I’ve been averaging one blog post per month, and though I just posted one two days ago, I felt led to write one today. I was driving to our land today and just spending time with God reflecting on what He has done for us and how blessed I am. I felt compelled to write a post about how God has blessed me, my family and our ministry since we began this journey over one year ago. This may get a bit long and I’m sure I’m going to miss a ton of people that have blessed us along the way, so I apologize in advance for both of those items.

Here are some ways that God has blessed me/us in this journey (in no particular order):

First up is my beautiful bride, Vicki. She is an absolute blessing to me, to our kids and to people around her. She has been perfectly willing to give up on the dreams we had for our life and move to the other side of the world to be obedient to God and to serve His people. God has been so good to me to give her to me as a wife!

Meegan Weaver Photography http://meeganweaver.com

Next are my awesome kids, Paytyn, Morgan and Olivia. They are a blessing from God as well and were willing to give up friends, family, good candy, McDonalds, basketball, volleyball, softball, band, comfort, etc. I’m blessed that Paytyn and Morgan have professed Jesus as their Lord and Savior. They have adjusted so well here and I couldn’t ask for a better girls!

Meegan Weaver Photography http://meeganweaver.com

God blessed us during our transition to Uganda by allowing us to sell our home, replace the roof, sell our vehicles, sell most of our possessions and raise the money we needed for startup funds and monthly support.

Our home church, Faith Baptist Church-Wichita Falls, has been a huge blessing as well! The church as a whole supports us prayerfully and financially and the members of Faith Baptist make up a large percentage of our total monthly support. Whenever we have a need, they have stepped up to meet it. They have sent a team here to check on us and bless us (more on that in a bit). Honestly, we wouldn’t be here serving without Faith Baptist Church! With their help, we were able to raise our startup funds and be fully funded in 5 months! They are allowing me to preach and our family to speak at two other events while we are on furlough and are planning on sending 3 teams next year. Pastor Craig meets with me every other week on a video call to check on me, encourage me, and pray for me. Jeff White has been a great encourager, in fact we had a video call last night that put the wind back in my sails.

Our Sunday school class from Faith Baptist Church has been a huge blessing to us as well. They make up a large percentage of our monthly support on their own. Two of the members are on our board, they have sent us care packages, and sent us a TON of stuff with some of the visitors that have come! Some of the people in the class were instrumental in discipling me, and without them, we wouldn’t be here today.

Vicki’s parents allowed us to move in with them for 6 months after we sold our house and has allowed us to keep our car, our container and some of our old furniture at their house. Vicki’s mom is soon coming on her 3rd (yes 3rd!) trip to visit us in 14 months! They blessed us by taking us on a safari on their last visit.

My parents came to visit us as well, which is a huge feat given my dad has bad knee problems and being on a plane for that long is very hard on him. He sold his ’52 Dodge pickup to help pay for their trip to see us.

We had a team from Faith Baptist Church (Beth Edfeldt, Ben Edfeldt, and Pastor Craig Lile) come for a visit to see our ministry first-hand and to just love on us and bless us. Beth has been a huge blessing to Vicki by weekly checking in on her, asking how she can pray for her and just being a great friend. It was very good for Vicki to have Beth come and love on her for a week or so. Beth also took some great photos for us! Ben was a blessing to me by asking me all the hard questions and helping me to improve on some areas of life and ministry. Ben continues to check in on me to pray for me and ask those hard questions. Pastor Craig was a blessing to us and our kids by loving on us, praying with us and giving sound advice and exhortation. They also brought us so many goodies from the church and our Sunday school that we could have opened up a convenience store!!!

We also had Chris and Meegan Weaver come to visit and they were a huge blessing to us! They came and helped us work on the land, see our ministry, take photographs and love on us. They counseled us and helped us walk through some marital and extended family issues which was a huge blessing. Meegan took some updated family photos for us, which was very cool because she is AWESOME! She also donated some to us last year before we left for Uganda. They also blessed us with a mini-vacation after they saw how stressed and tired we were. This vacation helped our family to reconnect, refocus and reenergize. It came at exactly the right time!

Caleb and Jamie Deerinwater stopped by for a few days while they were in Uganda on a trip to check on some sponsorship kids that they work with. They were a huge blessing to us as well and took some great photos for us to use on some of our marketing. They have blessed us with a very generous donation to purchase something on our needs list! Thank you!!!

Justin Wren, a friend I met at Farming God’s Way training, also came to visit us and blessed us with his friendship.

