Prepare for the Jump to Warp Speed

Not much creative energy tonight, so you will have to settle for an information dump and a few prayer requests. Thanks for reading anyway.

It has been great having two weeks here to get settled in and acclimated, learn my way around a bit, reconnect with old friends, and make new ones. The time has also been indispensible for a lot of class prep that I never was able to get to before I left. The ABU campus has been very quiet and my schedule has been very flexible.

All of that is about to change this week.

I will make to jump to warp speed Monday morning, and I do not expect to slow down much if at all until Easter Break (which is also the week that Andrea and the girls arrive! Hooray!).

Monday (tomorrow) morning first thing I will be paying a visit to one of the children’s facilities with my 60 Feet friends even while the ABU student body will be pouring onto the campus. I will return to ABU in the afternoon for student registration, and classes start Tuesday morning.

In addition to the two classes I am teaching at ABU (Gospel of John and Missional Discipleship), I have also agreed to take responsibility for the Sports Class, and I have been asked to work on a couple of significant projects; 1) Establishing a discipleship emphasis among the faculty, staff and students, 2) Helping get the gym in a condition to use for sports, particularly basketball – this means getting goals put up and getting the floor finished, both significant undertakings given to the difficulty of obtaining the appropriate, necessary supplies, equipment and materials over here in Africa.

I will also be giving as much time as I can to the ministry of 60 Feet. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to assist this amazing ministry to imprisoned children in Uganda.

Finally, I will be giving time as I am able to my friends, Pastor Ernest and his wife Catherine and Pastor Boaz and his wife Faith and their congregation, Gateway Bible Church in Bwerenga. Bwerenga is a village between Kampala and Entebbe about 18 kilometers from the ABU campus (check out that metric system reference).

Speaking of Bwerenga, I do have to share a bit from my experience worshipping there today. Pastor Ernest asked me to preach, which is a great privilege and delight; they are such a warm, teachable, and appreciative audience, and passionate worshippers of Jesus. Today I witnessed in tangible ways how much they love their pastors. After the sermon a couple came forward and said that they were going to be recognizing and appreciating their pastors today. They proceeded to share how they owed their healed relationship and repaired marriage to God’s work in them through Pastor Ernest, Mama Catherine, Pastor Boaz and Faith, then the testimonies and gifts continued to pour in (among the gifts were two live chickens and a 100 pound bag of sugar!). One person after another – young and old, adult and child – came forward to share of how they had been loved, cared for, taught, mentored, parented and/or grand-parented by these two couples. It was a beautiful testimony to the power of the gospel at work transforming lives through humble willing servant-hearted people. What a great day.

This is longer than I intended, so I will wrap up with some prayer requests:

1.     Praise to God for giving Andrea and Hannah a great visit with old friends in Tuscaloosa and for using Andrea’s teaching in the lives of many of the women at the Warrior Presbytery Winter Women’s Event where she was speaker Saturday.

2.     For all of us as a family as we continue to be apart until Andrea and the girls come over in late March.

3.     For my teaching to be effective in training the students here at ABU to be leaders for the church in Africa.

4.     For my ministry with 60 Feet to be a blessing to the staff and the children with whom they work.

5.     For God to use my efforts to ignite a Life-on-Life Missional Discipleship movement at ABU that will spread across Uganda and East Africa.

6.     For Mama Catherine’s hand recovering from a bad infection after a puncture wound she sustained last week. She has been in a lot of pain and has had to make numerous trips to the clinic for treatment for her hand.

Keep your eyes peeled for a post this week from Andrea on the Atlanta end of this Africa Adventure (that’s your cue, Andrea!).

Tim

Stale Potato Chips

I know it is only Tuesday, and I am only supposed to be troubling you to read this once a week, but something happened tonight that demanded a mid-week update.

You know how last time, after one week in Uganda, I wrote this fairly intense, make-a-deep-point-spiritually sort of blog post. Not this time. This is about something less weighty; nevertheless, near and dear to my heart...

...fried potatoes. I’ve never met a fried potato I didn’t like. Just ask anyone in my family, and they will confirm.

