Outstanding Projects

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Our Sangano church needs help. The need here has become urgent. We need to get this work done very soon, especially the toilet. It is in danger of falling in, and it is overflowing. Those of you old enough to remember outhouses know how dangerous this is.

I cannot baptize here anymore, as the baptistry will no longer hold water. We are Baptists folks. We need working baptistries. 😀 The rear of our sanctuary is in danger of falling over in a heavy rain. The situation is serious.

Everybody check out the Outstanding Projects page. Since God provided so well to get so many of the projects done, I have updated it so only the remaining two are still there. Please pray about pitching in to fund this work.

God bless you!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Post 03-18-2025

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Good morning folks! I hope America is finally beginning to thaw somewhat (sorry Alaska). We have just exited a particularly hot dry season and are finally getting occasional rain, which is good for our refugees, who depend on God sending the rain to water their crops. Pray we get a good harvest this season. Good harvests mean good food, and good food means healthier people.

Our study of Congolese Swahili is progressing. Fortunately, Swahili has two big advantages. First, it is not tonal (thank the LORD!). Second, it has a predictable grammar. Once you learn the code, assembling sentences is pretty straightforward. We are making rudimentary sentences and trying not to sound like toddlers while doing it. Pray for our brains to be able to learn this language and speak it. I want to be preaching in Swahili as soon as possible.

Pray for our churches. The challenges and dangers inherent in being refugees remain the same. It remains to be seen how the recent blessed change in administration will affect our people. All emigration to the US has stopped, and a lot of foreign aid is likely going away. This will not affect our people much, as the only people benefitting from that aid were the corrupt Ugandan officials running the camp, and their counterparts in the United Nations. Under Biden, Uganda had enacted a policy that suspended rations for longterm refugees in an effort to force them to repatriate, regardless of the security situation in their home country. Our people are still struggling with that. Just a reminder, anytime you want to send money to buy food or medicine, it will be welcome and useful.

Pray for me. My younger brother Joel died two weeks ago. I loved my brother very much. It was upsetting when he drifted away from the rest of the family and made some poor choices that destroyed his health so he died at 46. I am still bearing the grief from it. It is one of the hard realities of being here. As much as we enjoy laboring in the Lord’s harvest, it does separate us physically from family. Times like this bring that reality home very painfully. Pray for my Mom and Dad, Jim and Sue, and my brother and sister, John and Sarah.

The Sangano church building and grounds still need to be rebuilt or refurbished. While expensive by the standards here, it is very cheap compared to what buildings in America cost. Please pray about assisting with this. Our people need Congolese Swahili Bibles, which we can only buy in Congo and have them shipped here by bus. They can use more Rwandan Bibles also, which we can buy from the Bible Society here in town when they have them. We’ve been able to get enough Bibles for all of our church leaders, but many of the other people need them, too.

I need to replace the shocks and tires on our LandCruiser, which our children dubbed The Beast. The road to church is very bad. They’ve held up well, but are hanging on by a thread.

As always, pray for the churches, for the preaching, for souls to be saved, and for the power of Satan to be rebuked and restrained as we confront the darkness with truth.

God bless you!

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MISSION: Uganda Blog Post 01-09-2025

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Happy New Year (and Merry Christmas)!

I hope everybody enjoyed their holidays and got to spend them with family. We spent Christmas Day with some of our expat / missionary friends here in Mbarara, as is the way. We had a great Christmas.

2024 was an interesting year.

We were able to finish several Outstanding Projects. Our Kabazana church building is rebuilt, and they have beautiful, functional facilities now. We did some much needed repairs and upgrades at Ngarama. All three churches now have water tanks and baptistries, so the days of having to bring people to Sangano to baptize are finished. We finished up our long outstanding library project. All the books are out at the camp now, on their beautiful new shelves. We have the biggest library in that whole region. Our Sangano church building remains the only one in need of substantial repairs, expansion, and improvements. Please check out the Outstanding Projects page for details.

