Blogs

Aloha! Our trip to Hawaii is going very well. We started out on Maui, and had a meeting in the island's only Independent Baptist Church, Grace Baptist Church with Pastor Azra Brown. It went great. We showed up for Work Day on Saturday, and helped chop up some out of control greenery on the property. Sunday's meeting went great, and we got to serve the LORD and minister to His people. Pastor Brown is a missionary to Hawaii, like many Pastors here. Like so many resort islands, what you see on the brochure is very different from what actually exists. The islands are beautiful, don't get me wrong, but they are true mission fields all the same. Behind all the glamor, you still have sinful people that need to get saved. It's extraordinarily expensive to purchase land, build buildings, and just live in Hawaii (they're currently paying 4.60 at the pump on Maui), so it is a challenge getting a ministry going. You have both the Buddhists and the Mormons to contend with, as well as lots of very comfortable people who don't feel a need for the LORD. Pray for the churches in Hawaii as they contend for the faith in this very needy mission field.

Next, we flew to Oahu (about a 25 minute flight), where the remaining meetings are all located. We're staying in Friendship Baptist Church's missions apartment here, which is a tremendous help. Our first meeting on this island was at Windward Baptist Church with Pastor Kevin Akana. He is a BIMI missionary to Hawaii, and is doing a tremendous job also. Becuase of Hawaii's enormous problem with crystal meth (top in the country), to which his own Father succumbed, he started an addictions ministry called R.A.M. (Rebuilders Addictions Ministry). They have recognition from the courts here, and are working to liberate men from their chemical addictions, as well as the underlying sin that led to it. We had a great service, and three were saved, including a street hustler and drug dealer who is infamous in the area. God greatly blessed, and it was a powerful service in which we got to play our small part.

I've preached in a couple different chapels at Friendship Baptist's Christian School. This past Sunday, we visited Calvary Independent Baptist Church with Pastor Larry Kaneshiro. The service also went great, and God met with us in the service.

As soon as I send this letter out, we are shoving off for a meeting in Ko'olau Baptist Church with Pastor John Sass. That leaves two more meetings on Sunday, and then we return to the mainland next Tuesday. Pray for us as we seek to minister to these churches. Pray that we will gain more support in the months ahead. Pray for Hawaii, a paradise on Earth that is nonetheless full of lost people who need the LORD. Pray that the LORD will send more laborers to this worthy field where behind all the tourism are people who are precious to the LORD and need a Gospel witness. Pray for the churches, who are prospering here in spite of the high cost of living and the often indifferent people along with the opposition of cults and false religion.

God bless you all,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Hello, again! Our trip East went well. We had a great meeting with Pastor Barry Pace at Antioch Baptist Church in Sunset, SC. We made it to the service this time, and had a great meeting. On Sunday, we were in Mile Creek Baptist Church, with Pastor Jim Roberts. The meeting went great, and they are going to support us! Wednesday again we were in Trinity Baptist Church in Mocksville, NC with Pastor Darrell Cox. We had a good meeting and God blessed. Finally, on Sunday, the 17th we were in West Madison Baptist Church in Madison, WV with Pastor John Browning. This is the same church where we had to reschedule so fortuitously a year-and-a-half ago when a big Nor'Easter swept into Maryland and the accompanying rainfall flooded the church basement. We had another tremendous Sunday, and God moved and helped us present our burden for Uganda well. It was a good trip, and I think some solid support will come of it.

Tomorrow, Anna and I are flying to Hawaii for meetings in six churches. Our children will be staying with her folks while we are gone. Pray that they will be safe and well, and that they will have fun at Grandma's. Pray that our flight there and back will go well, and that our meetings in Hawaii will be fruitful. Like Alaska, the remoteness of Hawaii keeps missionaries from coming to the islands as often. Yet, the churches in Hawaii need to hear about missions, too. I intend to be a servant to the churches where we are as much as possible. Pray that we will be an encouragement and a blessing as we seek to present our vision for Uganda with the churches in Hawaii.

After our return from Hawaii, we will be in our church's Missions Conference in September, and then we will all be driving up to Alaska for meetings in 11 churches. Our Fall is as full of meetings as the calendar would allow. Pray that all our travels will generate the support we need so that we can be ready to go to the field in Spring of 2009.

