What to do with Fred? - How to help the poor. (By Bethan)

We seem to have adopted a grown man called Fred.

Three years ago we asked a metal-worker to fix some gutters on our house and commissioned him to build a slide for Sam.  He did both jobs very well, but the slide was very much delayed because the worker had ‘gone to the village’ and hadn’t come back.  We were quite annoyed at the delay, however, we soon learned that the worker had become paralysed in the village because he had suffered a major stroke.   We soon became very guilty as we were thinking him lazy and maybe even that he had stolen the metal we already paid for and run off to the village.

This man was Fred.

We received our slide from one of Fred’s apprentices and thought no more about him until one day, two years later, Fred appeared on our doorstep.  Literally on our doorstep: I went out to take the boys to school at 8am and actually tripped over him.  “Hello?” I enquired, “Can I help you, sir?”  He explained that he was Fred who had built the slide and he wanted to talk to Gareth so I let him in and Gareth listened to him.  Apparently Fred had come because since his stroke he had struggled to get work, considering he could now no longer use one side of his body (although he could walk) and his family had to move to Jinja (8 hours away by bus) and he had run out of money.  He needed work but before that he needed money to buy metal in order to make something to sell.  Gareth sent him with 20,000 shillings (£5) to make a school boarder’s tin trunk which he would hope to sell at 30,000 shillings.  Problem solved.  Or so we thought.

The next week Fred was back … with the trunk!   Fred explained that he hadn’t found anyone to buy the trunk and that he didn’t want to be in debt so if we just gave him 10,000 shillings we could, in effect, absolve his debt and have a tin trunk in with the deal!  Win-win!  (Over the next months we would come to find Fred full of win-wins that somehow didn’t add up!)  So Sam is now the proud owner of a tin-trunk in which to pack his toys to come home.  At least he thinks he has won!

Fred came back a week later at 7.30am.  He asked to speak to Gareth.  Gareth came and Fred told him that he needed more work.  Gareth told him of our colleague who needed a lock fixed on his own tin trunk (everyone must have one!)  We arranged to deliver the trunk to his ‘workshop’ (under a tree off the main road) and although we believe he over-charged us for the business but we figured we were helping him at the same time.  We said thank you and good bye.

Fred came back a week later.  At 7.30am.  I tripped over him at the gate on my way to school.  I inwardly groaned and then immediately thought “I wonder if Jesus ever groaned at seeing someone in need?” and felt guilty.  I smiled at Fred.  “Good morning Fred!  How can I help you?”  He wanted to see Gareth.  “Gareth’s a little busy right now, preparing for work in a village.  Can I help you?”  No.  Fred just wanted to see Gareth.  I’m used to this now: Gareth is the boss and any word from me, even if I say “Gareth said this” is irrelevant and probably untrue.  I went to get Gareth who also groaned.  Fred wanted more work.  We seriously didn’t need any more trunks by this point so we sent him over the road to Sam’s school to ask the director if he needed a slide for the kids’ playground, which we had heard him mention before.  Fred didn’t want to go alone so Gareth went with him and became late for the whole day of busy work making a water tank in a village.  The director didn’t have an answer straight away but promised to phone Fred back.

Fred came back a week later.  I tripped over him at the gate.  “Morning Fred!” I groaned inwardly thinking ‘Now I understand why Jesus used to go up a mountain or in a boat to get away from people!’  “What can I do for you this morning?”  Fred wanted to know why the director hadn’t phoned him yet.  I took Fred to see the director but he wasn’t there.  He then wanted to see Gareth to say good bye.  “It’s fine, Fred, don’t worry about it, I’ll tell him you said ‘bye.”  No, Fred was adamant he was going to see Gareth and anything I said wouldn’t change his mind.  I told him he may as well wait at the gate to save him the walk up to our veranda which, as a semi-paralysed man, is a steep walk.  He waited at the gate.  I went in to get Gareth.  Gareth groaned and we had a little rant about how Fred was really annoying.  Then we had a little rant about how annoying it is that we could never do the right thing: if we kept on giving him things he would keep coming back.  If we didn’t give him anything we were ignoring one of Jesus’ own children who was in need.  Gareth went to see Fred but Fred had gone. 

