Read our latest Prayer Letter (in Adobe PDF Format).
We thank the Lord for the privilege to serve Him in Uganda. The field is so white to harvest, but we have seen many come to Christ in the few short years that we have been there.
When we first came to the field in 2001 after two years of deputation, we joined another missionary family in the town of Soroti. For the next six years we labored there in the founding of two village churches a few miles outside of town. Teaching in the Bible institute and working with the village churches consumed most of my time while my wife Jewell primarily worked at the orphan boarding school. The school was started as a tool for church planting. We believe that the best preachers are yet to come in the training of orphan boys for the preaching ministry.
Last year God burdened our hearts to reach out and start another work. Since we had arrived in Soroti in 2001, four other missionary families had joined us there. So with that number of missionaries we felt confident in leaving the ministry in their hands allowing us to move elsewhere. After much prayer, God directed us to begin a work in the West Nile region of Arua. We arrived there in October of 2007. God has provided us 89 acres of land for the project, and we are very excited about the potential that is there. By God’s grace we have started a new church in the area and hope to open a Bible institute very soon in the training of preachers. God has given us a vision of raising up an army of preachers to go out and reach nearby Congo and Sudan along with the West Nile region where we are located.
We hope to incorporate several tools to assist in the ministry of church planting. We are strategically located to allow us to build and operate a radio station that can broadcast the Gospel into Congo and West Nile thus preparing the way for our preachers to later physically go and start churches. With the multitude of orphans on our doorstep as the result of Congo wars and AIDS, we believe that God would have us to provide a refuge for them where they could be reared up and trained for the ministry.
The land itself is a wonderful tool that has potential of producing all the food crops needed for consumption by our orphans and staff. We believe that it also has potential to provide food crops for marketing to offset overhead expenses. In short we believe that the land can be used to an extent that will allow the project to become self sustaining and ongoing long after we are physically able to be a part of the ministry.
It’s so exciting serving God in such an open field as Uganda. A great opportunity has been given us to begin a preacher-training center in West Nile that has potential to impact the lives of thousands for Christ. But as it has been often said, great potential will be reached only as God’s people willingly respond. We are asking God to send forth laborers to Arua and to join hands with us in this great work of God. To God be the glory!
