Making links - part one

Last year Augustin started suggesting that Growing Together and Discipling for Development (D4D) should co-operate. I was interested but unsure. I had been hearing good reports of D4D but I didn't want to be co-opted into a missionary project. When it was time to make suggestions for my work on this visit, I tentatively put on my list a meeting with D4D. It appeared on my schedule. I was much relieved to hear that 'discipling' is taken to mean much the same as mentoring, and not scolding or forcing into line.

Proposals for our time together went through several revisions. First I was to work with a new church group of 20 plus 10 D4D trainers for two days. I said that would make for a difficult group - too large and too varied in experience. So the plan was modified: two days with around 16 trainers. Then, as I mentioned to Augustin that I needed to start my detailed preparation well ahead of delivery time because I would be too busy in between, he said the re-revised plan was for one day training 10 or 12 trainers and spouses and one day visiting a church where D4D is operating. I asked to have the visit before the training day, so I could learn more about the group and its aims.

Monday was the day for the visit. Four of us went: Augustin, Dave Thomas (Evangelical Friends Church missionary from Oregon, here with his wife Debby and 4 children since about 1998) and Brad Carpenter (younger and more recent Fds Ch missionary, married to Chelsea for about 3 years). Brad drove and I rode in the front with him. This was the best opportunity I'd had to talk with Brad and Dave. I was encouraged by their openness and somewhat intimidated by the remarkable success of D4D, brought from Uganda by Debby Thomas, Augustin and 2 more pastors in 2008.

I hadn't realised how recent in this part of the world is the movement towards holistic church life, as opposed to winning and caring for souls and letting bodies fend for themselves. David Bucura tells how when he started cultivating the land behind his house he was chastised as a pastor for wasting God's precious time. There seems to have been a significant shift, both on the ground and among funding and mentoring agencies in the evangelical churches in the USA, just in the last few years.

I met an enthusiastic youngish church leader, Jean de Dieu, - not yet a full pastor - and several members. I found the stories remarkable.

Jean de Dieu used to be always at the main Friends church at Kagarama, begging for handouts for his family and lamenting the poverty of people in his little church. Then he heard about D4D and pleaded for his community to be one of the first trial groups. Soon after starting to think differently about his life, he picked up handfuls of small cassava plants discarded by the local population, who had been forced to take them but wouldn't plant a new variety; soon he was selling to his neighbours. Next he dried and saved seed from an unusual variety of tomato and raised a fine crop. Now he can afford to build a greenhouse to extend the fruiting season next year.

Next we visited Claude, in his newly extended and plastered house. Brad, who is the most frequent visitor, was surprised by the glazed window and door - done in the last couple of weeks. Asked to tell us the main changes in his life since D4D, he had plenty to say. He started reading the New Testament - I didn't understand how it arrived on his table but it did - was befriended by the pastor of the bigger Fds Church nearby, and became a church member. His first change was to start being open to advice and making plans. Then he began co-operating with his wife and making joint decisions instead of leading largely separate lives. (We later heard from a man who said he used not to see any poinjt in talking with his wife: she always thought differently from him and nobody would pay him for time spent talking things over. Now they listen to each other's views and make better decisions.) Claude's experience was that if he worked with God to accomplish whatever was before him, then the next vision would be granted. In the photo he is standing with his wife and three children - no baby on the way despite much teasing! - next to the water tap recently installed outside his back door. He used to sell water in the market place (presumably as an employee of the water company) but never dreamed of having the money to get his own tap. Claude with his family, with outbuildings behind - the house is much smarter

Others were also eager to tell their stories. Agnes had her sewing machine stolen by a thief who dug through the house wall, but instead of despairing she borrowed money for a replacement and has easily paid back the loan by taking her machine to the village centre on market days and getting commissions. Another Jean de Dieu said he used to work really hard but with very little result. Now he worked smarter and planned step by step his banana yield had more than trebled. Bosco, who described his former self as number one on the list of village paupers, was proudly wearing a World Vision shirt, and is employed by this larger charity for a year teaching the making of kitchen gardens.

Then we went to the church where others were gathered. Augustin asked them to confine their testimonies to one item each, and not to repeat what another had focussed on. For the most part they managed to be brief. (As it was, we didn't get lunch till 3.30 on the way back to town.) Ezira learnt through D4D that what she already had in knowledge and skills was important and now she values and uses it. Madeline has learnt better farming techniques and can now pay health insurance for all her family when previously she'd assumed the only way they would get it would be if somebody else paid. Jacqueline now has a kitchen garden, well fertilised and mulched, instead of running from one place to another to get ingredients for meals. Epiphanie had two points she had to make - that she'd learnt the importance of having loving relationships and that keeping bees had much increased the yields of her crops. Josiane had learnt about oral rehydration after diarrhoea for her children, and the importance of going promptly to the doctor if they didn't get bettter quickly. Theogene, who used to merely stay alive without getting anywhere, had learnt the benefit of planning. Esterie had learned the importance of sanitation and cleanliness.

Lively teaching techniques, an enthusiastic core of participants, mentoring at every level, always consulting the group on what they think they need to learn next... these seem to be crucial. If you want to know more, watch the video clip on the D4D website.

Part 2 will be about my day with the trainers.