God bless and keep you all!

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Greetings! Our summer break has gone well. It was good to be home for a while, and our church and families were happy to have us around.

We had a great Fourth of July, with much pyrotechnic goodness. We attended our church's 4th of July picnic, which was great fun as always.

Our daughter Elizabeth was baptized. We had been instructing her about baptism for a while, and she was adamant in her desire to be baptized. Her Grandpa Spilger did the honors. He had to lift her up to see over the rim of the baptismal. It's always a blessing to see children following Jesus, particularly when they are your own.

I preached for our Pastor for three Sundays so he and his family could go on vacation. They had a great time out West, and I was happy to be of service. It was a blessing as always to preach God's Word.

Elizabeth turns five tomorrow, but we are celebrating today. She's busy learning to ride her new pink and purple bicycle, so pray for her as she learns the physics of bike riding.

Tomorrow, we are departing for some meetings out East. We will be in Antioch Baptist Church with Pastor Barry Pace in Sunset, SC on Wednesday. This is the same church that we attempted to visit more than a year ago, but missed the service because we became desperately, hopefully lost. Never fear! I have the Pastor's cellphone, and (for sure) the physical address of the church, so we'll be fine. Pray for the meetings to come, and many more to follow this Fall as we seek to complete deputation and be ready to go to Africa next year. Pray that the churches which we have visisted in the past who have expressed interest in joining with us in ministry to Uganda will do so. Pray for our travels. We have had no car troubles in a while and would like to keep it that way.

Thank you all your prayers!

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Hello, once again! Our church just wrapped up it's annual Family Workshop, which coincides with the ever-popular Children's Workshop. We were very glad to be home and able to participate. Evangelist John Bishop was the speaker, and it was good to be challenged from the Word.

Last week, I participated in some of the filming for the Pendragon project, a Christian film that one of our homeschool families has been working on for the past three years. It was my screen debut. My small part was as pallbearer for a king at a torch lit funeral. We shot it at the nearby Fort Bellefontaine here in North County. Pretty cool!

God has greatly supplied this month. We received a huge sum of money from BIMI, which will go in the bank to buy plane tickets to Uganda. We also received some to buy plane tickets to Hawaii, where Anna and I will be going in August for a series of meetings. It's exciting to see God providing like He is, just further confirmation that He intends for us to go and is behind us all the way. Pray for us as we continue getting ready, and for the heavy traveling we will be doing this Fall. Pray that we will reach 80% of our support by the end of the summer, and be fully supported by January.


God bless all of you,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Hello again! Our trip to Hammond, IN went well. We went to both services at 1st Baptist of Hammond on Sunday, and presented our burden for Uganda in the evening service. We got to hear some great preaching from Jack Schaap, and had a great day fellowshipping with the folks at FBH. It was a good meeting, and was worth the trip. On Monday, before we went back to St. Louis, we visited the Chicago Field Museum, because I've always wanted to go see the Maneaters of Tsavo, which are on display there. These are the actual lions that in 1898 terrorized the British-sponsored rail building crew that was constructing a railroad across Kenya and Uganda. All told, they killed and consumed 140 men before Colonel John Patterson killed them both. They were a unique pair of male, maneless lions in perfect health that happened to have a taste for human flesh to the exclusion of all other food.

Our meeting last week in Louisiana had to be rescheduled, so we've been enjoying a needed respite from travelling. We're home until the first week of August, when we'll begin our Fall journeys. I'll be filling the pulpit here in our home church in July while my Pastor and his family go on vacation, among other things. It's been very good to be home for a bit.

Today, Anna and I ran our first official 5K race down at the riverfront in St. Louis. We've been preparing for months, running up and down the hilly, gravel roads in Bowie, TX, and today we attained our goal. This is one of the things we do to stay in shape so we'll be in prime physical condition when we go to Africa. We both finished the, as we later figured it, 5.5K run at 34'07", which is pretty good for our first time. We're going to try to do another run sometime this summer, and will be working hard on decreasing our run times.

That's all for now.

