All our adventures as missionaries, past and present.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 12-10-2012

/in /by

Greetings! The year is nearly finished. I hope in this last few weeks before the End that God blesses you and you find joy with your family and friends while you still can. 😀 You know, if the world ends, it won’t be due to the failure of the Mayans’ to buy more inserts for their Day Planners. It will be due to the great wickedness of man and the eternal plan of Almighty God. As for me and mine, we have work to do while it is yet day. However bad things may get in the short term due to stupid Electorates and even more stupid opposition Parties, our mission is unchanged – preach the Gospel to every creature. And that we shall.

I have been riding with Jeff Bassett and crew out to the refugee camp every week and leaving the family home (we are legion, and there aren’t enough seats). Djuna gives me a lift to my two preaching points on his motorbike, then out to Sangano for Jeff’s service, and I ride back with him. The car is still parked, following the Road’s successful assassination attempt. Some money has come in for the repair (Thank you, and praise the LORD!!), but not enough to do the whole repair. Please keep praying. As it currently stands, there will be no Christmas party for the children, nor for the churches like we usually do around Christmas – we lack the transport to get everything out there. If this transport drought continues, there won’t be a VBS in January either, which is when the children are off school. Our ministry is extremely handicapped right now.

Pray for our impending furlough. Our plane tickets are bought, which makes it real. I have sent many emails to churches, requesting meetings. Many have responded, many have not. Pray Pastors will find time to respond so I can finalize our furlough schedule for next year. Pray that new churches will be willing and able to grant us meetings so we can raise new support, which we need very much. Pray for all the traveling that is coming. Pray for our works, for our fellow laborers, for our employees, for our dogs, for our property, and for our fellow missionaries, who all have to get by in our absence. Pray there will be no excitement here while we are on loan from the Field visiting you.

We are looking forward greatly to seeing you all again, and to all the mighty things God has planned for the months ahead!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-10-2012

/in /by

Greetings, one and all! Thank you for praying. The works are producing fruit, and that is always a good thing. I have had four saved at Juru in the past few weeks, and this in spite of my best efforts to talk them out of it (you have to be careful with salvation decisions, so I press folks that want to be saved to make sure they fully understand what they are doing, and are truly responding in faith, not just reciting a prayer and joining our club like other outfits do). I reckon we’ll have to have a baptism service soon. Meanwhile, at Ngarama, we are trying something new. Attendance has dwindled there of late (these things go in cycles I have noticed), so I am bringing some small prizes with me on Sunday to reward those who bring visitors. I don’t plan on doing this ALL the time, but I thought it might be fun, just to see what they do. Everybody likes to be rewarded for their efforts, and bars of laundry soap aren’t terribly expensive. 

Pray for the roads. I know I ask for this quite often, but at the moment, it is one of the biggest obstacles in our ministry. The Chinese construction guys are working on it, but our prayer is that they would begin the paving soon. If the roads were paved, it would save us thousands of dollars a year in maintenance and fuel. Let me give you a recent example.

This past Wednesday, it was my turn to drive out for the Bible Institute class Jeff and I teach at Sangano for all the prospective preachers. We carpool to save fuel and wear-and-tear on the cars. He teaches for two hours, then I teach for two hours – it’s a good system. The rains have been very hard on the roads of late (this is awesome for the plants/crops, bad for driving). On the way back, I drove over what looked like an average depth crevasse in the road. I was going slow (have to on this particular section), but it turned out to be much deeper than either of us could see. I felt the back end of the car just drop and we both cringed. Within moments, I knew there was a problem. On inspection, we found a variety of issues. One of the back shocks was broke. We got it loose and begin to move on slowly to limp back to town. There was still knocking. The parking brake was locked up, so I disconnected the cable to release tension on the pad. Still it was knocking. I called our mechanic in Kampala. He suspected some of the bushings were damaged, and advised we drive very slowly (chameleon-speed as one guy put it). We drove a bit more, but it was getting worse and worse. I called him again, and we held the phone out the window for him to listen. He told us to pull over right away and call a wrecker. 

Calling for a wrecker is an adventure in itself here. We only had to sit for an hour-and-a-half waiting for them to come from Mbarara. We chatted with the school children who milled about on the way home from school. There was a stream running nearby. It was almost pleasant. They came, and we had to work to make them understand that it was the back end with the problem, so the car would have to be towed backwards. They got us hooked up, and we’re both praying the car stays attached the whole way back to town. We made it, just before dark, which is always the goal. Ssuemko came yesterday and confirmed what I already suspected – the whole rear end will have to be replaced. So, in addition to the shocks that have to be replaced, the clutch assembly which we were already needing to repair, and this new problem of a whole back end having to be replaced, we’re looking at around $3200 in repairs. Road: 1, Missionary: 0. Please pray about this need.

