I have just returned from another training trip to East Africa, where I worked to prepare a group in Rwanda for a launch of trainings beginning in March, and I continued the Pathway cycle of workshops in Uganda, now on workshop 4. The focus of this workshop was the book of Mark, and I was joined by my good friend Dan Stoddard, who was a pastor for a time, and has been a United Airlines pilot for many years.

Together we offered the ministry leaders training in various literary styles found in the Bible, how to analyze the structure of a passage, and the specific roles of parables in biblical literature. They preached short messages, we worshipped and prayed together, and enjoyed the sweet fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Dan and I were both a bit nervous to see what kind of messages they would preach, because in our last workshop, the students really struggled to come up with a message statement that captured the author’s main point of the passage. We were very pleased to see that in this workshop, they had all made significant progress in their preparation and preaching. It was a joy to listen to them exposit passages from the book of Mark, demonstrate an accurate handling of the texts, and apply them to our lives. At the end of the training, each of the leaders commented on how they had grown, both through the training and through teaching the training to others.

This group which met in Kampala has faced many transitions, and in some cases they have experienced hardships due to the overflow of refugees fleeing war-torn South Sudan. But God has been faithful, and we continue to anticipate his movement in this special group as they study, obey and teach the Word of God. Pressing on, Eric