March 27,2007

Frank and Dennis
Frank and Dennis are two men who have recently accepted Christ as their personal Savior, though in quite different ways. Frank comes from a family where Christianity was discouraged and even scorned, but he had been searching for several months. He is one of sixteen children (15 sisters!) and the only to go to university in his entire village of around 25,000 people in Kenya. He has graduated with a law degree but has not yet found a job. He is very intelligent and a great communicator. I have been amazed at how quickly he is grasping spiritual truth. I am trying to spend more time with him because he is soaking up everything. He came to the Lord through Pastor Kennedy who had been witnessing to him and spending time with him for several months. We talked with Frank for about an hour one night after a Saturday night church service and just a few hours before he received Christ. You could sense that he was close, but we did not realize how close. The exciting thing was that his father has no relationship with Frank, but called him that same night to tell Frank that he should seek God. When his dad first called, Frank thought that he was drunk and hung up. However, his dad called back and shared that Frank should pursue God. This same man had forbid two of Frank’s sisters from coming home because they had become Christians and had not talked to Frank for two years. He came forward for salvation the following morning at church. He is the man talking with me by the lake in the only picture of me on Flickr. There is also a picture of him and Pastor Kennedy with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Frank is the taller one and Kennedy has on sunglasses.

Dennis is a young man of around 20 that we met at the Shell gas station. Whenever we would stop to get fuel, he would be our attendant and loved interacting with our boys. One day I was asking him if he was born again. He responded that he was not born again but that he was a Christian (a common response here, actually, which is why you ask if they are born again). I asked how this was possible and he told me that he believed in God but did not believe that Jesus was His son. I told him that he could not be a Christian without believing in Christ and explained the gospel. He and a Muslim man stood and talked with me for 15-20 minutes that day and we started a relationship. On Christmas day we decided that we would take Dennis a copy of the book “More Than A Carpenter” for a present. We went back a week later to see what he thought and he said that someone stole his book, so we gave him a second copy not fully knowing if he was being truthful or not. A couple of weeks later I went back to see him again and found out that he was fired for stealing money. Every time that we stopped for gas, we would ask about Dennis but had not seen him for weeks. Based on his stealing, I was thinking that he lied about the book and probably was selling them.

I got a text message a few days ago on my phone from Dennis saying that he missed us and had been told that we were asking about him. I don’t know how he got my phone number, but somehow he tracked me down. I asked him if he read the book and he told me that he now knows that Jesus is the One true Son of God and that He loves Him. He got saved through reading the book! I need to find a way to get him into ministry and follow up with him on a regular basis, but at least the foundation has been laid. Moving people into discipleship is very important but also very challenging here, but imperative if lives are going to be transformed in such a way to transform a corrupt cultural system.

Birds
Uganda is supposed to be one of the best places in the world for birding and I understand why. We live only a few miles from Lake Victoria and also right beside a swamp, and so we get lots of birds coming through. We have seen many types and even more in recent days. The national bird is the Crested Crane and it is a beautiful bird. We have seen them flying by almost everyday lately. I don’t have a picture to post, but I will try to get one soon. I never have my camera with me when I see one. We have seen birds of all sizes and colors, including some brown parrots and African grey parrots right outside our front door in our guava tree. We see maribou storks everywhere, and they are large hideous creatures, which is quite a contrast to the other birds. They can usually be seen digging through garbage heaps in town. We have seen weaver birds, bee eaters, and many water fowl. There are hawks, eagles, and falcons everywhere, and they come to our yard all of the time. The sounds that they make are as fascinating as the variety of species. Even as I compose this blog, I can hear at least six distinct calls. There are loud hoops and soft singing and everything in between. I keep thinking of how much Jennifer Mathers would enjoy birding here knowing that she could really appreciate the tremendous diversity.


Outing with Students
We went after church Sunday with the KIU students to a place called the Entebbe Botanical Gardens. We went here one other time and got pictures of monkeys, and we saw even more monkeys this time. I have included some pictures on the Flickr link. The black and white monkeys are called colobus. They are very pretty but also tend to be very shy and run up into the trees if you get close. The gray monkeys are called vervet and are not shy at all. In fact, one got in our car and stole some food while we were feeding the other monkeys. I have included several pictures of Pamela and the boys interacting with the vervets. This is also the kind of monkey that Paska killed in our compound, so maybe they should take a lesson from the colobus and spend more time in the treetops. If you look through the pictures, you will see one monkey walking on his hands. We thought that he was showing off for us, until we realized that both of his feet had been cut off. We were told that it is common for witchdoctors to tell people to get monkey body parts for rituals, and that when you seen a monkey with a missing foot or tail that it was probably victim to a traditional ritual.

It was a very fun afternoon in a lush setting by Lake Victoria and with the students. This was one of the few times that we have had interaction with the students that was not in a formal setting. We get times before and after church and bible studies, but it is usually rushed. The discipleship groups are more intimate, but also fairly formal. We got to see the real personalities come out. It was really fun when they got into their tribes and did some traditional African dancing. Unfortunately, I did not have my video camera with me but I did get a few pictures that are also on Flickr. You could easily see the hams in the group by those who wanted to be the center of attention and leading the dances.


Thumper
Our boys now have a pet rabbit, courtesy of their friend Artibul. They are so excited and have played with it constantly since they were given this new gift on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, our monkey-killing dog would like to add another victim to her list and we have to lock up Paska before we can interact with the rabbit. She cries and whines and runs about wanting to “kill the wabbit” (hopefully you recall Elmer Fudd’s musical episode or you will not get the joke). The guys who built our fort came and built a rabbit cage yesterday. We use the wood from our crates that were shipped, so we have very little material costs on these items, and it gives us additional opportunities to interact with our friends. They asked me yesterday if I would take them to the zoo one day so I promised that I would do so. The only problem is that they might show up with 10 people wanting to go and my car will not hold that many people.

Internet Problems
We were finally starting to think that our communication problems were mostly behind us, but now our home internet has stopped working again. So, if we are slow to respond to email it is because we are back to having to go out in order to retrieve and send email. However, it does appear that our laptop is totally healed! It has not shut off on its own for at least a month and is working well. Praise the Lord because it would have been very expensive and difficult to get it repaired.


p.s. if new pictures do not appear on flickr it is because internet is very slow today where I am working.