Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Happy New Year to all of my friends and family following! I'm confident 2018 will be a year full of God's blessings and restoration.

Over the Christmas holiday, Sarah and I traveled to eastern Uganda to visit the resource center of a missionary and family friend of our home church in Kentucky named Tim Carson. Tim is the international director of a literacy mission called Spirit Led Educational Ministries, or SLEM, deep in the village of Namukuma (slemafrica.org), and teaches children English, and presents the gospel, through life activities and resources at his center.
View from the Resource Center in Namukuma
The first few days we were there, we had multiple dance parties, lots of good meals and presented many children with gifts from America for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we cooked a meal for the children from the village and some of their families and had a great time celebrating and teaching about the birth of Jesus and why it is so important. Christmas Day began when all 18 of us, including friends of friends, village children, Tim's 3 adopted sons and Sarah and I, were seated in the living room ready to open our presents.

Christmas morning crew
A boy named Borgie adorned with his Christmas presents
The day was spent loving each other with gifts and good food, and learning about Jesus more and more. In the afternoon, we welcomed a muslim couple into our celebrations and had a blast dancing and spending the day in their presence!

Christmas Day crew
The week after we returned from Buikwe District back to Kabale in the southwest, we prepared for PAG Central branch's annual January conference, where speakers from all around Uganda come and speak and hundreds of people from town are able to hear about Jesus and be transformed! During this conference, I helped the ushering team as we welcomed people inside our church building. From Wednesday Jan 10th to Sunday Jan 14th, we packed the church with people and worship and great speakers! Many people heard who Jesus was clearly for the first time and surrendered their lives to Him, and many people were also healed of ailments and spiritual bondage that gripped their lives or the lives of their family. The reality of freedom and salvation became something tangible for the first time for people in Kabale, and nothing could contain the joy that we had because of it!

PAG Central also celebrated 25 years of God's provision and faithfulness since the church began, and unveiled their vision to build a vocational school for children over the next 25 years.

As these plans for the church unfold, please pray with all of us in Kabale that God would provide the funds for their school and that God's will would be done through the PAG church here to reach people with the message of hope in a broken world. Also, please pray for Tim's ministries at SLEM as they seek God in how they can grow and prosper and for the provision of passionate teachers for children in Namukuma. The Spirit of God is among these people in a powerful way, and I am incredibly blessed to be an active part of their ministries and God's work halfway across the world from my home!