it into a children's lesson that will be Christ centered, pointing to Jesus. We also have just completed a two day field trip visiting four different children's homes. I think what we have appreciated the most is that none of this has simply been an academic exercise. It is all about knowing our Lord and Savior more and more; it is about growing in maturity; and it is about glorifying Christ in our lives - in what we say, what we do, how we live, etc. So not only have we felt like we have been feeding from a fire-hose, but there have been times we have felt emotionally drained and spiritually challenged. God is so good as He continues to teach us new things and deepen our understanding in so many different ways, even through the difficult times that may not seem to make sense at the moment. 

There has not been much down time, but we did make a trip to Kampala for pleasure and then there was an unexpected trip for Ingrid for medical reasons, which will be addressed fully once we are back in the States in May. Here is a crazy picture of how chickens get transported. I am guessing there were about 30 of them or so just tied together on the top of this taxi. We felt bad for the chickens, but it is not a new sight. One of the things we have seen in the past was a pig tied to the back of a boda (small motorcycle). The pig as were theses chickens was still alive and was just bouncing along. We have also seen bicycles used to transport just about anything; coffins, sugar cane, people, etc. Below is a picture of a bicycle with a sofa tied to it's back. It is amazing what can be balanced on the back of a bicycle or boda. We so admire the courage, strength and ingenuity of the Ugandan people!! We have also been able to take a few short walks around the New Hope property. Below is a shot of some short elephant grass we came across on our walk. We have seen it much higher!

Also on our walk we met a young boy on his bicycle who was just waiting for us to take his picture.

In addition to these things we have continued to spend time with our family group here at New Hope Uganda and are continuing to spend time with our African friends. Below is a photo of some of the family group at a going away party for a missionary from Great Britain. She has been at new hope for fifteen years and is now returning to England. 

Below is a photo of the family mother. Please keep her in your prayers as she has a terminal illness. Even with this we see her, often times in pain, ministering to the children in the family.

Both New and Old Testament survey have been really good. We went through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, and Joshua in detail, while going through the rest of the Old Testament as an overview. It was really good going into all the covenants and seeing God’s faithfulness to His chosen people even through their rebellion. We looked at how we see the entire Old Testament pointing to Jesus. Going through it verse-by-verse and passage-by-passage made it so much clearer why Jesus condemned the Jewish leaders for not recognizing who he was. It is amazing how much we say we believe,  because it is what we have been taught, but going through scripture and now knowing why we believe something makes it personal. For our hermeneutics and exegesis we have been using a course called “Veritas”. It really stresses the importance of context as well as an understanding of the different types of writing styles in the Bible, i.e. narrative, poetry, etc. It also takes into consideration the audience the writer was writing to, while seeking to understand the intent in the cultural context of the time and then applying it to our time. We went through Matthew like this, and in light of the audience, Jewish believers, we looked at how they would have understood what was being said. This detailed study not only has taught us new things. Going through the entire Bible timeline, including historical extra biblical records of the inter-testament period has really helped my understanding.

One of the most exciting things of all of this is that it has not just been an academic exercise. All of what we have been doing has been pointing to Jesus; all the way from Genesis to Revelation. It is all about Him! It is about His work in our lives and His plan from even before time began.

Well our time here is almost done. We are only three weeks away from finishing and we would really appreciate your prayers. We are at that point where we are looking to our return to the States and spending time with family and friends, but we still have homework and projects here, as well as more learning to do. All this to say, the temptation to focus on the future rather then the present is certainly there. We don’t want to miss a thing God has for us here, so please pray we remain focused the rest of our time here.

Finally, here is a picture of James. If you remember, we met him in 2011 and at that time he seemed like a young boy, but now he is almost as tall as Ingrid. He is part of a different family group, but it has been such a joy reconnecting with him. In this photo he was over at our home for his birthday.

By the time we write again we will probably be in Kampala preparing for our return to the states. We will hopefully see many of you while we are in the States.

We usually have a nature photo of some kind on the blog. This post is a special treat. Here we found two extremely rare, but beautiful, Ugandan tree birds. They look amazingly like Aunt Immaculate from the Institute and Ingrid. We will truly miss our Ugandan friends when we leave!

Love,

Lyle and Ingrid

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