As I was speaking, Winnie, one of my students, became distressed and was weeping loudly. We of course worked our way through that together, but I didn’t have any context to understand her distress.

I asked Director Anne Mwangi about it afterwards, and was humbled by her explanation. Winnie had been married and has five children aged 14-24. But some years ago her husband walked out, taking everything they owned. He moved to Rwanda, where he took six other wives! He even fraudulently sold the land left to their children as an inheritance. So, as Anne practically said, “She has a lot to work through. She has some challenges with forgiveness.”

And I thought to myself, “How little I know about life and suffering after all these years!” She and others like her should be my teachers. I have been blessed with many opportunities to study, for which I am deeply thankful; but many here know intimately levels of life that are as foreign to me as a new language.

May God bless the Winnies of Africa, and be their teacher at levels where we westerners are useless.

I have taken two days off from teaching in Kampala to visit some IT missionaries here – Tim & Angie Sliedrecht, and Josh and Mandy Shaarda. Both couples (Angie & Mandy are sisters) have been here almost a year. And it’s been a lovely visit, getting to know them and their children (Avalien & Moses, Lydia & Grace).

Tim & Josh work part-time at a small bible school, Bethel Bible College, and we explored ideas of a tiny Bible Resource Centre or some PALs to help build their study resources. We also talked with Patrick Orotin, the leader of a group of churches called the Integrity Pentecostal Church, about helping them train their pastors. Pastor Patrick may also be a good choice for translating into Ateso, the local language.

But useful as these conversations were, other ministries they’re involved with moved me more. They assist a local association that serves over 100 blind men and women. Some of these had been blind since childhood, but many had lost their sight in recent years from measles or other diseases. Magdalene read to us from a BULKY Braille Book of Psalms, and then showed how life had improved for her after she got a ‘Talking Bible’. Others that we met echoed that, including John-Steven, an older man who was a schoolteacher until losing his sight 15 years ago, and who finds the audio scripture invaluable in his preparation for the periodic preaching he does. The Bible on our PALs would duplicate that resource, but if we could record a version in Ateso, it would open that wonderful door to hearing the word of God in their own language to many others. And those we talked to were excited at the thought of having audio teaching about the Bible available to them as well.

That ended our visiting for the day, as we had a birthday party to attend. Little Moses, Tim & Angie’s son in process of adoption here in Uganda, turned one year old. A fun time.

In the morning we met a remarkable woman, Omese Beatrice. Her husband died six years ago in a car accident, and she has since organized an impressive widows’ association. The plight of widows in Africa is often dire. On a man’s death, his relatives take all the property that interests them, as property rights link to the male side. (A tragic consequence of the continuing custom of the ‘bride-price’ – the man’s family paid for the woman, so she and her things are their chattels.) Sometimes the widow and/or children may be taken into the in-laws’ home, but if so she may be treated as a virtual slave. Other times she’s just left behind, with or without the children. Although some of the national governments (including Uganda) are trying to address this issue and affirm women’s rights, it will take many years and much political will to change these deep-seated attitudes.

Beatrice has organized many of the widows in 10 of Uganda’s 69 districts. She has over 20,000 registered with her association! They provide many services, like help with micro-financed businesses, medical clinics, HIV-AIDS awareness – even an impressive hospice for widows in terminal stages of AIDS. She believes the great majority of these women are HIV positive and is implementing a large screening program to provide hard evidence. Their infection often comes from their vulnerability being taken advantage of after their widowing, as more of their husbands died from rebel violence in this strife-torn section of the country than from AIDS. But the greatest service needed, she says, is to somehow restore hope in these women who have lost all expectation of ever seeing their lives improve. As hers is a faith-based organization, that is her primary goal.

So with a memory full of new faces and a heart full of both painful and uplifting experiences, I hired a boat back over the swamp. Alex was waiting, and we started the long drive home.

We’re studying 1 & 2 Samuel, with a special focus on the many leadership models on display there. Actually we started with the last three chapters of Judges and the book of Ruth, because they are kind of prologues to the stories of Saul and David respectively. And I’m hoping we can extend our trip to 1 Kings 12, as the whole pattern of David’s life is best seen with the two giant contrasting figures on each side, Saul and Solomon. So we’re having fun.