Our Board of Directors have been a blessing as well. They include: Patrick Martin, Brad Davidson, Michael Gilmore, Scott Brooks, David Cook, Caleb Perkins, Kyle Mobley, Adam Beam, Denver Barnett, Chad Crowley, Ken Hogan, Stewart Cobb, and Adam Whitmire. They are all helpful, supportive and have blessed our ministry but I wanted to highlight a few. Patrick Martin serves as our Board President, but he also checks our post office box, makes deposits, mails things for us, handles our banking issues, motivates the board, listens to me rant and is an awesome blessing! Brad Davidson is our Board Secretary but he allowed me to drive one of his trucks for 6 months before we left after I sold my truck. He also allows me to vent and rant from time to time. Scott Brooks has donated a ton of printing and did a ton more at reduced prices for us, which is a tremendous blessing for a new organization without a marketing budget! He brings years of ministry management experience to the table as well! David Cook has designed our Heart for Uganda logo as well as a brochure. Chad Crowley has designed a logo for our Vocare Ministries organization (the name of the NGO in Uganda), and has been consulting us regarding social media and is helping us with our website. I could go on and on about all of these Board members, but just know that they are a tremendous blessing to us!

Dr. Kevin and Sharon Thomas have blessed us by allowing us to stay at their home during our upcoming furlough in addition to being huge supporters of our ministry.

Our monthly supporters are also a huge blessing to us. There are so many that I won’t name them all individually, but please know that we are so very thankful for their contributions to our ministry. We couldn’t do it without their help! We know that many families sacrifice greatly to ensure that we can minister to Ugandans and we know the responsibility that we have to use the funds in the best way possible. We don’t take this responsibility lightly!

We also have a couple of churches in addition to Faith Baptist Church that support us. First United Methodist Church in Throckmorton and First Baptist Church in Henrietta also support our efforts. We also have an organization called Completing the Task that supports our ministry. We are very blessed to have these as part of our team!

Our prayer partners! We know that there are tons of people that pray for us. We know that because we can feel them! We know that we are being lifted up because we face a huge battle here and couldn’t do it without the countless people back home praying for us. I was reminded of the fact that there are so many people lifting us up last night when I talked with Jeff White.

People who supported our purchase of the land are a huge blessing to us. We started the fundraising for the land in December thinking that it would take us a while to raise the funds, but we had the full purchase price raised in 1 month. This was mostly due to a very generous donor that donated a huge majority of the funds necessary to purchase the land. This land has already been bearing fruit by giving us an opportunity to witness to many people that are not being reached and to disciple some young men.

People who supported the purchase of a second vehicle for us are a huge blessing to us as well. I learned today that an 18 year old neighbor of our land was killed in a motorcycle accident where he was ran off the road by a truck. Riding a motorcycle to our land was my only alternative before we purchased the second vehicle. Several days of the week our van was being used by Vicki for carpool duties.

We have been blessed with some great Ugandan staff that support our mission and enable us to complete our work. I’m blown away by the faithfulness of these guys! For example, I’ve been busy this week going to the capital city to get paperwork completed for the registration of our NGO (Ugandan nonprofit), so I haven’t been able to check on our farm manager until today. I checked on him and was floored by the amount of work he was able to complete!

Our pastor here in Uganda, Pastor Terry and his wife Debbie, have been a great blessing to us a well! They have welcomed us, had us over for dinner several times, invited us to parties, showed me the ropes, given us advice, prayed for us, mentored us and countless other things. They are the real deal!

Our new friends in Uganda have also been a huge blessing to us. There are some really great people here and we have enjoyed getting to know them!

Chris Sperling, Grant Dryden, Joshua Kakande and Bill Stough have blessed me by training me and mentoring me in the Farming God’s Way practices. These guys are selfless in emptying themselves and I have learned so much from them!

Bosco Mukiibi is the general manager of an organization here in Jinja and has been a huge blessing to me in learning how to navigate culture and working with Ugandans. I’ve saved myself countless headaches by consulting with him first.

I have been blessed by a generous donor to be able to attend a Farming God’s Way In-field Mentoring session to begin my Farming God’s Way accreditation journey in South Africa later this month.

We are thankful for all the people that have taken time to send care packages, letters, notes, calls, etc. They bless us more than you know!!!

I really could go on and on and on, but I’m already over 2,100 words, so I’ll have to stop there! If I missed recognizing someone or left someone out, please forgive me as it was not intentional. I’m sure I’ll think of 50 more people that I didn’t thank as soon as I publish this.

I will be forever grateful to all of these people mentioned above and am so happy to have them as part of the Heart for Uganda team. We couldn’t accomplish our mission here without a support team back home, so I want to thank you again!

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