Chickens, Ladies and Bible Studies

A group of five women gathered together on the veranda outside of the KACHEP (Karamoja Christian Ethno-veterinarian Program) office. A year ago these women were selected from their communities to be participants in a chicken project supported through KACHEP. The goal of the program was to improve nutrition in communities. These women were chosen because they were women of influence, up-standing women who could be examples for those around them. They came from four different communities within a 20km radius of Nabilatuk. So on this day we gathered together to reflect on how the project had gone. All of the women were very encouraging as they shared the positive experiences they had with their chickens. Despite heat, rains, raids and diseases, all of the chickens had survived and were producing high-quality eggs. This may not sounds amazing, but it is. This is the first and only successful chicken program in Karamoja. These women have had to work hard at building cages for their birds, carrying water for them, keeping records, and learning about how to care for chickens appropriately. In addition to adding nutrition to their families’ diets, many of the women had sold the eggs and had created a small business for themselves which provided money for school fees or other household necessities. It was such a blessing to be able to reflect with them over the successes of the program. Of course I was not here at the conception of the project; I’ve just been blessed to be able to reap the benefits of the work that Dr. Jean and the three amazing chick ladies (Christine, Nabor and Valentina) put in.

Veterinarian work and projects such as the chicken program are blessings for the community and help build the capacity of the people of Karamoja. They are wonderful activities that enable us to participate in the lives of the people here. But in and of themselves, they are not enough. The programs themselves do not bring people into a right understanding of who God is. It is through the hearing of God’s Word that peoples’ lives can be transformed. We must utilize these programs to bring us into contact with people so that we can share God’s truth with them. We gain access to the hearts of the people through loving them where they are at, through building relationships with them and meeting their felt needs. But if we leave it at this, we have failed. We must use (and create) opportunities to share God’s Word with the people in ways that they can understand.

Thus at every training or animal health event, Melissa or I will share a story from God’s Word. So it was on this particular day that God impressed upon my heart to share the story of Lydia (Acts 16). As I prayed through this story I realized that these women have a lot in common with Lydia. She was a woman of influence in her home town. She had her own business selling silks in the marketplace. She had a foundational knowledge about God but she did not know about Jesus until Paul came to share these truths with her. Once she submitted herself in faith to Jesus her life was radically transformed. She immediately opened her home to become a place of worship. Her home became a church, where the Word of God was used to edify the lives of the believers and to bring them to greater faith. These five chicken women have lives that are similar to Lydia. They are women of influence, business women selling eggs in the marketplace. They have a foundational knowledge of God (“Akuj”), but most don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I felt like I was supposed to share this story with the women and challenge them to be like Lydia. To use the position that God had given them to be a blessing in their communities. As I shared with them I encouraged them to open up their homes to become places of worship and study of the Word of God.

The women listened with keen interest. At the end of the story, I challenged them through questions to think about the story and to pull out application for their lives. As they did this, they began to respond. Three of the five women immediately invited me to their homes. They were very excited about inviting me in and told me that they wanted to be like Lydia.

So Melissa and I have begun meeting in their homes each week. We have begun to chronologically story the Word of God, highlighting 26 stories from Genesis to Christ. This is building foundational knowledge about God so that they can recognize Jesus as the Savior when the time comes.

I am thrilled that God has opened this door of opportunity for us. As we have made the commitment to travel out to their homes on a weekly basis, we have found many obstacles standing in our way. But our God is greater and His love is stronger than any obstacle that would stand against us, so we push forward with the assurance that God is at work. Our focus at each of the Bible studies is not the number of people in attendance. We want to pour into these women to equip them to be able to share these stories within their communities themselves. In order to ensure reproducibility, we keep the stories simple and ask only three questions for discussion: 1) what does this story teach us about God? 2) What does this story teach us about people? And 3) If I believe this story is truth, how can I change my life to reflect that truth? In other words, how can I apply this story in my life?

At the beginning these questions were very challenging for the women to process, having no education, they find it difficult to think critically about the passage and pull out more abstract thoughts. But they are learning, and it is getting more in depth as we proceed through the passages. We are still at the beginning, having only met five times before Melissa and I came out to Jinja, but we are encouraged that in our absence the work will continue. In the weeks before our break, I worked with a local school girl named Christine. She was on school holidays so I commissioned her to help me record Bible stories. Another KACHEP worker named Emmy has taken on the responsibility to go to each of these homes to conduct the Bible studies using the recordings. We are grateful that God always provides for us through people and resources.

Please join us in prayer that these Bible studies will yield great fruit. Pray that these women will be equipped in the Word of God to carry it out to their community. Pray that their homes will become places of worship, places of Biblical study, and places of prayer. Pray that they will not just be hearers of God’s Word but will be doers of it. Pray that their lives will be transformed into obedient disciples of Jesus Christ. Pray for me to have wisdom and insight to guide these Bible studies well. It is sometimes very difficult to do this through a translator, things can often be “lost in translation” pray that God will help me to communicate clearly and that the listeners will comprehend these truths rightly. Pray for more opportunities to work with KACHEP to meet the felt needs of the community.

The first chicken project has come to a close and we plan on starting the second chicken project in October. I will be driving 100 baby chicks from Jinja to Nabilatuk on October 4. There are several big challenges for this new project. The first is transport, not only for the initial transport of the chicks, but also for the feeds, vaccines and materials that we will need on an on-going basis. Another challenge is that I don’t actually know that much about chickens and I have been thrown into it. The first four months are the most difficult where the chicks will need the most care. Another challenge is the feed. We must get feed from down country because Karamoja does not produce all that is needed for quality feed. The problem is that Uganda has had a serious shortage of good feed sources, it has come out recently that most companies are corrupt and are mixing sand or other non-food substances into the feed to reduce their costs. This drives the costs of the good feed companies up, which makes it difficult for us to know if we will be able to subsidize this project enough for the women. So please be in prayer for this project as we venture forward. I desire to support the women and the chickens, but I’m not sure I’m up to the task.

Here is a weekly schedule of the Bible Studies that we have, I would love your specific prayers over each of these women, their homes, and the villages.

On Mondays we usually go to Okatoot. One day we were traveling to the village and found that the road was blocked by a thorn fence. In addition to this, it had rained recently, so the ground was too muddy, rendering it impossible to forge a new road around the thorn fence. We felt discouraged that we had come so far (about at 45 min drive) only to turn around 5km from the village. We saw a couple of shepherd boys with their cows and asked them if there was any way around. They responded that there wasn’t, we asked them to call other people from their village to get another opinion. They called a few men and women from the village and we asked them about the thorn fence. They said that they were expanding their village, so we could no longer travel on that road. Frustration. Then they asked us why we wanted to get to Okatoot. We told them that we were believers in Jesus Christ and that we wanted to share the stories of God’s Word with the people in Okatoot. Immediately the people asked us to share the stories with them as well. We told them that the only thing we could offer was the Word of God- not education, medical care, or development (commonly assumed by-products of having a white person show up at your village). They said that they understood this and they just wanted to hear the stories of God. So, we have started two Bible studies on Mondays, one in the village of Okatoot and one in this new village called Naput. I love the way God directs us to the people that he has prepared to receive his word. Pray that God will continue to direct us and open opportunities for us.

Much love,
Summer