Both here and in Rwanda, where I also taught this material, people take a while to get used to the idea of just working section by section through extended sections of scripture. Seems as though they are more accustomed to ‘harvesting preachable nuggets’ than studying the logic and flow of an entire book. As I value the contextual approach, I’m pleased be the one to introduce it to them.

ILTP really does produce leaders. Two I have met this week, from previous classes, are pastors Sam Nangai and Bernard Balemba. Sam pastors a small-but-growing church in a Luganda-speaking section of Kampala, but is called on as a speaker from as far as Kenya, and struck me as a quiet but strong man of faith. (I preached at his church today and then got to know him over lunch in his home.) Bernard is associate pastor in a large church in eastern Congo which Anne characterizes as a church with good growth but weak leadership training. So he has been sent to investigate starting in his area a leadership training program modeled on the one here. They would like to start in March ’08. And there is another ‘clone’ training program already operating in Juba, Sudan.

This leadership training program does in reality multiply itself and build leaders.

Music was great and the whole service was upbeat in a worshipful way. The preacher was Geoff Bond, a pastor from Cape Town, and the teaching was good. (The pastor at KPC, by the way, is a westerner, Gary Skinner, who started this church some 20 years ago.) So the entire experience was a delight, both spiritually and culturally – just a lovely encouragement. A needed encouragement.

I had asked Anne if we could get a taste of both big and small on my sole Sunday in Uganda, so we drove off next to the church of one of Anne’s former students, in the section of Kampala known as Kirombe. It was a contrast! The church, the Evangelistic Church of the Lord, serves fairly poor Luganda-speaking people. They have recently outgrown their meeting-place and have built a new church that they’re thrilled about. At least it’s partly built – the pole framing is all in place, about 80% of the roof has galvanized sheeting, and the walls have some protection from bamboo mats. They’ll finish the roof and improve the walls as they have money. But you know, at ‘giving time’, just about everyone came forward to give, and many were using both kinds of envelopes they provide, i.e. tithe envelopes and gift envelopes. So it seems to be a church that understands the basic ‘give-and-you-will-receive’ principle of God’s economy, and I’m sure it will thrive.

They were so pleased to have guests – both Anne Mwangi, who is held in great respect as their pastor’s ‘Director’, and a mzungu. They were good listeners (I was designated as preacher, somewhat to my shock), and very friendly. And the kids, as is always the case in churches here, were all over me as soon as they saw my camera. We were then hosted to a lavish meal in the pastor’s home nearby (rice, matoke, sweet potato, chicken, cabbage & sauce), and ended our ‘church parade’ about eight hours after we started.

Which was better? An impossible choice. I loved the uplift of the big church, but they will never know we passed through the doors. The small church required more from us – you were participant rather than passenger – but they’ll remember our visit in detail and with pleasure. If I visit again in a year they’ll remember me and probably be able to tell me what I said. So ‘the big and the small’ together made for a wonderfully balanced, worshipful Sunday.

Kenya is the most materialistic society I have lived in. Now before you roll your eyes and stop reading, let me explain.

I consume a lot more when resident in Canada than when I’m resident in Africa, and so do all my friends and relatives. We eat healthy breakfasts, pack nutritious lunches and consider ourselves virtuous if we deny ourselves dessert after supper. (Whereas brothers here may have tea when they wake up, only eat lunch if it’s offered to them, and eat a modest meal at night.) We feel like writing to our MPP if cable or high-speed internet is down for an evening. If we’re progressive and want to withhold TV from our kids, we still buy quality educational toys and DVDs that aggregate to more than the cost of a new TV each year. We think we’re being good parents and smart consumers, yet we’re spending ourselves blind in comparison to every family I have come to know over here. I call this ‘imbedded materialism’ – spending and consumption that have so infused our life expectations that they have stopped feeling like materialism. Wishing for a Corvette is materialistic; wanting a healthy lunch is just sensible.

