Wayne Pelly flew from Washington State to Kenya to join Pastor Frank Michael Tweheyo, Empower’s African Director; Mrs. Margaret Kiswiriri, President of Empower /Uganda, and the Rev. Canon Jovahn Turyamureeba, president of the Empower chapter at Bishop Barham University College in Kabale, Uganda, and deputy principal for the school, for a series of New Man, New Woman, New Life seminars in Kenya, as well as Master Classes in both Kenya and Kampala, Uganda.
The best description of the impact of the New Man, New Woman, New Life seminar comes from the seminar participants themselves. The Master Class is offered to graduates of the New Man, New Woman seminar who have been using the material in their own ministries. The Master Class was offered to 28 graduates of the 2012 summer NMNW seminar in Bondo, Kenya this last September 24-25. They reported:
Men are treating their wives as friends and helpers, not as servants. They in turn are helping their wives. For example, they prepare tea for their wives and families in the morning. When the wife gets up first in the morning to make breakfast for the family; husbands are now making the bed. The husbands will often fetch the water for their wives. One wife’s comment was, “He carries the water bucket to the bathroom for me; now that is love!” They eat together with their wives, rather than in separate rooms (for example, the husband in the dining area and the wife, servant-like, in the kitchen). They are learning to share responsibilities; wives are not being treated as tools of work. One wife said that she comes home and finds that her husband has straightened the home. Boys tended to blame the girls and saw them as inferior. They are now accepting one another and working together. And one particularly interesting comment, couples are now sleeping together in the same bed, rather than separately as before.
Women are responding to the teaching in positive ways as well. For example, where the husband was paying school fees for the children, the wife started helping from her resources. Wives have stopped taking advantage of their husbands. They have shifted from “quarreling” to “discussing.” Someone reported that one wife was saved as a result of the NMNW material – particularly the vision of the “Ideal Relationship” from Genesis 1 & 2.
Twelve of these 28 Master Class graduates joined the Empower facilitators in offering the NMNW seminar to 105 participants in the Maseno West Diocese in Siaya, Kenya. They assisted in the small groups and in reporting the results of the small group studies. Not only was this a major step toward equipping these graduates to present this material themselves, it was an important step toward Empower’s goal to become African-led in Africa.
Following the seminars in Bondo and Siaya, the team proceeded to Nairobi to present the NMNW seminar in two churches there, the Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship Assemblies (PEFA) Church in Kayole, Nairobi, and the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) St. Michaels and All Angels Church in Kariobangi Parish. Approximately 30 participants were in each seminar. Frank facilitated the seminar at St. Michaels, assisted by Rev. Jessica Oundo, an Empower partner from Uganda who is teaching at a university in Nairobi (and including New Man, New Woman in her curriculum) and Wayne and Margaret facilitated the seminar at the PEFA Church. Canon Jovahn returned to the college due to his responsibilities there and so was not able to join us in Nairobi. Stephen Olang, of the Nairobi office of International Justice Mission, was our host and sponsor for these seminars.
The team’s final stop was in Kampala, Uganda, where they presented the Master Class to approximately 30 participants who had been previously trained by Margaret in NMNW seminars. In one impact report of the NMNW seminar, a man said that he realized for the first time that he was not cursed by God. A couple reported that they were now enjoying the “ideal relationship” in their marriage. A woman who described herself as a feminist reported that she was developing a healthier feminism by grounding it in the Scriptures. After revealing how much women were usually despised in the culture, a woman reported how she had been freed from her inferiority complexes.