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Search results for 'Uganda Trip #11' (13)

January 17, 2024
January 17, 2024
January 17, 2024 Almost Home | Uganda Trip #11 (January 12) I’m sitting with Stu and Mike in the Amsterdam airport during our six-hour layover here. I’m anxious to land at MSP at 4 pm on Saturday, see Carol, get cleaned up, try to stay up till 9 pm. I hope I get a good night’s sleep before gathering with you all at FCC on Sunday morning. I anticipate dosing in and out of consciousness on Sunday, watching football playoffs. We ended our classes this week well. Our students were engaged and worked hard at grasping how to handle the interpretation and communication of Old Testament Narrative and Law. I found our work on the law most helpful as we sought to see the law in light of God’s character and how Christ fulfilled the law before we move on to application. Application…that is often the struggle. I notice it in my small group when we go through the FCC sermon and conversation guide. We find it easy to make observations, but how does it apply today, or to put it another way, “So what?”. Most of the troubles we have in the church is not failing to know the Bible, it has to do with failing to appropriately apply the Bible. 

There are some really incredible leaders that we are working with who are sharing leadership with us, and they seem prepared to take over our function. Then it will be all theirs, as it should be. As a matter of fact, we have identified two men that we think could be sent to other countries. The goal of an enduring movement of gospel-centered, Bible-saturated, African lead churches seems within reach. I look forward to our next trip in May. I also look forward to being back at FCC soon! Larry Szyman Pastor for Missional Life
January 17, 2024
(January 12) I’m sitting with Stu and Mike in the Amsterdam airport during our six-hour layover here. I’m anxious to land at MSP at 4 pm on Saturday, see Carol, get cleaned up, try to stay up till 9 pm. I hope I get a good night’s sleep before gathering with you all at FCC on Sunday morning. I anticipate dosing in and out of consciousness on Sunday, watching football playoffs. We ended our classes this week well. Our students were engaged and worked hard at grasping how to handle the interpretation and communication of Old Testament Narrative and Law. I found our work on the law most helpful as we sought to see the law in light of God’s character and how Christ fulfilled the law before we move on to application. Application…that is often the struggle. I notice it in my small group when we go through the FCC sermon and conversation guide. We find it easy to make observations, but how does it apply today, or to put it another way, “So what?”. Most of the troubles we have in the church is not failing to know the Bible, it has to do with failing to appropriately apply the Bible. 