It’s a shock to me when a streetkid here bluntly says, “Give me money.” It makes me uneasy when a Christian brother confides in me that “I’m trusting God for a laptop”. He probably is trusting God, but when he points it out to me in case I am the conduit God has brought into his life, I feel a bit put upon, as though I’m a mark. I’m concerned when people’s faith gets mixed up with their material hopes, and God is portrayed as the channel through whom that TV, that job, or even that car may arrive. This in-your-face materialism disappoints me, makes me muse about flaws in the national character or in their bible understanding; while all the while I own and enjoy all the articles they pray and dream for, often in multiple quantities. Is there something wrong with this picture?

As against our imbedded materialism, our materialism of entitlement, I describe the attitude here as ‘expectant materialism’. Its objects are concrete and tangible, specific markers of success that are easy to view as God’s blessing. Elsewhere I’ve described the prevailing mentality in the African churches I’ve known as a ‘culture of hope’, where in our home churches it’s a ‘culture of contentment’. We struggle to find contentment despite all we own, and perhaps mistakenly transfer that struggle on to our African friends, assuming that their desire for things they don’t yet own is a similar discontent.

And yet it intrigues me that although people here are very frank about wanting things, they’re also very accepting if they don’t get them. They don’t seem to feel cheated by God in their deprival. They just go on trusting God for it in the future. Their hope has a long life.

I listened to a few hours of teaching last week that were openly materialistic. We shake our heads sadly and speak of the health and wealth gospel, and in its crass forms it’s hard to take. But this speaker used the hopes he knew his listeners had, as a tool to lift them up. “Yes, God wants to give you the desires of your heart in this present world; but sister, it’s no good praying for a TV if you’re selling tomatoes on a street corner. You have to position yourself to be the recipient of these blessings, prepare yourself by education and initiative before you’re ready to receive them, show your faith by your actions.” He didn’t preach self-denial or pour cold water on their hopes, but he taught that mere hope has to transition into real and practical vision before it becomes God’s plan for us.

It’s still a big issue for me, trying to understand this hope/contentment cycle. But I’ve come to accept that the problem presents itself differently depending on whether you’re starting from a position of plenty or of need. Maybe I’ve been too quick to spiritualize the NT concept of hope into a theological expectation of present salvation and future eternal life, instead of its more common usage of anticipated fulfillment of desire. Certainly our deprecation of our African brothers’ desire for a tangible ‘better life’ would be more convincing if we had set tighter limits on our own. Maybe God, the God so concerned with justice, does want to pour out specific healings and material blessings on our partners-in-faith who have been short-changed? Maybe I am meant to be the conduit for that laptop? (But then, Lord, what about the other three brothers who have shared that exact same concern with me on this trip alone?)

Surely there is a mine for silver,
and a place for gold that they refine….
But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
….God understands the way to it,
and he knows its place. (Job 28:1, 12, 23)

I remember my excitement a year and a half ago when I discovered the work of Faith Comes By Hearing, a US organization that exists specifically to produce audio versions of scripture in many languages. I immediately bought some East African versions and spent hours digitizing them from cassette, segmenting them into proper chapter sections, titling and tagging them. Eventually I wrote FCBH for permission to use this extension of their good work, only to meet a gentle but firm refusal. The terms of their contract with the various bible societies did not permit it… but if I would use their equipment, their training methods and their accountability system, I was welcome aboard. After many emails, it seemed as though we had reached an impasse. Use their materials their way or not at all.

I realize this sounds harsh on FCBH, which I believe to be an organization doing great work for the Kingdom. I believe they feel bound by the overly cautious United Bible Societies. Maybe, too, they’re a bit protective of their ministry model. But though it’s going to be harder than I thought, we have to keep seeking the rights to use (or even create) audio scriptures in local languages. It’s such a natural outgrowth of our Portable Audio Libraries that it’s a given.

The pursuit of such an agreement has to date led me into meetings with Elizabeth Muriuki, General Secretary of the Bible Society of Kenya, and with Norbert Rutebuka, General Secretary of the Societé Biblique au Rwanda. I’m hopeful that both contacts will be productive, although it seems as though National Bible Societies believe in ‘slow and steady’ approaches while I want to reach consensus with a handshake!