A few short days after writing all that about mild inconveniences vs. extreme hardship I met a fried potato I didn’t like, and what should have seemed mild became extreme.

Stay with me now. This is a big moment. This is the kid who every day walking home from school would stop at the Burger Chef up the street from his house for a snack of French fries. The grown man who every time my wife is out of town for a day or a weekend, binges on Ore Ida Tater Tots, and whose friend hears what he orders at lunch and says, “what are you, twelve”? The guy who gets excited about roadtrips, so he can stop at McDonalds for fries.

But it finally happened. It took living in Uganda, but it happened. I am sitting here tonight in my very quiet house, and with no small amount of anticipation, I go to the kitchen for my bag of potato chips. The ones I just bought TODAY. A brand new, never-opened bag. I’ll admit the bag looked a little funny, but clearly inside there were potato chips. So I open the bag, and the smell of fried potato wafts out, I take the first one and, mouth-a-watering, I pop it in my mouth. And…it is…STALE, I mean Uber-Stale, really, really, really STAAAAAAALE. Suddenly I’m seeing things really differently over here. I am thinking of recanting all that I said the other day about mild inconveniences. And this I know for sure; next time I am going for the bag that was 5,000 shillings instead of the one that was 2,500 (for those of you not keeping track of the value of the US dollar in Uganda, that would be about $2.00 vs. $1.00). All I wanted was a few potato chips with my coke. That’s not so much to ask for, is it? Of course its not! So now I am in a feel-sorrow-for-me-because-my-chips-are-stale funk.

Is that all it takes to throw me off, to get me out of sync, to get me in a wad? Really? Seriously? Stale potato chips??? Yeah, that’s about all it takes…. How disappointing and how predictably real. My self-indulgent heart seizes on something just that mundane, petty, and insignificant, and takes me to a bad place.

Jesus has given me this opportunity to teach students who have been hungry for and finally have some access to a quality biblical and theological education, and I’m worked up over stale potato chips.  He gives me a chance to help encourage and train pastors who truly are starving for the kind of instruction I have been blessed with year after year from Ligonier, Desiring God, T4G, Gospel Coalition, and the like (and the years when I didn’t go to one of those I still have had constant access to great books and ministry resources electronically downloaded instantly for a couple of bucks), and I am bummed out by stale potato chips. Jesus gives me the privilege of bringing his love to little children who would give anything for the stale potato chips I turned my nose up at, and I am obsessing over my NEED for a bag of Lays.

Lord, grant me grace to gain some perspective, if even from a stale potato chip.

Tune in Saturday or Sunday for another post and some prayer request updates…. In the meantime, if you don’t mind, go enjoy some of those nice, thin, crispy Lays potato chips, or better yet, maybe the sea salt and cracked pepper kettle cooked ones, and think of me.

Tim

P.S. Okay, time for true confessions… That part about turning up my nose at the potato chips? I made that up; it was just for dramatic effect. I ate those stale potato chips. I’m just that much of a tater junkie. They were bad.

A Week of Extremes

Last Saturday I was on a plane surrounded by mostly white, mostly American and European faces and a few Africans. I was surprised by this being on a plane headed for Entebbe International Airport in Uganda, Africa. It did not really look or feel like I was coming to Africa. The contrast between my flight from ATL to JFK and my flight from AMS to EBB was observably little or none (except for the flight time – ouch). Now admittedly, once I hit the ground in Entebbe the contrasts became apparent and quite severe. It is in many ways quite a different world here.

Contrasts can be mild or extreme. The plane flight over – mild. Hitting the ground in Uganda –extreme. Atlanta airport vs. Amsterdam airport – mild. Atlanta airport vs. Entebbe airport extreme. Living in Atlanta contrasted with living on campus at African Bible University, my home for the next 5 months - relatively mild (hope I’m not blowing anyone’s cover who has folks back home believing ABU missionaries are suffering over here). Don’t get me wrong there are inconveniences: power blinking on and off, weak water pressure, no power or water at all at times, coming upon a gecko in my bathroom, no air conditioning, taking malaria meds daily – inconvenient but far from extreme hardship.