There are some really incredible leaders that we are working with who are sharing leadership with us, and they seem prepared to take over our function. Then it will be all theirs, as it should be. As a matter of fact, we have identified two men that we think could be sent to other countries. The goal of an enduring movement of gospel-centered, Bible-saturated, African lead churches seems within reach. I look forward to our next trip in May. I also look forward to being back at FCC soon! Larry Szyman Pastor for Missional Life
January 12, 2024
(Wednesday, Jan 10)
January 9, 2024
January 9, 2024 In The Classroom At Last | Uganda Trip #11 Today we started our five days in the classroom. I was fairly concerned about my capacities as my jet lag has been really bad this trip. Last night I probably got 2 ½ hours of sleep, and I was afraid my body was going to decide it was tired when I was teaching, and I’d be incoherent. Thankfully, that was not the case and my energy level was solid. Our subject matter for this round is Understanding and Communicating the genres of narrative and law in the Scripture, using Genesis and Exodus. It is good to be reunited with the cohort, and my learning group in particular. It will be fun to see that even though they are quite familiar with the stories (narratives) in Genesis, how that knowledge can deepen as we give them tools for greater understanding and application. Our vision is to establish an abiding network of Gospel-Centered, Bible-Saturated, African-led churches. This means the leaders in my group (from Uganda, South Sudan, and the Congo) need to be equipped not only to understand but multiply leaders. This means sharing the teaching duties with what we call Lead Trainers, those who took the courses in a previous cohort and set themselves apart. Vincent (pictured) did a really solid job. Stu Dix suggested I take his phone, record him teaching, send him home to view it, and do a self-evaluation. Tomorrow we will go over his evaluation and I will give him mine. The temp was 102 today. The rest of the week looks a bit better, with highs topping out at 96. Whenever we are in our quarters, we each have a fan on us. It’s been cooling off enough at night that I haven’t sweat myself to sleep–yet. It’s an honor to work with these eager leaders. Pray that I get some sleep, please! Larry Szyman Pastor for Missional Life
January 9, 2024
Today we started our five days in the classroom. I was fairly concerned about my capacities as my jet lag has been really bad this trip. Last night I probably got 2 ½ hours of sleep, and I was afraid my body was going to decide it was tired when I was teaching, and I’d be incoherent. Thankfully, that was not the case and my energy level was solid. Our subject matter for this round is Understanding and Communicating the genres of narrative and law in the Scripture, using Genesis and Exodus. It is good to be reunited with the cohort, and my learning group in particular. It will be fun to see that even though they are quite familiar with the stories (narratives) in Genesis, how that knowledge can deepen as we give them tools for greater understanding and application. Our vision is to establish an abiding network of Gospel-Centered, Bible-Saturated, African-led churches. This means the leaders in my group (from Uganda, South Sudan, and the Congo) need to be equipped not only to understand but multiply leaders. This means sharing the teaching duties with what we call Lead Trainers, those who took the courses in a previous cohort and set themselves apart. Vincent (pictured) did a really solid job. Stu Dix suggested I take his phone, record him teaching, send him home to view it, and do a self-evaluation. Tomorrow we will go over his evaluation and I will give him mine. The temp was 102 today. The rest of the week looks a bit better, with highs topping out at 96. Whenever we are in our quarters, we each have a fan on us. It’s been cooling off enough at night that I haven’t sweat myself to sleep–yet. It’s an honor to work with these eager leaders. Pray that I get some sleep, please! Larry Szyman Pastor for Missional Life
January 8, 2024
Today’s thoughts will come from yesterday (Thursday, Jan 4). At 9 am, Mike Evans and a few local guys headed to a town called Kitgum (a 45-minute drive), while Stu Dix and I headed to the Adjumani district (one hour and 45 minutes), an area currently hosting 440,000 displaced people in 18 settlements (or neighborhoods). When we think of a refugee, we think of a person passing through on their way to a preferred place. The average length of stay for a refugee is close to 20 years! Churches are needed in this environment. Is it possible that a Gospel-Inspired Life can be experienced in this setting? Our pastors say “yes”!
January 8, 2024
The transition from Amsterdam to Nairobi was a bit more sedate, other than the fact that Mike, Stu, and I were sitting side by side in a rather smallish (compared to what we’re used to) KLM airplane. When I say compared to what we’re used to-we always fly economy. Once we landed in Nairobi, the fun began. MSP would not give us a boarding pass for our last leg of the journey, which was from Nairobi to Entebbe, Uganda. We assume it was because they don’t have a partnership with Kenya Air, like they do with KLM. Once we landed, we had to find where we could get our boarding passes.
January 4, 2024
Today I start with a long post. It’s 3:30 am and we have arrived in Uganda. Otim (oh team), our usual driver, was at the Entebbe airport when we arrived. We are now in a rainy trip across the country. We started our journey at a restaurant at MSP arriving there at 4 pm on New Year’s Day. We got to watch the first half of the Michigan game against Alabama. “We” are 1) Mike Evans, planter of Faith Community, New Richmond, and current Site Trainer of Training Leaders International (TLI). TLI provides the curriculum that we use to train the pastors we are in Uganda to serve. 2) Stu Dix, the planter of The Village Church of Baldwin and a summertime employee of Glacier National Park (along with his wife Cheryl and daughter Sarah are park ranger there) and 3) yours truly. We have made this trip about twelve times together and the privilege of doing the work we do and doing it with friends of mine is a great, great gift. As we load the plane, I get an aisle seat next to an elderly man (which is really saying something for me to call someone elderly). I’m always on the lookout for the chance to move to another seat where there are two or more empty seats together. Mike and Stu are in the same row and have the outside two aisle seats with two empty seats between them. I turn and look at the row behind them-I struck gold! All four seats were empty with the plane nearly full. I slide over into the aisle seat in that row and the man next to me gives me a thumbs up. I’m “feeling it.’’ A few minutes later my gold disappears…quickly. A family of seven comes in with dad dragging a toddler by the arm, a mom seeking to comfort an infant, and two boys and a girl in the 6-10 age range. Their seats were in three different rows and the kids had carry-ons with no idea what to do with them. I helped them get things in the overhead bin and find their rightful seats. The children were understandably excited as they were on their first plane ride. They were in for a long day as they were headed to Nairobi, Kenya. Everyone got buckled in and announcements were made, and we were off on time. About 15 minutes into the flight the ten-year-old boy taps my arm. Could I help him get a movie going (his parents were preoccupied with the little ones)? I finally settled in and got a movie going and about a ½ hour into the movie the man next to me taps me and points out that his screen is not functioning very well. I tell him I don’t know what to do, but I will ask a flight attendant to reset his screen. I get the attention of the first one that walks by and mention the need and she said she would address it. Back to my movie (another tap) and the youngster wants to know how much longer it’s going to be. Up to this point, we have not gone an hour into the 8:20 trip to Amsterdam, with a matching trip to Nairobi. I show him how he can track the flight on his screen. I would say we had close to a dozen of these encounters throughout the flight. The two boys were sitting in the row behind Stu and Mike. They had contests seeing who could flip the fold down trays the quickest back into their closed position. They were having a blast. Stu and Mike, as they would get a slight push from the row behind them, not so much. The last ½ hour was especially noteworthy. The younger of the two boys behind Mike and Stu wanted to know why the picture of the plane on the flight tracker wasn’t pointing down if we were going to land pretty soon. I introduced him to the elevation tracker, and he would report the descending numbers out loud for the neighbors. We were now in the tray tables up, arms rests down and seats in the upright position phase of the flight. The older one decided this was a good time to do two things: to push the button that called flight attendants and to unbuckle his seat belt and stand up. I encouraged him to stop and was joined by a flight attendant who was trying to get her section under control and safe. We landed and as I left one flight attend