October Descipleship Training School Class

Graduation Day Photo

A couple of weeks ago we were awoken at 4:00 A.M. by the sound of happy chatter, giggles and laughter.  The October DTS had returned from Outreach and they were obviously happy to be back on base.  They had been on outreach for 2 months and had experienced a great deal in a short time.  The majority of them had been sick at some point on their outreach and some were sick the whole time they were gone with either diarrhea, malaria, typhoid or amoeba infections.  Outreach is a time when they go out into the communities to preach the gospel and help churches or missions who are already established.  Sometimes they go to very remote areas where they have never seen white people and the gospel has never been preached.

I would like to briefly share some of their experiences with you.  They often went a day at a time without food or water.  They basically camped the whole time or lived in churches.  They said that in 1 location there were many rats living with them and one Canadian said that she woke up with rat feces in the part of her hair.  They told a story of having to kill an antelope that was caught in a fence with a dull small knife and then they cooked and ate the animal.

One of the American girls was offered a bracelet when visiting one of the tribes.  One of the guys offered her the bracelet and then put it on her arm.  She smiled and thanked him.  Within a short time his mother was dancing around her and whooping it up.  Someone came with a cow horn and dipped it in something and sprinkled it all over her.  Shortly after she saw the whole village coming toward her and she started getting worried about what was going on.  Apparently the guy had proposed to her and she had accepted so the village was coming to celebrate that they were getting married.  There was apparently a lot of confusion after when she was trying to rectify the misunderstanding but she managed to escape with the rest of the group.

In another area that the group went, the women did not wear tops and it was common to see them breast feeding their babies without covering themselves.  As soon as these women saw the girls from the DTS, they passed them their babies so that they could take care of them.  When the babies started fussing they would try to get the girls to offer their breasts as a soother to the babies.  At first they tried to act out what the girls should do but when they were not getting the desired result, the villagers started to pull up the girls' tops to help them understand what they were to do.  The girls were not too comfortable with this so they just handed the babies back to their mothers.

They also went to a mountain region populated by 3 different tribes. There has been a great deal of conflict between these tribes during government elections which occur every 5 years.   Every family that they came in contact with had lost family members to the rebels.  They only had temporary structures because they knew that their houses would be burned down again in 5 years.  There was so much hopelessness in this group that they were hungry for the message of the gospel.  They ate up every moment with the DTS class and begged them to send another group when it was time to leave.  This seemed to be the DTS class's favorite experience.

On Friday, the 23 students in this class were honored at a graduation ceremony that 200 friends, staff, other students and people from the surrounding community attended.  It really was a big affair as we prepared a chicken dinner with vegetables, rice, fruit salad, and cake for all who attended.  This was by far the best food I have had since arriving here!!  My classmates and I from the Organic Agriculture Training School prepared the dining hall, decorated it, and served the food to all the guests.  It was quite an enjoyable day.