40/40 pictures

These are random pictures from my time at 40/40. I posted some pictures pertaining to specific posts beginning with the post dated April 25th and onward. Hope this gives you a glimpse of what my time was like!

Sunset in Lusaka

Mt. Kilimanjaro from the plane window

Sunset in Lusaka

Oxcart

Sunset in Petauke


chopping greens the village way

washing dishes in the courtyard

shelling groundnuts (aka peanuts)







Making peanut butter with a huge mortar

Meet Godfrey

Godfrey is one of our watchmen. He is 25 years old, speaks at least 8 languages, and helps to pastor a Swahili Presbyterian church that meets on his property. He is also our personal car wash, lemon picker, and general handyman around the house.

But as amazing a young man as Godfrey is, he didn’t start out that way. By the time he was 12 years old, his father had died, his mother couldn’t support him, and he was living on the streets. He begged, worked odd jobs, and fought to make ends meet. He snuck into classes at local schools so he could continue the education he so valued. Before his 15th birthday, Godfrey was known as a street fighter and drug user.

Through a series of “coincidences,” Godfrey met a man who invited him into his home and agreed to provide housing, food, and school fees in exchange for work around his home. Godfrey, who wanted to “make his fortune” with music, was intrigued by the man’s guitar and asked him to teach him to play. Over time, Godfrey heard the man’s story and learned that he was a follower of Jesus. Godfrey chose to follow Christ as well. And since then, over the past ten years, our gracious Father has turned his life around. He completed secondary school, as well as seminary. He returned to his father’s land, began providing for his mother and sisters, and felt led to start a church under one of his trees.

That isn’t to say that Godfrey’s life has been perfect. He is poor and lives in Africa. He is in the process of building a one-room home for himself on his land so he can eventually marry. His Muslim neighbors are not happy about the fellowship of Christ-followers that meet there, not far from a mosque, and have caused many problems. His bicycle was stolen from our compound while he was at work back in April. And just recently, he suffered a bad wound on his foot when several panes of glass fell as he was cleaning his home. But Godfrey knows where his hope lies. He knows that his faith is in the Eternal One, the One who does not change, even when our circumstances do. He is an encouragement to my faith.

Death by Liturgy

Because of the spiritual landscape of Arua, there is a major shortage of Baptist churches in and around our area. Most of the students that we work with in schools attend Anglican “Church of Uganda” congregations. Because of these and several other cultural and scheduling factors, Kelli and I often attend an Anglican church near our home as well.

I have always struggled with the idea of following tradition for tradition’s sake. “It’s the way it’s always been done” isn’t a good reason for me to do something. But, in recent years, I have been reintroduced to the Truth and spiritual meat that so much of our liturgy, hymns, and tradition are full of. And somehow these ancient truths and songs encourage and energize my faith. I have learned how not to mindlessly recite the words or sing the songs, but to consciously worship through the hymns and prayers of years past. I love the legacy of faith that is captured in the liturgy.

But as I have transitioned to liturgical worship, and in an African context at that, I have found that this is not generally the case. The congregation at St. Phillip’s Church monotonely mutters the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostle’s Creed to the point that it is unrecognizable. They recite words in English that they don’t even know the meaning of. “Christians” blindly accept the words of priests, church elders, and religious teachers as spiritual truth, whether there is any Biblical basis for it or not. And when they leave the church after worship on Sunday, they don’t give God another thought until they return the next week.

Don’t get me wrong—there are born-again believers in the Church of Uganda. But there are also multitudes of people who, just like in the States, go to church on Sunday because that’s what “good people” do, and never give a thought to their need of a personal Savior. They never think about the songs they are singing or the prayers they are reciting. As they, in all honesty, worship the liturgy meant to draw us into worship of the Holy One, their souls are slowly dying. And it just reminds me- again- that we really aren’t all that different from the Africans after all.