2024 was a year of pruning. God pruned His churches. There is no other explanation. Multiple families had to be removed due to extreme sin and refusal to repent or be restored. We experienced a shakeup in leadership, due again to extreme sin, and the Big Man mentality that seems to seep in when anybody gets a position of authority here. I had to close a church, due to their total abandonment of Biblical doctrine. Sin is a real thing. It can’t be ignored. It can’t be reasoned with. It has to be removed. Every time.

Some people have remained faithful from the church we closed. They are attending another of our churches until certain conflicts remaining from that upset are resolved. Their faithfulness has been both a blessing and an encouragement. It is now harder for them to attend, and they are sticking with it. If God directs, and provides the land and the money for buildings, we may yet start another church with these people as the foundation.

I anticipate much growth in the coming year. We are going to be doing a lot more training, especially among our deacons and their wives. I am going to teach more specifically how to preach and how to teach. We’ve done it before, but we’re going to focus the intensity.

In 2024, my best man, Zizi, emigrated to America with his family. They are in Kentucky, weathering the massive snowstorm you guys just received. It’s a little shock and awe for people who have lived at the Equator their whole life and never saw snow before. I found what appears to be a good Independent Baptist Church in Lexington where they will be attending. Pray for Zizi and his family as they adjust and go through culture shock.

My new liaison, for lack of a better word, Willy is doing a great job. He speaks Congolese Swahili as his native language, and fluent Kinyarwanda. We are going to be starting Swahili lessons with him soon. He was a school teacher in Congo and Rwanda, and is well qualified to teach us language. I intend to be preaching in Swahili before the end of the year. Pray for us as we try to combat the effects of the Tower of Babel incident.

Pray for the Independent Baptist Churches of Sangano, Kabazana and Ngarama. We have much to do in 2025, and are very excited for all that God is planning to accomplish, and our part to play in His plans.

God bless you!

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Water, Water, Everywhere…

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MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 12-03-2024

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Greetings!

I trust everybody had a great Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for. I for one am very grateful for my wife and kids, and now grandkid. I am also grateful America will no longer be ruled by Communists (at least, after January 20).

The event we have long anticipated finally came to pass. Our national pastor Zizi and his family were finally given the greenlight to emigrate to the United States. It was very sudden as such things always are. So we quickly had to pull together a Sendoff Service for him and his family, and other logistical details to help with their trip. I am going to miss my friend very much, but I am also very grateful he finally made it to America after six years of hope deferred. Unlike the 30 million illegal invaders that have been trafficked across our Southern border (which will be going back soon thankfully), Zizi and his family are LEGAL immigrants. They will have to walk through the process of becoming citizens, but in about 5 years they will all take the oath and become my fellow Americans. Which is awesome. Pray for Zizi and his family as they get adjusted to life in America.

In other news, after YEARS of effort, I have finally transported the last of the books from our container out to our Independent Baptist Church Library at Sangano. Years ago, pre-COVID, God gave me a vision for starting a library at the camp. Those people have nothing to do to fill the hours, except sinful things. I wanted to give them an alternative, and support our school in the process. So we raised the money, bought a shipping container, put out the call for books, filled the container with a lot of help from our church, got it shipped, fought our way past Uganda’s inept and corrupt customs officials, got it to Mbarara, unloaded it so they could shift the container into its place, reloaded it, and there the books sat for years while we worked out how to proceed with the library. We got some much needed help from some college girls who helped us sort and stamp all the books. Plus I lost a couple years to COVID. Then I had to raise money for shelves, and get the shelves built. All this time, I have been carrying books out there, a carload at a time, week in and week out, and as the shelving increased, we had books ready to fill them. Last week, I hauled out the last load. Glory to God! Every classroom has bookshelves full of books, 17 huge shelves altogether. Tens of thousands of volumes. God bless and thank you to everybody who helped make this possible over the years.

Pray for our churches, for the continued salvation of sinners, and most important, for their growth as Christians.

God bless and keep you!

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