One of the primary goals of this journey was for Heather and I to not
be on mission alone. One day you, our supporters (whether by a single
prayer or a large check) will stand in Heaven and hear fully of the
mighty things God has accomplished in Uganda because of you. We did
not want to raise support from others to send us on mission. Rather
our desire was to join in mission with our greater church community on
a mission together to Uganda. The difference between these two ideas
is a subtle but important one and in many ways I feel we have been
successful. However I don’t think we have done the best job, even
with this blog, of communicating exactly what God is doing here.
Often the blog has focused on painting a picture of Uganda for you, to
make it more tangible, but not focused on the mighty works of God
here. The reasoning I believe is twofold. First Heather and I have
had a wrong view of how we spend our time working on the blog, e-mail
and other communication at home. There is so much to be done here
that often we emotionally feel like time spent on e-mail or a blog
post is laziness or “not real work.” The reality is quite the opposite
- in fact if we did nothing with our time here but tell the story of
what a year at AHI is like and how God is working here, to you on the
opposite end of the earth, that would be a success.
The second hindrance may be harder to explain, but I’ll try. The crux
of it is this: Heather and I TRULY have done nothing by our own power
here. I’m not being modest or trying to give some fake sense of
humility, we have TRULY done nothing except by God doing things with
us. Over and over again we have put ourselves on a ledge and jumped
and every time God has granted the miracle of flight. To talk about
these things publicly seems in one sense as if we are taking credit,
as if we are claiming that we have summoned wings all our own. Both
of these excuses are deceptions from the enemy, counterintelligence
trying to muddy the message of the work of God in Uganda, so my hope
for future blog posts is to shed more light on the many works of
Jesus.
First AHI itself: African Hospitality Institute has gone through
tremendous change in the 8 months we have been here. It has very
little resemblance to the school that existed when we first arrived.
AHI of old was very focused on theory and classroom time and run by a
few staff members with Maggie always kept at a distance. Vocational
schools have a negative connotation in Uganda (much like the United
States) for being for stupid or otherwise incapable people. So some
members of the staff did everything they could to try and build AHI
into something more like a secondary or specialized school and remove
the appearance of it as a vocational school, more for their own pride
than the wellbeing of the students (it’s more impressive to be the
headmaster of a school than the headmaster of a vocational school).
Maggie for her part did not like this but allowed it to be run this
way - trying to be culturally sensitive and allow the school to be
Ugandan organized and run (a very noble and right idea). It’s amazing
how confusing things can get when you’re trying to lead but also serve
in a culturally sensitive way, and up can quickly become down even
with the best motives. The beauty of it all is that God knows our
hearts and he knew Maggie’s and though individuals may have had
selfish motives and thought they were getting away with it, God always
brings things into the open and did so here. In the early summer of
this year God began to clean house, bringing to light several
conspiracies and character flaws that literally forced Maggie’s hand
to fire these staff. The details of those situations are best
described on
Maggie’s blog but are not really what is important or in
my opinion even why it happened. Rather I think God had held his hand
of mercy out for long enough and decided the time for justice had
arrived, before this class of students graduated without the knowledge
or skills they needed.
So with most of the head staff gone Maggie was able to go back to the
drawing board and rebuild AHI with the blueprint of the mission God
had placed in her heart a half-decade earlier. Heather, Maggie and I
sat down several times a week and began to hash out what AHI would
look like. The basic premise we came to was more practical learning,
more interaction with Maggie (since she is the specialist and the only
person here who has worked in Hospitality), smaller class sizes but
with a new class entering every year rather than every two years
(hopefully creating a sense of mentorship by upper classmen) and most
importantly a curriculum built from the ground up by the current staff
and students based on what skills they needed to get a job and be
successful in it. That is the new AHI. The old AHI had students with
their heads down on desks while a teacher lectured for hours about
“work ethic.” The new AHI has the staff demonstrate work ethic every
day and encourage the students to join in. The old AHI would spend
hours writing on a chalk board why bread rises. The new AHI has the
students bake a loaf of bread. The old AHI had tests that were mostly
theory and very subjectively based on which students a teacher
preferred. The new AHI has students actually complete the expected
activity (clean a guest room, serve a guest) and grades on objective
expectations (was the floor mopped? Did they smile while they
served?). Heather moderated the student forums on curriculum and I
contributed most of the material for testing and guided the staff
through the process, but that wasn’t us, that was you, and
specifically it was God doing his thing. How do I know? Heather and
I are not trained teachers, and we are certainly no school principals,
and yet somehow God has used us to build a new school program. That
has to be God.
