There have been a number of moments in the month I've spent in Rukungiri where I just have to stop and soak in the fact that this is my life. Things like listening to the boys sing in Runyankole and knowing that the God they worship is the same here and in America. Or walking to and from ministry holding hands with sweet schoolchildren and telling them that Jesus loves them. Or turning the Geography class you're not equipped to teach into preaching the Gospel for 40 minutes.    Things like these have become such a part of my everyday life here that...

   What does it take to do such a thing? A four month trip to Africa. To be honest I was not prepared for what I would find here. I was not prepared to see things for what they really are.    Now you may be asking what does that mean? Before I came to Africa I had an image in my head of what the world looked like… from the comfort of my own home. I had been flipped over before, when I went to Marine Corps boot camp, but never turned inside out. I have been witness now to the fact that influences of the flesh and satan look the same everywhere, and missions...

God is absolutely ridiculous. In the past two days so many things have happened i don't even know where to begin. I suppose the beginning would be a swell place… 7 of us from the team had to go get our visas renewed because at the airport they only gave us 1 month. We were supposed to get 3. Anyways, we got in our driver's car at 8:30 am thursday after devotions at the school anticipating 4 four hour trip to Mbarara. When we got there then we found out they wouldn't do it for us. They said we would have to drive to Kampala to do it. Another 4 hours away… We got to...

After being in Uganda for about a month, there have been so many amazing opportunities for ministry. I’ve been able to teach math and science classes, preach a sermon last Sunday morning on Mark 9:42-50 and start to build relationships with the students of Makobore High School.   Preaching in church was extremely nerve wrecking but also incredibly encouraging and rewarding spiritually. Mark 9:42-50 says, “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your...

Sometimes God blesses me in the most interesting ways; I feel his presence in the pouring rain, dancing around in worship with my team, laughing with our new-found Ugandan friends, singing for and playing with orphan children, teaching English to high school boys…God knows my heart so well! Everyday he provides me with a new and incredible joy.    We officially started our ministry on the 4th. We are working at the Makobore all boys high school where we play sports, teach, clean, and just hang out with them. The beauty of our ministry is that we have no guidelines; we...

Spend about 20 minutes around our team and chances are you'll hear the phrase "comfort zone" a time or two. I knew that picking up and moving thousands of miles away to rural Uganda with a bunch of strangers would undoubtedly involve stepping out of mine, but it seems that every day there is a new lesson to be learned about abandoning familiarity and comfort to follow God into the hard places. For starters, I never expected that my ministry here would involve playing volleyball with a bunch of high school boys. If I had known that as I was signing up for this trip, I...