Thursday, April 7

After a good night’s sleep we ate breakfast we headed up to the church. On the way as we entered Nysaka there were dozens of children gathered around the local water pump with buckets waiting for their turn to take home their day’s supply of water.

I had purchased 50 pieces of hard candy at the hostel and asked the driver to drop me off as we entered town. I always find it fun to walk along the streets handing out candy to children who are surprised to see a Mzungu (white person). I only know a few Swahili words, but “Jambo” (hello) goes a long way.

Once I arrived at the church I handed out the 25 WAPIs that were made for me by Jerry Josten at Sonrise. WAPI stands for Water Purification Indicator. It’s a simple device that allows people to have confidence their water (or milk) has reached the point of pasteurization. It takes considerable energy to heat water from 71° celsius to the boiling point. The WAPI has a small cylinder with an organic wax that melts at 71º, so once the wax has melted and run down to the bottom of the cylinder you can be assured that the water is safe to drink. This simple device allows people to both save energy (coal, wood, charcoal) and have confidence that they’re not ingesting harmful bacteria.

After chai and singing, (see songbook below) I began our teaching by talking about creation and the nature of mankind (both physical and spiritual beings). Here are a few of their questions:

Q: What does it mean when it says a person’s heart is “hard”? Is this literal?

Q: Where does the spirit dwell? Does it dwell in one of our physical organs?

John picked up by talking about the fall of mankind into sin (Genesis 3). Some of the questions were:

Q: Where is the garden of Eden?

Q: What color was the skin of Adam and Eve? They asked this because all of the films about Jesus show him as a white man and they often picture Satan as a black man. We explained that Adam and Eve were probably the same color of those in the Middle East today (Brown). How’s that for a middle ground. I apologized for all of the white Jesus actors…and for him being so serious…and for his British accent.

Q: Why were all snakes cursed because of Satan’s actions?

After a break we resumed by looking at the Bible’s teaching on Sin. We went through the reality of sin, the nature of sin, the results of sin, and how sin affects both believers and non-believers. Most of the followup questions were hypothetical ones about various sinful situations and how to respond to them. We quickly broke for lunch and ate another plate of rice and beans.

For the first time in all of my travels I almost “lost my lunch”. I was finishing my food and experienced a gag reflex. I had to stop several times to make sure I could finish my meal without throwing up. By the way, here is the church bathroom:

After lunch we launched into our last teaching. John began our study of salvation by looking at our need for salvation, and God’s provision. I picked up by looking at how God calls us to salvation, and the result of salvation in our lives.

We had a lot of discussion about election and predestination and our challenge was to make sure that we believe what the Bible says-even if we do not we fully understand how it all works.

Other questions were:

Q: What is the “eye of the needle” that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 19:24? I explained that it was a hyperbole (such as speck and log in Matthew 7). The wrestling point here is concrete thinking vs abstract thinking.

Q: What did Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 7:20 when he said, “Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called”? I took them back to our study of context. If you read the verses before and after the answer is clear. Look it up!

Q: In the parable of Jesus in Luke 16:8 why did Jesus praise the dishonest manager?

Because of a lack of time we had to skip the teachings on the Church and the Future (Missionary Steve Van Horn has done an excellent job teaching about the Church in past seminars so I felt they could get all of the other material easily). They will have to read these on their own in the coming months.

In all, there are 25 pastors in 14 different churches from the Lake Region who have banded together to form their Fellowship. Most of them lead churches of 50-75 and are very dedicated to their people. Only three of them have any sort of formal training and none of them receive any kind of income from their church work. Most of them are supported by their wives who have small businesses run from their homes. They are a great group of men and I’m proud to be able to work with them. We closed our seminar by praying together.

Joseph was a great sport acting as our interpreter for the week. He’s quite good at this!

Here are a few of the children that were in and out of the meetings:

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