State of the Mission Part 1

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