The next time he came he chastised me for being rude and leaving the gate locked with him outside.  I tried indignantly to explain myself but Fred always talks through my explanation and continues with his helpless expression and nothing can be said that he would listen to.  Of course he wanted to see Gareth so I went to get Gareth before I exploded in Fred’s face.  Fred told Gareth about how he was going to see his family in Jinja and try to stay with them and get work.  The upshot was that Gareth gave him 60,000 (£15) for bus fares to Jinja and sighed an inward sigh of relief thinking we wouldn’t be tripping over Fred on our doorstep again.

Three weeks later I tripped over Fred on the doorstep at 8am.  ‘Oooooooh no.’ I sighed under my breath.  “Morning Fred!”  I said.  “I’m surprised to see you here, I thought you went to Jinja!”  Fred had gone to Jinja and found that everyone there was using machines to make metal objects so there was no work for someone who still used their hands.  He came back to find work instead.  But alas, there was no work to be had.  Could we possibly give him some money to help him buy metal to work?  Of course he didn’t say this to me, I’m just the secretary.  He asked Gareth.  Gareth said that he wouldn’t be getting any more money and advised him what he should do in terms of looking around and asking around for work.  He offered Fred the opportunity to figure out how to make metal cases for some new stoves that Isaiah and he were making.  Fred went away to figure it out.

Two weeks later Fred was our early morning wake up call.  “Just be aware, Bethan, I think Fred’s at the gate,” warned Gareth.  I took the boys to school and when I came back Fred had let himself in the gate and was sitting on our veranda.  “Gareth, he’s here” I told Gareth.  Gareth didn’t have time to talk to Fred and we both muttered to each other in operatic hushed-tones how we were thoroughly fed up with this man coming to us asking for our help.  Gareth was in a hurry, already late for a long day of burning agricultural waste and making charcoal – a long business that needs a whole day to be done in a village two hours’ drive up a mountain – and seeing Fred was the last thing on his mind.  “Yes, Fred.”  He said bluntly.  Fred explained how he didn’t have any work or hadn’t eaten breakfast and was generally in tough times.  Gareth tried to sympathise but in the end had to shout and use a tough voice to get through to Fred because everything he started saying was interrupted with an excuse as to why Fred’s idea of a hand-out was right and Gareth’ idea of trying to help in other ways was wrong.  Gareth said that he would not give him any more money whilst not seeing anything for it (understand Gareth is a development worker so handing out money is not the way they work: first you implement an idea, work out how much it will cost, make sure it is going to work and then find funding – in effect, us.)  He eventually had to shout to Fred “please go, Fred, I’m not giving you any money and I have to go to work!”  Gareth was about to get into the car and drive off when the usual tug of his conscience made him stop (the Holy Spirit loves to keep tugging and making us better people despite our best efforts!)  He ran down the drive, along the road and offered Fred some baked bin tins and the like for him to recycle into useful things for him to sell.  Fred went away with the tins looking most dejected.

A week later Fred was back.  As I fell over him at the gate at 8am I said “Fred, there’s nothing for you here, please, you have to stop coming to us.  We can’t solve all your problems plus the rest of the town whose people are also poor.”  Fred explained that he was particularly unlucky.  “But the whole of Kasese is unlucky!  So many people are sick, paralysed, deaf, poor and generally very badly off!  Why should I only keep on giving you money and help when the whole town would start coming and then where would we be?  [It is unlikely that the whole town would start coming but I was off on a tirade by this point.]  We are not a bank where you can just come and withdraw money!”  Fred asked me what is a bank.  I sighed.  “A bank is where you walk in and withdraw money and then go.  We are not a bank!  You cannot just come here, ask for money every week and then go!”  Fred kept on explaining that he was a special case, that his mum was dying in Jinja and he had to go there to be with her and therefore needed to talk to Gareth.  “Fine!”  I replied, exasperated.  “I’ll go and get Gareth.” 

