Dear Faithful Friends,
We’re in transition again! (Have we ever
not been?) Much has happened over the course of our time here and it has all
served to give us clarity into the work we are being called to do. We are
excited for new opportunities and chances to serve together with those who are
engaged in life changing work.
At
the beginning of next year we will be leaving Welcome Home Ministries and Jinja
and moving to Gulu, in northern Uganda, to work with Our Call Missions. OCM was
started by Keith and Lisa Coggin who have lived in Uganda for 15 years and have
been involved in a number of different ministries over the course of their time
here. Their focus over the past few years has been on developing a
Christ-centered, Biblical based curriculum incorporating all of the Ugandan
requirements but integrating improvements in content and teaching/learning
methods.
This curriculum, called Roots
to Fruits, was originally designed with very rural villages, having no real
access to “traditional” schools, in mind. It has however, grown in scope and
now there are schools and ministries all over the country desiring to implement
it for their students.
There is still
much work to be done in the development and refinement of the curriculum as
well as partnering with ministries to train teachers to use it.
We are excited to be joining Keith and Lisa
in this incredibly valuable work. We will join Our Call Missions in support
roles, which is were we fit best, the way God designed us to serve. Christina
is excited to help with administrative type things, assisting Lisa and managing
the financial aspects of the ministry.
We’ll be working to develop and implement sustainability and
income-generation projects to support the teachers and Village Learning Centers
in remote areas. Also, we are excited about opportunities to engage with the
real and present refugee crises coming out of South Sudan. Our Call Missions
was started with a desire, among other things, to reach into the under-served
communities of that young and struggling country and now, as a group of pastors
recently expressed, “South Sudan has come to Our Call Missions”. We eagerly
await the opportunities God will provide for us to love and serve and walk
alongside people in this difficult situation in whatever ways we can.
Lastly, joining with OCM will give us the
freedom to begin to pursue an area of service that I (Benj) have dreamed about
for a long time. I want to offer my
giftedness, skills, resources and availability to others who are serving in difficult
places- to be a servant to the servants. This type of ministry has
begun to happen organically here in and around Jinja with both large and small organizations.
However, Jinja is a very well resourced area. There are people here who are
able to do this sort of problem solving work and my thought is: If the need exists here, how much more so
in areas that do not have the resources to meet these needs? Also, there
are a number of young men already connected with OCM who would be excited about
joining in this work with me and gaining some real-world skills and experience. We still don’t know exactly what this
will look like but we believe that a real need exists, that Gulu will be a great place to call our “home base”, that Our Call
Missions will be a great partner, and that God will lead and direct and receive
all the glory!
Some of what this means for us in a practical
sense is that over the course of the remainder of this year we need to join
with a new “sending organization” that will handle the administration of our
funding as well as essential things like health insurance, training, and
accountability. Also, we will need to begin building a house. It is our intent
that, Lord willing, this will be a long-term situation for us and, in order to
have some long-term security and financial stability, building a house is the
best option. The land we will build on is owned free and clear by OCM and we
hope to be able to put up phase 1 of a small, simple dwelling for about $16,000
that we can call home. There are also a number of projects that will need to
happen on the OCM property to better accommodate the ministry we hope to do and
we’ll need to purchase a better vehicle. We are trusting God to provided what
is needed to do all of this. Lastly, our intention is to make a trip back to
the states next spring to share all of the details of what this new venture
will look like with you, our faithful friends and supporters. We don’t have
dates yet, but it will likely be sometime between when the snow melts and when
it starts to get cold again. (Our blood may have thinned a bit since we’ve been
here. Turns out 60 degrees is
really
cold!)
Again, (and again, and again) thank you for
your support and encouragement! We are blessed by it, God is honored by it and
lives are changed because of it! Please pray and seek the Lord and if He would
have you continue supporting this new ministry and direction. Please pray for
us as we also seek the Lord and His direction and leadership in all of these
details. Please stay tuned, as more information and specifics will be coming
over the next 8 months. Please be blessed as you grow closer and closer to our
faithful Savior and loving Father day by day!
Grace and Peace,
Benj, Christina, Izaac, and Ellie
