This is a post about “Me!” No, not “Me’ but Him! It is about God & His amazing Greatness; His Glory & that I get to participate! Since we gave up the American way of life & moved here we have lived in a massive paradigm shift. I have been doing what I had wanted to do for many years: Serve the Lord full time or translated: Live out the desires of my heart as Psalm 37:4 states. Walking away from corporate America & the security of a steady paycheck & the comforts of an advanced society into this was like walking from night into day or going from earth to standing on the moon!

As I have mentioned many times here, we have received far more blessings for our sacrifices than we could have ever hoped for. Uganda is our home now & each day we wake up blessed no matter what struggles we are facing. One big blessing is other areas of ministry besides our aka KIDS. I have begun partnering with the Uganda Baptist Union.

I am assisting in training leaders, teaching pastors in the areas of strengths that I have as well as being a full time preacher. George, who is the pastor of our home church is an amazing man of God. With me doing the teaching, he is getting the chance to devote more of his time as the western region overseer.

He is wrapping me up in this mission of growing leaders. He can spend more time with the pastors of the church plants he has established in outlying villages. We have been slowly visiting these churches the past 7 months & I have to say it is humbling to preach in these small but vibrant churches where having 4 walls to meet in is a luxury. I could never have dreamed I would be doing this. I get to smile as I watch the Lord work! While I am helping raise up leaders, the Lord is teaching me & I also learn a lot from these people in terms of their culture, strengths & struggles.

All of this is pushing me to dive deeper into continuing my own education, be in the Word constantly & also pass along my experience and training I received in America; training many of these pastors and leaders do not have. Bible colleges, while inexpensive by American standards, are expensive for the people here.

So much of their training is done by other pastors who also struggle since they lack a lot of resources. So teaching in the areas of exegetical & homiletical study, sermon delivery, effectively leading Bible studies & leadership training is needed. It didn’t take long to realize that there are some serious gaps that can lead to false teaching and legalism. The Lord lit a fire in my heart in this regard & like every other area I have ever served, I saw my own inadequacy. My inadequacy is His opportunity to bring glory to Himself as the Holy Spirit works! I get goose bumps seeing the constant intervention by the Spirit when I preach or teach.

Our role here is NOT to change the culture. We do severe damage attempting to drag the American way of doing things into a country in need of change. What we set out to do, is assist the culture, assisting the churches to better live out the Great Commission. In some ways, they do that much better here than in America.

I mention all of this because when we were called here, we both knew that we wouldn’t be here just doing one thing; we knew God would fill our lives with rich opportunities. To be honest, I have struggled some with understanding what the Lord would have me doing. After a lot of prayer & time, that mystery is unfolding. Just as it has been with serving God in my past, it is far different and greater than I would have thought. I am SO unworthy of the gift of being able to serve here with these amazing people!

Oh, speaking of roles, this “NON-Home Depot-DIY Dude” is learning to become one. Debra has “encouraged” me to grow in this regard. I help out on the property doing extremely dangerous tasks such as replacing door handles / locks in both units that tended to lock occupants in the bathrooms. This required chisels and hacksaw blades which was fun.

Clearly this is WAY outside of my comfort zone. Changing out security entrance light fixtures, doing electrical work & Debra’s newest project for me: Altering shelves in the closets which will require (GASP!) a tape measure, saws, nails, additional wood & hammering!

Yep, moving halfway around the world to a foreign country where you are the minority, where you face discrimination, some racism, occasional favoritism, unreliable utilities & internet & unusual challenges, I get the opportunity to daily have my comfort boundaries destroyed. Life couldn’t be better!