We went to Lira for a few days of rest. Where we stayed there was a lovely garden. We were kept one day longer by the rain...very peaceful! There was lots of time just to "be". And to sleep, like little Daisy here... Daisy is one of 2 grand-daughters of our friends Rev. Martin and Mildred. Thank the Lord for some refreshing rest in Lira!
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The second of a series of 3 week-long CHE trainings went on very successfully in Patongo at the end of June! We thank everyone who prayed. We thought rather than show the usual sort of photos of the training, we'd feature what a difference rain makes to life and how things look. We read a poem once that described "the perfect world". It said that in a perfect world, there is always sunshine, and no rain. Ugandans would disagree! Without rain, you wouldn't see a field transform from the picture above (taken from the church looking at the house) to the pictures below (taken from the house looking at the church)! Sweet potatoes, well on the way! So we need rain! Now of course, everything has pros and cons. Most people already know about what the rain does to dirt roads. No need to post again! However, the onset of the rains have other effects. One example is that many of our participants, unfortunately, were quite late reporting to our training - and this is partly due to people busy with garden work. One man was 4 days late! (He will need to repeat). Another effect is the strong winds that come with the rains. You can see below a picture taken during TOT1, which shows the building on the right is where the men were going to sleep for TOT2. But they were not able to, because the roof blew off! And so the men had to squeeze into a quarter of the floor space of the church (except for the reverends who slept in the hut - second picture), and the floor unfortunately was wet because the ground was soaked and it was seeping up through the concrete. Finally, the rain can really affect the cleanliness of the water that comes from the borehole (pumped water from underground). The rain carries run-off, and also makes the water table higher. In our own home, our water is actually brown during the rainy season. We're so thankful for a really superb water filter!! (highly recommended!). But like we said - pros and cons! We took the opportunity to make it a teaching moment. Mike called over the CHE Trainers (most of whom don't treat their drinking water in any way) while he was cleaning the filter. There was lots of nervous laughter when people saw the brown sludge coming out the back end of the filter unit! This was a great visual display to lay the groundwork for an activity we did later in the week, when we taught the Trainers how to use problem trees in engaging the community (and used "Why don't people treat their water?" as the main problem!) Indeed, what a difference the rain makes!
We are back from TOT2 in Patongo! We have just finished sending out the prayer updates to the people who have signed up to pray for specific CHE teams. The last team we visited before TOT2 was from Purganga. The Puranga team is doing really well, and we thought we'd share the update on the blog! So what have they been doing?
They are still working on training 2 separate CHE committees. They have been plugging away at this for quite a while, and it is a bit unclear why it is still not finished. However, as they have been going, they have been seeing wonderful fruit from the ministry, including:
And all of this was done by the community themselves, with God's Holy Spirit motivating them and bringing forth the results. Praise God that He is producing something lasting through the CHE ministry! |
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October 2021
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