The local church here is in the middle of a special mission: “7 Days of Flying over Impossibilities”. My mind wandered to this issue as I sat through some of the sessions, and I was comforted. I know we’re meant to have local language audio scriptures in our program – I just don’t know when it will happen or how to make it happen.  But I’m comforted by the thought that God knows. So I’m taking my cue from this mission’s theme and putting this particular ‘impossibility’ on God’s to-do list. I haven’t taken it off mine – I’ll still follow any leads that open up – but I’ve decided it’s God’s responsibility to help us ‘fly over’ this roadblock, in his time.

Ugali is a superthick ‘porridge’ made from boiling water and cornmeal.  There are versions made with cassava flour (which I don’t recommend); the standard variety made with a finely milled and sited ugali flour, which is bland but ok; and the kind I had today, which I’ll try again soon – not at all bad.

Last night I made a big pot of beef and cabbage curry that tasted better than it sounds. It was to last me for three of four nights, but with several people working in the office through the day it didn’t survive lunchtime. (Funny thing, but nobody that I meet here seems to plan for lunch – if a friend offers food they’ll eat in copious quantities; if not, they’ll wait till dinner.)

Pius Omina, my young office assistant, got the water boiling and pulled out a bag of his custom ugali ‘flour’. It was fresh ground from the corn, with no sifting or bleaching. He taught me the basics, though I’ll still have to practice a few times to get the knack of the stirring.
The keys seem to be: water at a fast boil; the right amount of flour (no measurements – it just has to feel right); and aggressive stirring, working the congealing mass against the side of the pot, then flipping it, etc – many times. The whole process takes about ten minutes, and when it’s done you turn it out on to a plate almost like a lump of bread dough.

Eating it takes practice too. It takes the place of cutlery – so you pull off a small piece, work it in the palm of your hand until it can serve as a mini-wrap, and scoop up some flavourful stuff with it on the way to your mouth.

Fair warning: if my technique improves, you may find it on the menu at one of my ‘Africa nights’.

I bought 10 Kinyarwanda bibles. Not too startling, not too expensive. But I’m taking them back to Canada. You see, when I wanted to buy a Kinyarwanda bible in Canada about a year ago, I found it’s not easy. I would have struck out, in fact, except for Pastor Wilfrid of the Rwandan church in Toronto who kindly gave me one.

I read with great interest an article from Christianity Today in August, by Christopher Lewis. (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/august/25.46.html) It showed that my experience was common. Refugees and immigrants can have great difficulty getting scripture in their mother tongue. The younger generation will need them less as they will be quickly mastering English, but the first generation wants and needs those bibles. This CT article described a couple of individuals who had started collecting and stocking bibles in many languages for the immigrants and refugees in their communities.

It’s not only insufficient demand that makes these bibles hard to find. Even within the members of the United Bible Society there can be competition, closely-held copyrights, shipping & stocking issues, small-scale print runs, and lack of co-operation between national Bible Societies.This despite the fact that the primary wish of all these organizations and the people in them is to let the Word of God shine forth.

IT Canada, is, among other things, a refugee support organization. Who better to build a stockpile of scriptures in many languages – not as a museum collection but as  a working distribution centre? Typically, short-termers returning home face the problem of how to fill their suitcases that bulged on the outbound leg with clothing, equipment, soccer balls and used books. May I make a suggestion?

So let’s talk around the idea of building up our own little “Acts2:11″ store, our own modest multi-lingual stockpile of our most treasured resource , to offer the newcomers in our midst. Acts 2 tells us that strangers and travellers were delighted on Pentecost day to “hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Let’s feed that same delight in our own day.

Anicet is my taxi-driver in Kigali. I’ve discovered why he started late, although it wasn’t until the third or fourth day of using him as driver that he opened up after a conversation about how people in Rwanda learned to forgive. He was from Kibuye region of western Rwanda, one of a family of 6. In 1991 he got worried about the political climate and left for Uganda. He was still there in 1994 when genocide erupted.

He’s the only one left of his family now. Five brothers and sisters, both parents, aunts, uncles and cousins were slaughtered in those fateful 90 days. He doesn’t even know how they died. But he decided he had to start a new life, with a new family. Yes, he started late.