Here’s an extreme though: sitting on the patio at the American Club in Kampala enjoying a cold coke in a delightful environment complete with cool breeze, tennis courts, swimming pool, beautiful exotic plants. It was then that a friend commented, “I am having a really hard time sitting here in the middle of all of this after our day today.” We all agreed. “Our day today” had consisted of visiting children existing without loving parents or family in very difficult living conditions; a day seeking to relieve a little of their suffering with a warm smile, a kind word, a loving embrace; a day seeking to bring a little joy to their days by building a wooden playground play-set and a putting fresh coat of colorful paint on their rusty old swing set, sliding board and see-saw. That’s a true extreme: the worlds in which we live in contrast with the world in which these children live.

Reading back through John chapter 1 this week, as I prepare to teach a course this semester on the Gospel of John, I came across a greater extreme, the greatest of extremes: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14). Jesus, the eternal second person of the Trinity, the One through whom “all things were made” (John 1:3), became one of us; he came and lived with us. He condescended to be born a helpless little baby, then live here subject to all the hardships and difficulties of this life, then to suffer and die at the hands of those he came to save, us. Extreme!

The Gospel – free grace for a hard-hearted rebellious sinner like me – extreme! You and I granted by God in the Gospel “adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5) – extreme! And a certain hope for eternity – extreme! This all came to us through the extreme of what Jesus experienced on the cross in our place.

What will I do with that this week? I hope it will move me to go and “become flesh and dwell among them” this week; whoever “them” might be. I hope I will let it change how I look at them and extend love and mercy to them. I hope it will move me to lay down my life for my friends as Jesus has laid down his for me.  What will you do with that this week? How will you “go and live among them” right where you are today? Give it some thought, and risk something extreme.

I promised prayer request updates for those of you praying for us (which we so deeply appreciate), so here goes…

1. As ones who have been given the privilege to cry to God, “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:7), please pray for the fatherless here in Uganda that even in their extreme suffering they would know the extreme love of their heavenly father who gave his only son that they might know him.

2. Pray that 60 Feet would have full access to the children to whom they long to bring the love of Jesus in word and deed.

3. Pray for me as I seek to bring pastoral support and encouragement to the 60 feet staff.

4. Pray for my course prep this week as I have one week until students arrive, and I have the privilege of being a part of ABU’s mission of “training leaders to transform Africa.”

5. And pray for me and Andrea, Hannah, Rachel, and Maggie as we are separated until they come in March.

Tim

On my way…

I am en route to Uganda, sitting at JFK, awaiting my flight to Amsterdam then on to Uganda. In the midst of the whirlwind we have experienced as a family for the past month, it has been hard to even think about what we are about to do. Consequently, I have not been feeling a sense of excitement or fear or anticipation or anxiety; I’ve just been too distracted…but not anymore. It is all becoming viscerally very REAL to me, and I have had quite a few moments the past day or so when I have thought to myself, “Have I lost my mind”? The response of some of those reading this will undoubtedly be: “Well, its about time he realized it”  - you have not just thought maybe I’ve lost my mind; you have known it!

Andrea back in Atlanta nailed it when I shared those thoughts with her about having “lost my mind.” Here is how she put it in a text message to me just a little while ago: “You have lost your mind, because of the cross.” There it is! In 1 Corinthians 1 the Apostle Paul says, “…we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” So, yes, in a sense I have lost my mind, and we go to Africa with our foolishness and weakness, but with the Wisdom and Power of God that is the Gospel. And there is our hope as we go and the hope we bring to Uganda – Christ crucified.

Andrea helped me further by sending me a picture of one of the children to whom we will be ministering during our time in Uganda. This “madness” we have embraced is for the glory of God and for the sake of people – real people – who just like me need both the message of the Gospel and the hands and feet of the Gospel every day. We go to take both, and we are trusting in God to transform lives by the power of that Gospel.

We plan to use this blog in the coming months to keep friends and family posted on what is happening in our ministry in Uganda and how to pray for us, both for me in Uganda and for Andrea, Hannah, Rachel and Maggie in Atlanta, then over here in Uganda, then back in Atlanta. So keep checking back for weekly updates.

For the Gospel and for Uganda,

Tim