One class I taught last semester was called “Job Preparation.” It’s
a perfect example of the “New AHI” way of doing things. It was an
entire class dedicated to filling out job applications, gaining
confidence in mock interviews and building a resume. Furthermore, I
taught the class with an American accent and marked students down if
they did not arrive on time. I gave them important papers needed for
the class and refused to replace them if they got lost, citing their
need to be responsible employees. Basically I was equipping the
students with the tools and professionalism they would need in looking
for a job. As a retail store manager I have done an innumerable
amount of interviews and looked at thousands of applications and
resumes. Ask my old staff and they will tell you Patrick likes to
interview several dozen people for each one person he hires. On top
of that I’ve done a few job fairs where I was interviewing hundreds of
people in a single day. I’ll be honest that when I began the class I
was a bit worried - I wish you could see some of those first job
applications. But one thing I love about our students is how fast
they learn, in fact it seems to me that if given the opportunity they
could learn anything you would be willing to teach them. It was my
joy to watch the students go from meek,
nearly-couldn’t-hear-their-answer to an interview question, to bold
salesman of why any employer would be lucky to hire them. In fact I
may have pushed them too far because when Kyaninga Lodge, a five star
resort in Fort Portal, came to interview for employees, most of
students came to me after their interviews with the owner and told me
how much easier that interview was than the ones we practiced in
class.
How successful was that class? Well the students haven’t even
graduated yet and of nine students, six were hired on the spot by
Kyaninga Lodge (they start work a week after graduation). One has even
been hired as a dessert chef, a pretty prestigious position for your
first job. Obviously classes other than Job Preparation gave them the
skills to get those jobs and have the confidence they did in the
interviews, but I’m sure there have been stellar employees I have
missed out on just because they had a bad interview, and the goal of
that class was to not let that happen to AHI students. Again, was
that me? No way, even the IDEA of a Job Preparation class happened
some morning between breakfast and reading my Bible. God was at work.
Heather has had a huge impact in her cooking and baking demos. The
students are no longer just following recipes but asking smart
questions about why recipes work or don’t work. They are getting
creative, tweaking and understanding more of the art of cooking rather
than just the rote of following directions. That’s a huge development
in Uganda where the school system is built on conformity (how else do
you manage class sizes of 90+ students?) and such experimentation is
often frowned upon. The reason we have a student going on to be a
dessert chef in a five star lodge is because of the skills Heather has
taught him. Somehow Heather never seems to get tired of teaching
others to cook, maybe because your prayers keep her energized and
because God is leading her.
For Maggie our role has often been one of a sounding board, a
brainstorming partner and most of all a voice of encouragement when
things get ugly. In many ways we came to Uganda not to support AHI
but to support Maggie directly. I remember one night after things had
gotten particularly dire she looked at us and told us how for the
first time she really felt like she had partners and friends out here
struggling with her. That she felt loved and taken care of. I also
remember one day when she ran over to the Green House while Heather
was teaching and shouted in to me, “Your wife is the BEST teacher!”
My favorite word of encouragement from Maggie is she often says “I
love all your ideas!” Maggie has really allowed us to join with her at
AHI and try crazy ideas and the testament to God is how many of them
are both crazy and yet work, because God makes it happen.
One big change that has happened is switching from having a staff and
student fellowship time once a week to three times a week. Now on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we start our day with singing, prayer
and a study of scripture. The first fellowship each week we have been
studying a series called “
The Story of God” (the material comes from
our home church Soma) that is a sort of flyby overview of the entire
Bible. Nothing has perhaps had a greater spiritual impact on the
staff and students then simply looking at the Bible and allowing God
to reveal to all of us who he is. Like I said earlier these students
are so smart and they have just soaked up the study, and Imago Dei has
become a common term around here, reminding us all to treat each other
with the respect of being an Image Bearer of God. It’s been so cool
to see them connect the dots and get really excited to know their
Creator.