Rwanda is a country where many people have shocking stories they could tell… if they chose to. It made me wonder, though, about the taxi drivers in Waterloo & Toronto & Windsor & Hamilton. It’s such a frequent first job for immigrants, including I’m sure refugees. I wonder what stories are locked in their memories.

Pastor Deo is head of the Prison Fellowship of Rwanda, and I was looking forward to learning more about his work. About five years ago he heard a call from God to work in this field, though it took him and his wife Christine a year to summon the courage to say goodbye to his management job with Rwanda’s main utility provider. He now works fulltime at it, along with two chaplains who give two days a week to working with inmates and whom Deo supports with travel money and family needs when he can. He has also trained twenty volunteer counselors to work specifically with prisoners who have deep psychological trauma from their violent past. Prison Fellowship International provides leadership training and periodic conferences, but no operational funds. So it’s tough to keep the work going.

Rwanda has some 80,000 prisoners, 90% of whom are still doing time for their 1994 genocide-related crimes. There are also about 7,000 women in jail. Genocide crimes are dealt with at multiple levels in Rwanda. The serious, high-profile cases are handled by an international war-crimes tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, that is hopelessly behind schedule. The government of Rwanda recognized early that it had no hope of scaling up the court system to deal with the huge caseload of serious but lesser cases, so it restored the old local system of ‘gacaca’ courts. These are community-based assemblies where victims, perpetrators and witnesses meet together under a court-appointed guide to seek justice in their local setting. They got under way just last year.

According to Pastor Deo, the results of their faith-based initiatives go far beyond these legal measures. Many, many of the prisoners have responded to the gospel and given their lives to Christ. They dissolve in tears again and again at the thought of what they did, once touched by the Cross.

There are so many angles to finding justice after genocide. There are the prisoners, both those who are repentant to the core and those who are not. There are their families who have had to survive for a decade with the main breadwinner gone. There are the desolate prisoners who see their wives pregnant with other men’s children and realize they weren’t willing to wait any longer. There are women living with HIV-AIDS as a result of rape during the war. There are the victims who lost parents or children or brothers or sisters. There are prisoners leaving the jails who need re-integration into their communities. A lot of the work of Prison Fellowship involves bringing these disparate groups together, face to face, to forge the kind of forgiveness that will have strength to survive in the real world. So an AIDS victim will meet with the man or men who raped her. Men and women will meet those who killed their parents or siblings. The tough, tough, slow work of reconciliation.  How many tears they must shed together.
Deo made an passing comment that caught my attention. He is wonderfully Pentecostal, of course, and I have seen evidence in his church of the Spirit’s gifting on him. I didn’t realize he had a healing ministry too. And the place he uses it most is in the prisons, which of course have few of the services we expect in our jails. As he points out practically, if God is going to heal someone, where better than with those who have neither money nor access to medicine?

We spoke of course about money. How could he talk for a couple of hours about heart-breaking, heart-warming stories so close to his heart without sharing their desperate need of funds? So since he has come to respect International Teams’ commitment to his country, he wonders if it could stretch to the prisoners too. And once again I find myself facing needs that are so worthy, so deep, and yet so disconnected from the specific reasons I’m here with L2L.

Listen to Learn may have one valuable contribution to make to their work. As prisoners become believers, they ask for copies of the Bible, though Prison Fellowship can not usually provide them for shortage of funds. Many of them read very poorly or not all, though, so they organize reading classes when they can find volunteer help. BUT… if we were to provide a few dozen mp3 players containing nothing but the New Testament in Kinyarwanda, they could be loaned out by the chaplains and the literate and non-literate alike could hear the words of God in their own tongue. This will be very easy for us to do – if we can arrange permission to use those audio materials, permission that to date has been unavailable to us. (Watch for an upcoming post on developments on this.)

But oh, the need for those dollars! Admittedly, when Jesus described his calling “to proclaim release to the captives” or said sadly that “I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me”, he didn’t put a price tag on it. But then he was expecting us to be doing the visiting. When we want or need to delegate that heavy task, other responsibilities come into play. Hebrews 13:3 kind of sums it up: “Remember those in prison as though you were in prison with them, and those ill-treated as though you too felt their torment.” I have no idea what this means in practice, either for IT or for any who read this – or for myself.  But I promised Deo I would tell his story. As I heard it.