Pray about furlough. I am busily scheduling meetings. We will need more churches to support us, to make up for what we did not have when we came, and which never materialized, and to make up for the vast increase in the cost of living that has come about since 2010. Please pray I will be able to get meetings in NEW churches, and these churches will support us. If you would like a visit from us, please contact me so I can work you into the schedule (it is filling up fast). Pray for America. You know why.

God bless you! Thanks for praying! God is good, and we are confident He will supply what we need for His work.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 10-19-2012

/in /by

Since the move kept me so busy that two months went by, I thought an addendum might be in order to keep from deluging you with everything in one letter.

I have finished preaching through the section in Ephesians about the family. All in all the teaching went well. We plan to review it again in the near future with a marriage conference but have yet to set a date for that. Home and family life seems to be a struggle for the folks here in many ways and the only way to fix that is with Biblical teaching about it. I taught to the children in the church service when we talked about Eph. 6:1 and then Anna did teaching specifically for the children during Sunday School. Remember how on the week I was to teach about the woman’s role in marriage that none of the women came? Well, when Anna taught the children about obedience, at one of the churches not one child was there when we arrived (4 or 5 eventually trickled in, way down from the usual 15-20) and only about half came at the other church. Figures. 🙂

Now I’m teaching on Spiritual Warfare from Eph. 6. This is so important because there is a lot of wrong teaching about angels, demons, and Satan from the Catholics, Pentecostals, and even Muslims.

Back in September we had a baptism and marriage service. Several folks were baptized and 2 couples were properly married. It was a big day with a meal following the events and I think the last time we will do a service like that since it seems as though we’ve outgrown the auditorium. There were around 200 there and there almost wasn’t space. The afternoon finished with a huge rainstorm when we tried to crowd all the children into the building as well. With the rain on the tin roof and the nearly 300 people talking you couldn’t hear yourself think!

We had planned to do a VBS in August and then again in September however, due to the extreme expenses of moving and multiple major car repairs for both ourselves and the Bassetts, we were unable to afford the fuel to go out there and other related costs. Now that we are through our move this month, we are making plans to do a VBS in the next weeks. We’ll be teaching the children about the Armor of the Lord in conjunction with what we’re teaching in church. We will also be able to use the opportunity to teach them how to present the gospel using the Wordless Book and Wordless Book bracelets that have been sent to us. Thanks to all who have provided these!

I have finished teaching through the book of Genesis in our Wednesday class and will begin teaching about Church History. It will be exciting to give these men a bigger picture of where their spiritual history comes from since the Bible was completed.

The church in Juru has been struggling in the last couple of months. Some of the men whom we’d thought were leaders in the church have been found to be struggling with sin (drunkenness). Despite hard preaching on this specifically, they continued in this sinful habit. This was damaging the reputation of the church. Recently, it seems like these men are beginning to walk in real victory and that maybe the preaching is finally sinking in. Please be praying for these men to not cave to the pressure of their culture to drink and that they will stand strong and have a good testimony in their community.

In the next few months, the two churches in which we’re working now will be organized under a constitution. One of the men has translated the constitution into the needed languages and we’ll begin teaching through it in the weeks ahead, in preparation for that event. Consequently, we’re praying about which of the trading villages along the way to start another church. There are a number of places without a church of any kind or with a church of some sort started that doesn’t preach the Word of God by people who aren’t qualified to be ministers of the gospel.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 10-15-2012

/in /by

Greetings! Much has happened in the past two months. Remember the EPIC HUCKABEE MOVE 2012 I mentioned in August? It ate two months. Two months of brutally hard work, excruciating stress, frustrations, and sheer exhaustion. August and September I spent pushing wet noodles up hill. In other words, I had to get the various men I hired to work at a pace an American would consider to be fast. As I’ve said before, time is viewed very differently here. Everyone moves at their own pace, which is invariably slow. No one is in a hurry, even when they should be.

The number and magnitude of projects required to bring our selected house and compound up to snuff was overwhelming. Each job (plumbing, electrical, masonry, carpentry) required bringing Ugandan labor into the mix, with varied consequences, sometimes negative, to the process. My job of painting the place could not begin until ALL of their jobs were finished. Our house is divided into two portions separated by a smaller compound-within-a-compound connected by steel security gates. They finally got the big house done, and I started painting. It took two-and-a-half weeks for myself and one of my Ugandan friends to patch, tape, and paint every room, and seemingly endless liters of paint, but now we have a beautiful, well-painted structure to live in. As annoying as all the required inspections and what not for houses in America might be at times, I can definitely see their importance. 

Last week we began the move. Each day, Anna and the kids would pack things into our legion of Rubbermaid containers, and I would haul them over to the new house and put them in their place. I spent the time necessary to go through the place and remove all useful fixtures and hardware which I had previously purchased and installed. Bit by bit, room by room, we whittled it down until on Friday, only the big things remained. We hired a truck, one of the smaller Japanese cargo trucks they use for hauling sand and such, and began taking things over. It took six hours, and just like that, we were moved in. Of all the stressful things that come into our lives, after death and divorce, there is moving. Moving on the mission field is several magnitudes worse. This past weekend we just crashed, even though we had a lot of unpacking to do and got a lot done on Friday and Saturday.

Now we’re gradually flowing into the new place. The kids are loving the place. It’s paved with cement, so the kids can ride their bikes and play even when it’s been raining. We are trying to get the grass to grow on the dirt areas. I have planted numerous rose bushes and other flowering bushes in the flower beds. We transplanted several banana trees from the old place and strawberries. So, in about six months, it will look like a park. 

Thank you for praying for us during this long, grueling, expensive, stressful move. Now that this distraction is finished, it’s back to work lining up meetings for our furlough in America, as soon as we get unpacked enough in the office so I can walk in there. 🙂

Pray for the work in Ngarama. Somebody may have been poisoning the wife of Theogene, the man we are training to be pastor there. If there’s anything Ugandans cannot stand, it is a successful Ugandan. Theogene works very hard and serves the Lord, and so his garden does very well. Some folks were jealous of this, and tried to poison his family (this is a common occurrence here). I am taking him some activated charcoal tomorrow to give to her to see if it will help. Pray the evildoers will be exposed and brought to justice, and that Theogene’s wife will recover. Pray for the preaching, for souls to be saved, and for the men we are training for leadership. Pray for the future churches we will be starting.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 08-14-2012

/in /by

Howdy! I have finally reached the part of Ephesians that specifically deals with families (wife-husband, husband-wife, children-parents). I began preaching through Ephesians with that specific passage in mind, and have been heading steadily in that direction for the past year. So, the day finally arrives, I’ve prepared the first sermon in the series, dealing with wives (they happen to be first in the passage), and I get to church at Ngarama, ready to go ANNNNDDDDD…. no women. At all. Turns out, there was a problem with the well in town, and all the ladies were off drawing water from a more remote source (’cause getting water is women’s work). NO WOMEN, and I’m all set to preach a sermon specifically for women. So, so Africa. Instead, I had to shoot from the hip and preach a sneak preview sermon to the men. The next week, I’m at Juru, ready to preach to the husbands, and there’s 1 man in church. One. You know, it’s starting to feel positively X-Files. I imagine by the time I get to the children, all the kids will have vanished following strange lights in the night sky. 

This is all part of our effort to teach the concept of Biblical families. As those of you ministering in America know, sin wrecks families. Every culture has its weird, extra-Biblical practices. There is a wide variance among people in upbringing, so you always have to teach on this, not to mention learn it yourself. Here, we have to teach the men not to beat their wives, and how and when to spank their children, as opposed to also beating them. I have preached against drunkenness, because the men tend to drink up the food money while their children go hungry. There is also a strong cultural hesitancy for men to express love to their wives, or help them in the home in any way. I’m trying to teach them how to treat women, with Jesus of course being the best example. It’s generational, because they learned it from their fathers, and if it’s not stopped, they’ll pass it to their sons. I’m trying to teach the ladies how to respect their husbands also, instead of the underhanded, manipulative methods they typically use to get their way. If the men love, they’ll get respect. If the wives respect, they’ll get love. In trying to take what they want, instead of giving what the Bible commands, people lose the thing they’re trying to obtain from their relationships.  Pray they can get this. We are going to follow up with a Family Conference for married couples, and I’m hoping it will reinforce and build upon what I’ve been preaching.

Meanwhile, EPIC HUCKABEE MOVE 2012 continues. God supplied higher than normal funds this month, and I was able to right the ship, so to speak. There were still two major expensive projects this month, which covers my part of the renovations. Praise the Lord, though, while it is still tight, it’s not as bad as last month. Pray the work can be finished soon. The engineer who is doing the renovations for our new landlady is being typically African in regards to time, meaning he is going at his own pace, in this case, slow. It’s eating up the month, and I had planned on being moved in August. This isn’t going to happen. Now, I’m just praying he’ll be done by the end of the month so we can move in early September. You see, I need to paint. The Africans favor painting their homes in one color on the inside. After awhile all that white makes you start feeling starved for color, so we are going to re-paint the rooms in different colors of our choosing. None of this can happen until the engineer finishes and gets his men and materials out of my way. So, I’m sitting here spinning my wheels, with this big painting project hanging over my head. He does good work, just not always very quickly.

Pray for our vehicles, and the repair of the road we drive out to Nakivale. Pray for our move, that all will progress smoothly. Pray for the VBS we’ll be doing soon, and the Family Conference. Pray for the families, that they can be strong and Biblical. Pray for the training and maturing of leaders.

 

God bless you, and thank you for praying!