World Vision Pastoral Training

Mike here so please forgive spelling and poor grammer! :)  Greetings from the team and from the Students in the Theological Education by Extension (TEE) class.  It has been another hot dusty day in Gulu with the wind blowing and the spirit of God in moving as well.  We spent some time with two groups of pastors who are going through a training class in basic pastoral skills.  They have all completed 5 books in the first phase which is mostly self directed.  They are now going through phase 2 which includes weekly facilitated discussion groups with a trained leader.  In our time they shared some of the key things they have learned and put into practice as a result of the training.  The overriding theme was that these men had the heart to reach out to the people around them with the gospel, but they only knew what they saw in one or two people around them.  TEE provides well rounded training in areas such as preaching a balance of Love and Justice.  Gustavo shared that he started teaching more about the love of God and his congregation has gone from 10 to 100 as the people in the church start sharing the love of Jesus with their neighbors.  Selvester realized from the teaching on how to reach children that he and his church had been neglecting the children.  Now that they are doing some things in this area they  have grown from 20 children that probably were not getting much out of the time to 48 kids who are getting something they can understand and now several of the parents of these new kids are attending as well.

This training is a part of the World vision area called Christian Witness which is the connecting point to all of the other things they do.  They use the hand analogy where WaSH (water sanitation and hygiene) is one of the fingers and Christan witness is the palm.  (Don't expect me to list the other fingers after a long day you can look them up in WV brochure "How a community is transformed"!) Christian Witness is integrated into everything they do from spiritual care of the staff to pastor training and several other things in between.  Our brief experience with the TEE program participants is that this is a great program that needs to be replicated and expanded.  The great news is that the WV staff is looking to do that and to make sure that it is sustainable when they are gone.  We heard about the impact on these 11 people and their congregations and we really believe that God is using this to build his Church and to make his name famous in Gulu Uganda.

Thanks for your prayers - at the end of each day we review the request for the day and we can clearly see how God is answering. We have had some minor health issues, and motion sickness on the bumpy roads but nothing serious. Keep praying - some additional items to pray for - Pray for the World vision staff - that we can encourage them to keep on going, for strength for them as they drive / facilitate/ translate and generally work with us to teach us what transforming a community looks like.

Rubanga Omedi gum
(God Bless you in local language of many in this area)

PS - Dale - Christine said she wanted to keep Ilia and I said I had an obligation as a dad to make sure she got home to her dad.