Roots to Fruits on Tour

Maybe 8 years ago I started hearing hints of "Roots to Fruits", but it remained as words in the air.  When Moses and I started praying about shifting to a new location, those words came up again, and I started to get a little heart beat... yep, God has always given me a little flutter of joy when something changed in my life.  Heartbeat - Kuyper College (formerly Reformed Bible College).  Heartbeat - move to the Netherlands.  Heartbeat - serve in the Philippines.  Heartbeat - change my life and move to Uganda.  Heartbeat - Moses... okay, those were big heartbeats, but tiny flutters occur throughout other life decisions.  And so, after chatting with Moses and the directors of Our Call Mission in Gulu, we moved all of our earthly belongings to a new city amongst the Acholi tribe.

Roots to Fruits is a newly developed Christian curriculum that also includes all of the Ugandan standards of learning.  So far, there are two levels of Kindergarten completed and P1-3 are being used in some primary schools.  At the moment I am helping to edit the P4 materials.  Math. Science. Heritage/Literature. Bible.  It is our hope that by the end of this year, the P4 curriculum will be rolling off the printing press and into the hands of schools.

February 4-13 found Moses and I on the road with Dan and Jeremiah.  They are two trainers/teachers of the Roots to Fruits curriculum.  The four of us traveled to 3 different locations to train 4 schools and we were blessed throughout the trip.  

Moses and I didn't know Dan and Jeremiah that well, but after 10 days together, we have formed a cool bond as a training team.

Moses took the guys out for their first try of Indian food.  Dan calls it "Kampala Food" as he has never eaten anything so spicy or foreign.  :)

Moses led the morning devotions each day.

The second school, or location that we went to was 17 km from Mukono town, and we were hosted in an outstanding way - great fellowship, a kind and humble guide/host, beautiful hotel rooms in lovely gardens and yummy food.... So here is Jeremiah with the king of the Jungle.

And young Dan shows his place on Pride Rock.

Moses and I hang out with Mama and Baby Tembo.  :)

At least we had time off throughout the weekend, to rest, explore, and talk, while the week days were full of training times.

Just having fun, and chatting about how to plan or lead the next day's program.

Having fun with my BUD!

Another adventure was taking Jeremiah out for a Blackout Rolex...

Check out the menu to find the Blackout!!

We were blessed with lots of local traditional dishes as well.

Of course, singing comes with devotions... again, totally Moses' gifting.

Besides devos, Moses was the main driver (sometimes me!) and he was taking photos and video clips of the training.  It is our goal to create a training video, so that when many schools wish to buy into this new Christian curriculum, or some schools need a quick refresher course, they can just pop in a DVD and get caught up on the training/use of the materials.

Our last training was filled with moments of smiles from this precious Baby Faustina.

Working on a new Paradigm Shift is challenging for many of the teachers who only know and have experienced one method of teaching.  ROTE!!  Change is hard.

Explaining how this curriculum is Christ-centered, hands on, thought provoking, creative, and yet fully captures all the Ugandan school requirements is mind boggling for the young teachers.

We also have the privilege of presenting the Phonics program of Read for Life.  I have learned that our English is actually a very hard language to learn... so many rules with exceptions.

We are thankful that the schools seemed to grasp the material and we pray that they will put it into practise how it is supposed to be used.  It is a step by step or year by year program, and it would be hard for new students to step into this curriculum beyond Grade 2.  

Please join us in praying for the over 30 schools who are using (or hope to as soon as schools reopen) this material.  And pray for Dan and Jeremiah as they will be traveling much to follow-up on the schools that have been trained.