God bless,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

The trip home went well. We made the whole drive in one day, and got home early enough that a crew from our church was able to come over and help us unload the truck double quick. Our first week was disgustingly busy, as Anna helped her sister Naomi get ready for her wedding to Gavin Walsh on the very next Saturday. We were all in the wedding, so we were all involved. Then, on Sunday, we had a homeschool high-school graduation for 4 of my former Sunday School students, including my brother-in-law, Paul. Needless to say, we barely had time to breathe.

We've been busy unpacking and cleaning this week, and are enjoying being home in St. Louis. Today, we're heading to Hammond, IN for a meeting with Pastor Jack Schaap and First Baptist Church of Hammond. Pray for our drive today, and our meeting tomorrow. Pray for God's blessing and leadership in the services, and that we will be able to communicate our burden for Uganda well.

God bless,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Today's the day. This is the last day of class at Baptist Bible Translators Institute. We graduate on Saturday, and drive back to St. Louis on Sunday. We're just about packed, and once I get the moving truck tomorrow, I'll be able to clear the big pile of containers out of our living room. This afternoon, we'll be picking my Father-in-Law/Pastor and his wife up from the airport. Everybody's excited, especially the kids. They've missed their grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles on both sides very badly.

Our final meetings went well. We had a missions conference at Bible Baptist Church of Rendon in Fort Worth, TX with Pastor Clayton Suggs May 2-4. It was a tremendous meeting, but getting there was a challenge. We had put our van in the shop for a suspected oil leak (turned out to be the main seal ), and they couldn't get it done in time. So, here it comes Friday and we have no way to get to our meeting. Thankfully, East Side Baptist saved the day and let us use the church van. On Saturday, I was on my way back from soulwinning, and a tire blew out. We were never late for a meeting, but the harassment from the enemy was ever present. The reason why was this: on Saturday, I got the great privilege of witnessing to and winning to the LORD two boys we met on outreach. Alex and Chandler, 11 and 12, both got saved! Pray for their growth. Sunday night, Bro. Suggs cut us loose so we could have a meeting in 1st Baptist Church of Cottondale with Pastor Charles Pugh. It was a great weekend, and we were so pleased to be used of God.

Pray for us as we get things wrapped up here, with packing and cleaning and what not, and for our travelling on Sunday. We're getting up early and driving all day to get home. Pray for both vehicles. We're coming home!!

God bless,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Hello again! We've just finished another round of meetings. Thankfully, we don't have any major trips from now on, which will make finishing school easier. I had wanted to be done with deputation when I came to BBTI, but it just didn't work out that way. It's all for the good, though, because we've had some excellent meetings since we came to BBTI, and it was a lot easier getting to them with the epicenter of deputation being located in West Texas for the past ten months.

Following our meeting in Baton Rouge, we drove back to Bowie to try to catch some more of Bible Translation class with Charles Turner. It's been a great class, with a lot of practical instruction on how to get the Bible from its original languages into another language using the best formal equivalents between the two. It brought up a lot of considerations. What do you do when the Bible uses idiom that has no equivalent in the native dialect? How do you describe things that are unknown to a people group, like lambs, snow, grapes, or wheat? What do you do if the Bible uses a possessive, but possessives aren't allowed in the language you're working with? It was fascinating studying the Greek and observing how the King James translators had to make these sorts of decisions when translating our own English Bible. Bible translation is a monumental task, and not for the faint of heart. It absolutely requires full partnership between the translator and the Holy Spirit, working in and through the human translator to help birth the best possible translation of God's Holy Word into the language of the people He loves and wants to reach with His Gospel.

We drove back to Alexandria, LA on Wednesday for a meeting with Pastor Jonathan Pyle and Air Base Road Baptist Church. Bro. Pyle is the son of Pastor Jerry Pyle, of Bible Baptist Church in Nevada, MO, one of our earliest meetings which we had on deputation. We had a great meeting, with some great preaching, and drove back to Bowie on Thursday. Once there, we repacked our stuff and got ready to make a trip out to Arizona for some more meetings. After class on Friday, we made our way out to Tucson, AZ for a meeting with Pastor Greg Dawson and Shining Light Baptist Church. Pastor Dawson and met a few years back at Pastor Steven Morris' church, Sun and Shield Baptist in Marana, AZ, for his missions conference. He's got a growing church full of good people, and we had some great services on their Missions Emphasis Sunday.