One day in Story of God when we were looking at the early Church and
how they lived, ate, prayed, studied, and shared everything together
an argument broke out. One of the staff and one of the students began
arguing over their denominational differences (see my previous post
about the power denominations hold here) and basically who was right.
I actually let them argue a bit because I knew what was next, and
laughed to myself and how awesome my God was. Because the very next
verses we looked at were 1 Corinthians chapter 3. “For since there is
jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not
walking like mere men? For when one says, "I am of Paul," and another,
"I am of Apollos," are you not mere men? What then is Apollos? And
what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord
gave opportunity to each one…For no man can lay a foundation other
than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Much of the lesson
was about how the church went from being united as we saw it in early
Acts to divided as we saw it in 1 Corinthians. By the end the two who
had argued found themselves apologizing to each other (and to the rest
of the class) and repenting publicly. I have personally even heard
them continue to apologize and gain a greater respect for each other.
There is just no way Heather or I could ever take credit for something
like that. God is at work.
The second fellowship each week one student shares a few verses that
are important to them and what those verses mean to them. Then the
rest of staff and students join in sharing the implications that verse
holds for them as well. Everyone’s favorite part is that at the end
the person who shared gets to choose who shares next week. This
popcorn style has been so successful we have implemented it in many
other school practices. The third fellowship of the week we start by
sharing a verse but then everyone goes off alone and spends time in
prayer and meditation over that verse. Eventually we all gather back
together and voluntarily share what God has been saying to us in our
quiet time. All fellowships end with a rousing singing of the Ugandan
National Anthem. Heather and I surprised many Ugandans at the
National Prayer Breakfast where we were able to recite their national
anthem as well as any Ugandan.
The real point of all of this was to build a rhythm that the students
could carry with them for the rest of their life - being invested in
scripture and allowing God to lead their lives. So we are really
excited and encouraged when we hear that the six who are going to Fort
Portal are planning to continue to hold fellowships together and even
include others at the resort to join with them. Also important has
been the realization at AHI that character development really has to
come from Jesus. Only he has the power to change hearts in a lasting
way, and the deep character flaws we saw in the staff that were fired
rooted from a priority on things other than Christ. We now know if we
can just allow God to change hearts then the rest (work ethic,
honesty, kindness) will flow naturally from that.
Some other accomplishments of God with us over the last eight months
have been: Opening a new school library where the students and staff
are almost constantly checking out books and reading; a new intern
program starting next year with two of our students now being hired on
as staff for a one year contract; an exciting field trip to Ziwa Rhino
reserve where the students got to work in the kitchen alongside the
staff, and of course got see rhinos for the first time in their lives;
a future partnership with a new lodge being built on the Rhino reserve
where students will get to work with a mentor there for two weeks and
spend some time at a “real job” in hospitality. Based on the success
of these six students at Kyaninga Lodge the owners plan to tell many
other lodges and resorts about AHI students (so be in prayer for the
success of these six students, because their success is intertwined
with AHI’s). We have also seen tremendous growth in individual staff -
I could write an entire blog post on the growth of each staff person
here at AHI (and maybe I will) but just know that God has used us to
really have an impact on their lives and we love them all dearly.
So this blog post has gotten quite a bit longer than I expected and I
have not even covered half of what I was hoping to. Further proof of
just the sheer amount of work God is doing out here. So I’ll try to
cut it off and we will continue in a week looking at all the things
God is doing outside of AHI - a Ranch Newspaper, a Church Planting
Network, Pastor Training, and much more. Man oh man I can hardly wait!
In the meantime I hope this helps give you a better perspective on
what God is doing out here. I want to give a special thanks to the
church bodies who have been supportive of us, Soma Issaquah,
Catonsville Baptist Church, FBC Savage, Memorial Baptist Church and
the many community groups of Mars Hill. It’s so cool when the Church
gets on mission!
-PHD