With one movement I went in the gate and shut it before he could follow me in, leaving him sitting on the grass outside our gate.  I went to tell Gareth that his best friend was here and we both said to each other “Seriously, what are we supposed to do?  I’m pretty sure we are supposed to just keep giving and giving without complaining because we have far more than he does and to us it really doesn’t matter if we give him £5 because we have it.  But if he keeps on coming every Monday for the rest of our time here he is not only going to drive us insane but he will keep asking for more and more until we feel thoroughly taken for granted and then his friends will start coming too!”  We really didn’t know what to do.  Eventually we decided that we should give him 20,000 shillings (£5) and a bottle of water to go to Jinja and we should advise him to stay there with his family because he clearly isn’t getting any work here in Kasese so he may as well be there in Jinja not getting any work where his family can look after him.  Maybe one of his children needs to leave school to find work to look after him (we usually would not advise children leaving school but since any education beyond year 6 is out of the ordinary it is not unusual for people to do that here.)  Isn’t that why people have so many children?!

By the time we had discussed all this Gareth went to the gate and found that Fred had gone.  The next bit is rather ironic, considering that we had been trying to get rid of Fred: Gareth ran down the road looking for Fred in order to give him the money and give him the advice to stay in Jinja!  He found him a few hundred metres down the road and hopefully, saw Fred go on his way for the last time.

Fred has really made us think but we are really and truly not sure what Jesus is trying to teach us through Fred’s visits.  Or are we making excuses and it is really perfectly obvious:  We are not seeing Jesus in everyone we meet.  What does the Bible say about Fred?

Matthew 25:35 –

Jesus was talking to people: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.   Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?  The King will reply “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Proverbs 14:31
Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.

Matthew 10:42
And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward."

Kingdom economics and the problem of growth - By Bethan

BMS produces a wonderful magazine called the Mission Catalyst that professes to be “intelligent comment on faith and culture”.  It never ceases to provoke my mind and stir up action in both my day-to-day life and my relationship with God.  The latest edition (issue 4, 2014) was about the economy.  Surely that’s nothing that Christians have to worry about?  That’s what I thought – well at least I assumed that I could never understand it so why bother? – but I was wrong and here’s a summary of the magazine for those of you who either didn’t receive it or didn’t read it thinking that it was not something you need to worry about.  It argues, very persuasively, that “the neglect of economics is a wound in the side of the church” (Canon Peter Challen).

The first article, “Creating Consumers”, sets the scene: an article about the man who changed the world of advertising from the mind-set of buying what we need that was durable and effective, to the age of brand identity, desire economy and disposable everything.  According to Jonathan Langley (author/editor) this change has not been a “calculated evolution instigated by big corporations, but largely the brainchild of one man.  Edward Bernays.”  Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s American nephew and he used psychology and clever wording to change ordinary peoples’ buying habits.  The advances made in manufacturing during WWI had created the danger of overproduction.  These ordinary buying habits could not keep up with the speed with which goods could be produced.  Advertising, under the tutelage of Bernays would turn into the science of making people desire things that were being produced!  Do we realise that we have been used to prop up an economic system that requires us to keep on purchasing things that we really do not need?  President Hoover even stated that Bernays had created “constantly moving happiness machines”!  In other words, slaves to production.

So that is potentially where the thirst for constant economic growth comes from.  But surely economic growth is a good thing?  Brian Czech, Founding President of the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, thinks not and I tend to agree with him.  “In textbook terms, economic growth is increasing production and consumption of goods and services in the aggregate.”  But let’s think back to where ‘things’ come from.  “To put it in the technical terms of ecological economics, as the human economy grows, natural capital is reallocated out of the economy of nature and is converted into consumer goods and manufactured capital.”  So everything we buy has been taken from nature.  That’s not too hard to believe considering we came to this world with nothing and everything we have been provided with for life on Earth has come from the natural environment around us.  So if we are constantly pushing for economic growth, God’s Earth and therefore his creatures who depend on the Earth’s resources are going to suffer.  Czech advocates a “steady state economy” that basically means stabilising population and per capita consumption.  In simple English that means having enough children to replace ourselves and not consuming everything you can but only consuming what is necessary (and this can be argued according to the living conditions in the place where you live but think like this, as Czech does: “Would anyone be driving a Hummer in the kingdom of God?  Or building a McMansion?”)

Another problem that consumerism and constant economic growth brings is that of debt.  “Countries have got themselves horribly into debt, individuals have got themselves horribly into debt and governments have often got themselves re-elected by promising more and more goods and services and by taking themselves more and more into debt…” (Interview with Michael Ramsden)  But I, for one, am confused about how many billions of pounds countries can be in debt for.  For example couldn’t the National Mint simply print more money?  That was my simplistic thinking anyway.  But Canon Peter Challen (Chairman of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice) explains: “money is created not by the state in a transparent way by a national treasury, as people’s money, created and lent out into the system free of interest.  What we have is the commercial banks, who, ever since 1695, have been allowed to create money.  They create credit, which goes out and generates economic activity, and the money associated with that.  But what they don’t create is the money that will pay the interest.  So in order to pay the interest on top of the capital, people have to borrow.  And so we get this incredible exponential growth of debt, slowly and insidiously at first, but then at an incredibly increasingly rapid rate in recent years.”  So this ‘invisible money’ circulates and doesn’t really exist except on paper (well, computers).  But then a rumour comes about and people want to withdraw their money but their money doesn’t really exist so banks go bankrupt so that no one has any chance of getting their money back (the most infamous bankrupting situation has to be the Wall Street crash in 1929).

So is this type of economics the only way to exist?  Canon Peter has a theory that goes against the flow of economic reality today.  When asked about what economics would look like in God’s Kingdom he replied:  “[Kingdom economics] … would have to have the issuance of credit and money as the responsibility of the state and not of commercial enterprises.  I think banks would have to return to their proper role of brokerage.  Of arranging, where there is saving, that that is lent on.  At that private level of lending on people’s savings, you could have interest as a private transaction.  But basically, the income for infrastructure, for schools, hospitals, roads, etc, should be created and lent into the system to generate productivity of goods and services that then repays that money into the treasury, either to be taken out of circulation or, if a new need arises, to be circulated again.  So that you have a reciprocal flow of money against real values.”

Finally, the problem that ever-growing economics has for the world as a whole cannot be ignored; especially not by an international mission agency such as BMS!  Herbert Anders (Editor and co-author of Equomanual: a handbook for a spirituality of economic justice) wrote a paper about neoliberal economics: “an economic approach where the private sector, rather than governments, controls economic life…  The underlying idea of neoliberal economics is to have a deregulated market where the most powerful win all.”  The basic idea being that everyone will profit from the enormous riches created by a small percentage of the world because the capital will be invested in the global market.  Unfortunately, “the wealth ‘trickling down’ to more than 80 percent of humanity from the riches and consumption of its richest 20 percent is more like the crumbs that fall down from the banquet than a fair participation in the meal.”  Anders believes that correcting this problem is not a question of collecting money to share with the poor; rather “it is a question of rules that can guarantee rights of participation in the global market for the more vulnerable players.”  Andy Flannagan (director of Christians on the Left) points out that “‘Free’ markets have led to the collapse of developing world economies.  As history has shown, the weakest are inevitably exploited when there are no laws.”  This explains why the term ‘fair trade’ is creeping into our vocabulary and is perhaps better than ‘free trade’ at creating an even international playing field.

When it comes to changing economics we might all say “but we are just one person/ one church/ one village, how can we change anything?” but Anders cites that there are Christian movements opposing the main financial players in financial activities in the US [and elsewhere].  He also suggests that “[churches] are creating awareness of economic injustice in a manner that could be described as ‘capillary’ – at the local, limited level.  From that consciousness-building grows alternative economic thought and action all over the world.  There is a saying that I have heard and is particularly poignant whilst living in Africa: “If you think you’re too small to make an impact you should try sharing a room with a mosquito!”  A constant buzzing in your local MP’s ear will make a difference.