We spent Monday and Tuesday in Tucson, and took the opportunity to take our cowboys down to Tombstone to see the site of the infamous gun battle between Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and the Clanton gang at the O.K. Corral. It was a bit of a letdown, because the whole town was a tourist trap, and you couldn't get into to any of the historic sites without paying a fortune. Oh well, we enjoyed ourselves any way, and got to see Boot Hill Cemetery on the way out of town. Now we can say we've been there.

Our next stop was a missions conference in Phoenix, AZ with Pastor Brent Loveless and North Valley Baptist Church. It was a great conference, and the people seemed to really respond to the LORD. Pastor Larry Obero of Bible Baptist Church in National City, CA was the main speaker, and did a tremendous job. The Pastor and his wife took us to see Sedona on Saturday. It was nice to get to see the Red Rocks of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon again. The ladies got to do some shopping in downtown Sedona, and we had ourselves a good time.

At the moment, we're making our way back to Bowie, TX. We have three weeks of school to finish up. We got our finals for Bible Translation class emailed in on Friday, and managed to get our reading done while on the road. Now we will be joining the Literacy class already in progress when we get back, with courses in Teaching English as a Second Language and Field Medicine to follow. Pray for us as we finish up school, and get our stuff packed and ready to head back to St. Louis after graduation on May 17. We have a few meetings as well coming up in May locally before graduation, so be in prayer for them also.

God bless and keep you all,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Greetings! Boy, you blink, and next thing you know, four weeks have flown by. We've had a few meetings, and managed to have a Spring Break from school as well. We went to Pastor Garry Way's church in Gainesville, TX (Fair Ave.Baptist Church) on March 30, Pastor David Grice's church in Grand Prairie, TX (Lighthouse Baptist Church) on April 6, and we just had a meeting in Central Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, LA with Pastor Bob Buchanan last night. I'm writing this in haste at the hotel because we need to get going, and I want to send this thing while I still have access to hotel broadband (as opposed to the dismal fixed wireless we have in Bowie, TX which makes things take ten times as long to accomplish). Our meetings have gone very well. God has blessed us. He keeps sending us to great churches, and I am confident that He will raise our support dramatically in the months ahead.

School is nearly done. It seems like we just got here at Baptist Bible Translators Institute, but in a few weeks, we will be graduating. Then, we sprint for the finish line at the end of the year. Be in prayer that we will finish well, with the school, and with deputation, and be prepared to head to Africa in early 2009. Pray for the heavy travelling we will be doing in order to wrap things up this year. Check out our itinerary to get a picture of what is in store. It's a blessing to think about being done, and being on the field sooner than it was when we began.

God bless you all,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda

Hello, again! We've just had a meeting in a missions conference in Bossier City, LA at Shady Grove Baptist Church. Their new pastor is Steven Sorrell. He and his family were missionaries to Sri Lanka. The former Pastor, Dennis Blankenship, was called to be a missionary to Sudan, and is now on deputation to that end. It is a very missions oriented church. Several of their folks are are either currently missionaries, or are called to be missionaries. It was a great missions conference.

Shady Grove is just around the corner from Barksdale Air Force Base. Our friends Tim and Julie Tuttle are stationed there along with their kids. We had a great time touring the base and the Air Museum, and the gang had a lot of fun ripping around with their three boys. The boys enjoyed all the cool old planes they had on display. It's not every day you get to touch a B-17 or an SR-71 Blackbird. Barksdale is home to the B-52G bomber. Every so often, one of these huge planes would come swooping in for a landing. I marvel that something so huge could possibly get off the ground, and yet it does. It was great to get to fellowship with them and catch up on their lives in person.

Our next meeting is on the 30th in Gainesville, TX about an hour away with Pastor Garry Way and Fair Avenue Baptist Church. Pray for us as we go to this meeting, and as we finish up Greek at BBTI.

God bless,

James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda