All our adventures as missionaries, past and present.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 12-06-2022

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Greetings!

I promised to fill you all in with more details in the next letter. Promises made, promises kept.

The Holy Spirit has been doing much work in our ministry. I preached on Ephesians 2. Specifically on the difference between Children of God and Children of the Devil. We expect children to resemble their parents. It is abnormal, possibly a sign of infidelity, when they do not (obviously foster/adopted kids are exempt from this illustration). So how can Christians claim to be children of God, but behave like Children of Satan? Jesus said the fruit always matches the tree. You can self-identify as a Christian all you like, but if you act like an unregenerate sinner, among your other sins, you are probably a liar. And a fraud. God desires truth. We have to be genuine followers of Jesus Christ, not quasi-religious hypocrites who blaspheme His name by unBiblical, heathen behavior and attitudes.

One of our muzeyi (old men) who sits in the back every week, believed on Jesus Christ, confessed his sin, and was saved from Hell by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. That morning, I had been thinking, as Pastors sometimes do “Is anything I am preaching/teaching having any effect at all?” Then this happens. God always shows Himself strong when I need it. I will be baptizing this gentleman on Christmas Day.

I had to discipline some deacons at our Isanja church. I went there that morning fully planning to close the church. I cannot have a church full of unregenerate sinners masquerading as followers of Christ. The Holy Spirit met with us. People confessed sin. You have to understand how unusual that is. People prefer to hide their sin. This is probably the case everywhere, but it is very much so in East Africa. The men involved in the gold stealing scheme humbled themselves and asked forgiveness of the church. They cannot be deacons, but they aren’t going to split the church by yanking their families out, causing a bunch of drama in the community. Their wives repented, which is amazing. Usually the women lurk in the shadows while their men take the fall, then they become sources of division in the church. Not this time. They repented too. Finally, we all committed ourselves to forgiving, encouraging and loving one another, and working to avoid bitterness. It was remarkable. God made it very clear – do not close this church. Keep praying for Isanja Independent Baptist Church.

Pray for our baptism service on Sunday at Ngarama IBC. We are hoping to reach into the community with this. Pray that the gospel will reach willing hearts, ready to hear the truth. Then there is the baptism service, church dinner, and two weddings coming up on Christmas Day at Sangano IBC. Be in prayer for that also, that God would be glorified, people would be saved, and the believers would be edified.

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MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 11-28-2022

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Greetings! I trust everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I am thankful for my family, for my ministry, for my salvation, and that God gave me to Christian parents who raised me to love and serve Him. I am abundantly blessed.

Thank you to all of you who have prayed for us and supported us financially all these years. The best is yet to come!

I have made a few changes in how I communicate, as you may have noticed. First, I have switched our prayer letters over to MailerLite. This will, hopefully, keep our emails from getting snagged by your spam filters. I have setup a Rumble channel, where I will be posting regular video clips from the field. It is far easier to show you things than to only write about them.

Truth Social will be my microblogging platform. Go ahead and follow me there, but be advised, they are currently blocking all VPNs, so I can’t get in there to do anything at the moment. That should be resolved in the near future.

The PDF copies of our letters have the QR codes for these, so you can conveniently scan them with your phones. If you want notifications, you can subscribe to our videos, and also the RSS feed for our blog.
If you have not done so already, feel free to sign up for the prayer letters at our website. It should prompt you to do this when you first visit. Otherwise, there is a place in the right column where you can do that as well.

I will be sending these letters out more frequently. So they will be shorter.

We have two baptism services and two weddings coming up. Be in prayer about that. Pray for Isanja Baptist Church, for its people and its leadership. There has been some sin which was affecting them, but they are repentant and we are dealing with it. More about that in our next letter.

God bless you!

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MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 08-29-2022

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WE GOT IT!! Our NGO is renewed!

Now I can finish the process of renewing my Work Permit, then Anna’s Dependents pass, and Brennah’s Student’s Pass. We will then, finally, be fully renewed on all our paperwork. It was a massive undertaking that would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of our lawyer Eliab who helped us navigate the maze of government regulations and reach our goal.

Be in prayer for our kids. My next youngest set of children, Elizabeth and Gaelin, have started college at Pensacola Christian College. They are joining their brothers, James, John and Ethan, who are Seniors there this year. So yes, all five siblings are on campus together. Elizabeth is studying nursing. And my son Gaelin has answered the call to preach. He will be studying Pastoral Ministries. That makes him fourth generation. 

As a matter of fact, all 4 brothers are rooming together. I could not have planned it any better. God has blessed my kids. I am very grateful for PCC. I can’t think of anywhere I could send them for college where they are getting a high level of academic training, but not be impoverished in the process, or brainwashed with cultural Marxism.

Be in prayer for our churches. One of our deacons has gotten himself jailed, justly. He got lured into a scheme to steal some gold by the troublemaker Timothy, my own personal Diotrephes. I had straightly warned everybody in that church to beware of Timothy. But our deacon clearly did not heed the warning. We have other deacons that can carry on there. Part of the reason I led the church to choose more deacons was to keep power from being concentrated in one guy. I had a feeling something like this might eventually happen. So new blood was needed

Pray for the secret things to come to light. This culture operates on deception, for the purpose of avoiding shame. So things get swept under the rug and allowed to fester. I am praying all things will be revealed. Then they can be dealt with Biblically. 

Thank you for praying!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 06-13-2022

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Well folks. I really let time get away from me didn’t I? I had hoped to be able to share the good news that our NGO was renewed. But bureaucracies, no matter which country you are talking about, move at their own pace and will not be rushed.

Renewing an NGO requires navigating a labyrinth of confusing — often conflicting — requirements, obtaining dozens of letters, recommendations and permits from about every level of government, all so you can submit the paper equivalent of a small forest to the National NGO Board for approval. That’s where we are now – waiting for approval. And we have been for a month. Pray that it gets done soon. I’ve also submitted my work permit, and all the other permits and passes for my family, and those can’t be approved until the NGO is renewed.

Meantime, things have gone very well in the churches. While we were away, Uganda closed all their churches and left them closed for 15 months. This created a multitude of problems. The people found ways to meet from house to house anyway, but it still put tremendous strain on the churches. Some grifters attempted to seize control of our Sangano church, and caused trouble in the other three. The matter has been resolved, though not before we’d met many times with people and heard their struggles, and sought to put things right Biblically.

Then, it took five months to gradually work through the lesser issues that inevitably arise, have people air their grievances, and make peace and repent towards each other. God has given us a tremendous amount of unity, and things are going well.

We had a backlog of baptisms and a couple of weddings. We had to work our way through updating the memberships and inducted all the new members. Finally, after all that, we held the Lord’s Supper again in each church. Nothing quite promotes the unity of a church like the Lord’s Supper. I wanted everybody to work through their issues and resolve things first, because I didn’t want anybody eating and drinking of the Lord’s table unworthily, as the warnings given in 1 Corinthians 11 are quite clear on that point.

I have done men’s training for prospective leaders and young men in the church. We have at last reached the point where the churches can appoint new deacons. It will take a lot of pressure off our “old timers” who carried the burden during the long COVID lockdowns and give them extra hands on deck to help with their duties.

I am very pleased with what God has allowed us to accomplish since my last letter. God is blessing and working, and it is my great privilege and pleasure to be involved in what God is doing out at the Nakivale Refugee camp in our four churches.

Sorry for the long delay in communication. I am using Truth Social now for all my microblogging needs, under the username @missionuganda. There is a link in the upper right, along with a link to our Rumble account (an alternative to YouTube). I regularly update the Truth account, so that’s the most current method of communication.

God bless you!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 01-10-2022

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Happy New Year!

We survived our return trip to Uganda at the end of November. We packed up all our belongings. Got our COVID tests. Said our goodbyes. Then we began our trek. As you can imagine, the already complicated process of international travel is even more difficult now. Uganda requires a negative PCR test within 72 hours of when you ARRIVE in the country. Subtracting the 24 hours to get the results, and the almost 24 of actual travel time, the window in which to do this is very small.

The lab failed to get our results back in time, but the airline allowed us to fly anyway, since Amsterdam allows entry on a vaccine card. They also did not charge us for the extra pieces of baggage we had! Praise God!

Our results still had not come when we arrived in Amsterdam and we were stranded there for almost 24 hours because of it. We were finally able to talk to someone at the lab in America and get the results emailed to us. The airline moved mountains on our behalf. We caught a flight to Paris, spent 12 hours in the airport there, before getting a flight to Nairobi, Kenya. By this time, the 72 hours had passed. However, Kenya’s timeframe allows 96 hours, and we were within that. Once we landed in Kenya, we were home free. We were able to get on our short flight to Entebbe.

Needless to say, by the time we reached Entebbe 4 days after we left, we were beat. After we passed a second PCR test in the airport, we were finally allowed to go. Because of the flight changes, our luggage did not arrive with us. They sent it on the next KLM flight from Amsterdam. We eventually got our things a day late, minus one piece that had inexplicably been unloaded in Kigali, Rwanda (a connecting stop on our original flight). It arrived the following week and the airline had it sent to us in Mbarara. God blessed, and only one small item in our luggage was broken despite all the changes and delays!

I had reserved a room in a guest house, so we went there, unloaded our stuff, got showers, and went to bed for the first time in almost 4 days.

We waited an extra couple of day for our missing piece of luggage, but finally left with its status unknown, and headed for Mbarara. What a relief and a joy to finally crest that last hill and cast our eyes upon the mountain valley that holds the home we had not seen for so very long!

The guy I hired to keep the place in our absence had worked very hard to make the place beautiful for our return. He did a great job.

After two years of sitting empty, except for bugs and geckos, the house was a catastrophe. It took two days to get it clean enough for us to be able to sleep there. Two rats had been living in my office, the store room and the boys’ room. They had made a terrible mess. Many things needed to be fixed, both in the house and on the vehicle, as they always do when we’ve been gone. We pushed through and got it all done at last.

Meanwhile, I had to resolve problems out at the camp. Some rebels in one of our churches took advantage of the Corona lockdowns to attempt a takeover of the church. It didn’t work. After everything at home was more in order, I met with the camp officals, and our members, and our deacons and got it squared away. Pray for continued peace.

We held a Christmas service at Sangano the day after Christmas. We brought all the churches in to the service. I preached. Greeted everybody. It was like returning to family after a long absence, for family they are. Then I baptized 65 people, young, old, and everywhere in between. God is still working in hearts all over the camp. After all of that, we had Congolese beans and rice and stew, which I had not tasted in 2.5 years. It was a great day and God was glorified.

Pray for us. I have a lot of work to do. Every permit has expired. Everything has to be renewed, including the NGO which expires in May. I am facing a sea of paper work in the coming months.

Pray for our churches. We have a lot of teaching and training to do to get everybody back up to speed. In the 1.5 years of the lockdown, they were allowed to attend church for five months. That, more than anything else, contributed to the troubles, along with standard human sinfulness.

Pray for our backlog of building projects. I plan on starting the first of the construction projects, rebuilding the Isanja church building, in the next weeks. Any financial help with these project would be appreciated, both by us and our church people.

We live in uncertain times. As always, we continue to serve the risen Savior, plan the best we can, react to the unexpected as best we can, and continue to occupy until He returns. God is still working in lives all over the world and we feel privileged to be part of His work.

God bless and keep you.