I’m going to leave you with a very sobering thought from Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist: “The top one per cent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 per cent live.  Throughout history, this is something that the top one per cent eventually do learn.  Too late.”

If you want to subscribe to the quarterly Mission Catalyst for free please visit: bit.ly/catsubs or email catalyst@bmsworldmission.org for more information.

Solar Project - Completed

Last week I submitted the 30 page evaluation of the solar project which I've been working on with Isaiah, assisted by electrician Amisi, for over two years. We spent July and August travelling around all the project churches gathering data and conducting interviews of church pastors, church members, children who've attended the solar-lit homework clubs and locally elected community leaders.   Obviously some churches have done better than others, but on the whole we've been overwhelmed by the success of this project, not only in development terms through providing a community light source, reducing local dependence on kerosene, and providing income from phone charging; but even more so through its success as a missionary project bringing communities into their churches and helping those churches to reach out into their communities.

The whole evaluation is too long to include here, although if you want a copy then please email me at gshrubsole@yahoo.co.uk and I'll send it to you.  However, here is the "summary of achievements" page.  I offer a huge thank you to all who helped implement this project, and to those of you whose generosity helped fund it through BMS World Mission.  It has been so popular that Isaiah will be raising a proposal to extend it to another few churches in 2015, after we've left.

Summary of Achievements:

Despite these considerable challenges, this project has delivered successes in all five of its stated objectives.  Details for each church will follow, but as a whole the project has led directly to increased use of churches during weekdays for homework clubs, phone charging, and early morning and/or evening fellowships.  Although statistical evidence of educational impact is hard to obtain, the evidence of those interviewed is that providing free lighting for doing homework has caused the individuals who used it to improve their educational performance and save money on kerosene.  Over 7,800 mobile phones have been charged in these churches providing cost and time savings to those who previously struggled to charge their phones much further away.  This phone-charging has raised a total of over 2.1 Million Ugandan Shillings (£500) income for these churches, which is a huge amount of money for places where average Sunday collections often total only 3,000 Shs (£0.75).  The money has been used in different ways, which include: support to pastors, income for project supervisors, construction of church buildings or latrines, saving for replacing batteries or other project equipment, church furniture or musical instruments, transport for pastors or members to do evangelism or receive further training (including BMS’ Sunday school training programme), supporting a church nursery-school, hospitality to visitors (including ourselves), support for the sick/condolences for the bereaved, and investment in other income generating projects, including animal breeding, cabbage planting and bee-keeping.  The most exciting achievement of this project, however, is also the hardest to quantify and that is its missionary aspect.  Church membership has grown in all of the solar project churches, by an average of 88%, which is substantially higher than in other KBA churches without solar projects (which averaged 10% growth from Feb 2013 to Jun 2014).  Furthermore, this growth not only consists of Baptist churches attracting lapsed Catholics, bored Anglicans or other denomination-drifters.  It includes people of Muslim backgrounds, Jehovah’s Witnesses or of no faith at all; people who had never heard the Gospel before but have now thanks to charging their phone, doing their homework, seeing a strange new light in a dark place, or being touched by the compassion of receiving solar-funded “first aid” or condolences from a stranger.  God works in mysterious ways, and it is not for us to scientifically apportion credit for the workings of his grace in reaching new believers.  However, there is no doubt in our minds that the faithful evangelism of the dedicated pastors and members of most of these 8 churches has been significantly assisted by the outreach opportunities and income provided by this project.

Paying it Forward.

Have you seen “Pay it Forward”?  - If not then try looking up this Hollywood dramatization of the book by Catherine Ryan Hide, filmed in 2000.  The basic premise of the film is that the world will become a  better place if we pay our gratitude forwards, to others, even those we haven’t met.

Of course, it’s not an entirely new idea.  You might argue that a well-educated professional is already “paying forward” their gratitude to the state which supplied the services they depended upon to achieve success and prosperity (good education, health-care, decent roads, access to justice etc).  Their higher-rate income taxes will fund opportunities for the next generation to enjoy the same benefits.

