Another Giant Leap Forward

Feb. 15, 2014 - Group picture of the first-ever training for
volunteer values teachers in Uganda/East Africa

Seven and a half months ago, we moved here with a “dream” which we felt was also God’s plan for us…to see the godly values program established here in Uganda/East African…to mobilize and equip church volunteers to teach God’s Word and His righteous standards to Primary and Secondary students in their classrooms. For several months a Start-Up Committee met to discuss and advise us as to how to adapt the Philippine program to work best here in East Africa. Then God brought us writers, artist, and musicians to work on revising the Philippine curriculum for East African students. And…now the exciting (and somewhat scary) leap forward of actually training the first group of potential volunteers to use the curriculum is history. All together we registered 26 participants—about double of what we had initially intended for this first phase. We were delighted to see that the number of men almost equaled the ladies, there was a fairly broad spectrum of ages and experiences, and a number of evangelical denominations were represented. Praise our God for how He has continued to bring together all that’s needed for each step!

The training was somewhat similar in content to what we are used to in the Philippines, but there were also some remarkable variances. Rather than a number of people from a few churches (as is usually true in the Philippines), there were one or two from about 20 different churches. All of them listed the school where they planned to test teach the curriculum, meaning that rather than a number of classes in one school (which is the norm in the Philippines), we’ll have one or two classes in several schools. These differences are probably are due to our partnership with Scripture Union Uganda and our reliance on them to contact and recruit churches/volunteers. We know that a lot of prayer went into the training and so we’re trusting God for how this somewhat new paradigm will work. We’re also excited and anxious to see who will actually implement the training by test teaching the curriculum. And we can hardly wait to hear how the VEC (Values Education Class) program will go over with school administrators, students, and parents. Thanks for praying with us on this journey of faith!