But the principle of paying it forward is much older than that and can be found in the Bible.  Surely it underlies the whole concept of tithing? – Showing our gratitude for all the blessings we’ve had in life, by passing on a tenth of them in service of the God from whom all blessings flow.  However, for many of us who grew up going to ancient Anglican churches, the idea of tithing lost its appeal because it seemed people were being asked to sacrifice their income to pay for astronomic heating bills, fixing decrepit lead-roofs, Bishops’ palaces and the pensions of retired clergy.  Whilst some of these may be necessary, they don’t always sit well with the teachings of Jesus, the radical yet humble carpenter and preacher from Nazareth. 

Jesus himself criticised the Pharisees who obsessed about the legalistic details of tithing everything right down to their herbs  - “mint, dill and cumin”, but neglected “justice, mercy and faithfulness” Matt. 23.23.  Instead he drew our attention to the poor widow who gave “all that she had” (Luke 21.1-4).   Having grown up in a comfortable home in a rich country I’ve sometimes struggled with this verse, as well as wondering about what the widow did the following day? 

As a development worker I read books by Economists who tell us that people generally make decisions based on their rational self-interest.  To me it seems common sense that this is simplistic because people don’t always act rationally.  Furthermore, as a Christian, I know that this isn’t always true because I keep seeing people sacrifice their own interests in favour of others. 

This week I have been astounded and profoundly challenged by an example of this.  As many of you know, we started a Daycare for the vulnerable toddlers of Acholi Quarter, which is still running 9 months after its official funding finished, but which faces an increasingly unlikely future as its running costs (about £150 per month) currently far exceed its income from parental contributions. 

Some of you also know that Pastor Alfonse has been doing an excellent project with street children in Kasese.  With very few resources he has been helping these young boys to fry G-nits (pea-nuts) and sell them around town and also to farm a hired plot in order to sell beans and tomatoes.  Every week the boys meet to pool their earnings and then decide how to use them.  They’ve amazed us before with their generosity to each other, supporting a boy to resettle to his familial village, or chipping in for expensive medical bills for another. 

This week, however, Pr Aflonse announced at the monthly Development Committee meeting that the street boys had sold some crops and had decided to give 20,000 Shillings (£5) to Daycare.  He explained that many of them had previously lived in Acholi Quarter, before finding themselves on the streets, and they wanted to help the next generation of young children growing up there.

Let’s be clear about this.  We’re talking about children aged 8 – 15 who sleep in storm-drains, under bridges or trees or against the side of buildings, who eat whatever they can, and who rarely own more than the tattered clothes on their backs.  People with no social status, little or no education, and often with no family.  They haven’t just been moved into a shiny orphanage in Jinja and they haven’t been given Child-Sponsorship from a big American church.  They haven’t really been given anything.  Rather Pastor Alfonse has shown them respect, love, compassion, an excellent personal example, and the means to start making an income through their own hard-work.  But despite the countless things they could do for themselves with this small income, they chose to pay some of it forward to help other vulnerable children 5 – 10 years younger than themselves.

Is this an isolated case?  No it isn’t.  The three women at Jambo Café work long hours for a very modest income.  They all have their own children with school fees to pay, and yet as well as tithing their profits to the church they are also pooling their tips to give to other women who want to start their own businesses.  They are grateful that they were given an opportunity to start their own business (thanks to many of you!), and are paying that forward by helping other women.

Of course, £5 from the street boys will not keep Daycare running for more than a day, but that isn’t the point.  Jesus’ Ministry made it abundantly clear that whatever we can give or do on our own is never enough, and yet when we give freely and whole-heartedly it can still have a massive impact – an obvious example being the little boy who gave up his tuna sandwiches (well 5 loaves and 2 fish to be precise….), which fed five thousand.

I realise that charity fatigue is a growing problem, and many are tired of endless requests to send money to Africa or yet another place afflicted by war or flooding.  But paying it forward isn’t just about money.  It’s more personal than that.

I challenge all of us to look back over the last ten or twenty years and think about which people really made a difference to our lives.  Then think about what it was they did which made our lives better.  Now think of a way to provide that same benefit to someone else.  It might be financial – for example my Dad has spent 16 years using his garden model railway to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer care after their excellent nurses cared for my Mum in her last days.  So by all means do pay your taxes, and give your tithes – to whichever causes you believe in.  But it might well not be financial.  It might be the volunteer scout leader, music-teacher or sports coach who inspired you, the person who cared for your children to give you a break, the person who gave lifts in their car or who helped your elderly (grand)parents.  It might be someone who encouraged or mentored you when others doubted your abilities.  Whatever it was, the best way to repay that kindness is to pay it forward and do the same – or something even more wonderful – for others.

Of course, if the thing that most transformed your life was someone sharing the Gospel with you then that is no exception.  Find someone else whose life has gone astray and show them the Good News, preferably with actions as well as words.

The street children of Kasese have profoundly challenged me, and I’m thinking about how to respond to it.  Meanwhile I’m passing on that challenge to all of us.

Jambo’s Biggest Order… with more good news to come!

Today I spent the afternoon at Jambo Café with all three ladies (Eliza, Alice and Moreen).  I had been called in to help with the gigantic order of a three-tiered ‘Give-Away’ cake with six smaller cakes as part of a nine-cake set selling for £75, a phenomenal sale for Jambo. (A give-away is just that: the woman’s family gives the daughter to the man’s family and it is a precursor to a wedding, which may happen any time in the future).   The first thing to note is that I had a wonderful time with the three ladies chatting and laughing and working like clockwork together.  The reason that this was so wonderful was that, for those of you who remember, not too long ago the atmosphere in Jambo was particularly icy as two of the women were not speaking to each other.  Praise the Lord, those relationships have been healed and Jambo is now a friendly and warm place to be!

While we were working on the cake icing, a man phoned Alice’s phone and she handed it to me saying “You talk to him, it’s Tony!” I cringed.  I hate talking to Ugandans on the phone as I struggle to grasp what is being said, and I don’t know a Tony!  Alice shoved the phone in my face and I started to find out who Tony was and what he wanted.  It turns out that Tony runs a tour company called Speke Ugandan Holidays (www.SpekeUgandanholidays.com) and is trying to organise a coffee-farm tour that he can put on his itinerary to take his tourists to a coffee farm, talk with a coffee farmer and find out about the whole coffee business.  Tony said he had read my blog and seen that there is a wonderful café with a good testimony (he’s also a Christian) and that he would like to bring his tourists to Jambo for lunch after the coffee tour!   This is an answer to prayer because business has not been so good recently as a lot of ex-pats who have been living here for the last year or two have now gone.  And if one tour company is getting Jambo on its radar then we hope that others will follow.  This was our aim for Jambo’s business side: that tour companies would bring their clients to Jambo as they travel through the country visiting Uganda’s beautiful National Parks.

After this good news we continued with the cake, which came on nicely with the chosen colours of blue and yellow (we can only get garish food colours here, and bold colours are very popular so this is perfectly normal!).  I used this opportunity to teach the women some new icing piping techniques.  I am by no means a professional cake decorator but I’ve iced a few cakes in my time, including our wedding cake, so I have a few creative tips to share.  The only downer was when the person who had ordered the cake came to see it and, despite liking what we were doing, reminded Alice that she had also ordered red to be on the cake!  So we started to pipe red flowers dotted around the side but Deb Benn, our colleague who was looking after my boys, called me to say that Jonah needed me to come back as he is not feeling well and was having a melt-down!  However, it was so lovely to spend a joyful few hours working and laughing with the Jambo ladies and I am grateful for your prayers for the ladies’ healed relationships.

 

Finally, I am trying to organise lunchtime ‘life-seminars’ at Jambo every week in October with a different speaker each week.  Subjects to be discussed are: family planning (a hot topic in Uganda!), financial planning (which many people don’t manage), sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV and AIDS) and women’s health.  Each seminar will end with a short discussion of God’s view on each subject and how to put advice into practice.  Please pray for this endeavour as it takes some organising and we really want Ugandans to come and learn things that aren’t taught in schools, are rarely talked about in churches and are generally not even discussed in families.