It's helped that along the way God has given us enough of a vision and fruit bearing to make it encouraging to say, yes, this is why we're here. For instance, at the end of every pastor's retreat that we have, we give opportunity for the pastors to share, you know, how The time has blessed them and what they've gotten from it. And we always, every single time, look at each other afterward and say, this is why we are here. Because you see the encouragement that they have received, not only from the times of teaching, but from the resources. So that kind of thing has really given us the grace to stay. And then most recently, grace in times of danger. I mean, I can promise you that all of the dangers that we have experienced over there, they have been a hundred times worse in my imagination than in reality. Because again, God gives you grace in your time of need. He doesn't give it to you when you're imagining the dangers or thinking about what's ahead. He gives you grace in your time of need. And so that has been a real blessing to me to see that played out in a very real way. Before we went to Uganda, I mean, I promise you, I was having frequent nightmares about snakes and poisonous snakes of all kinds. And when we went there, yes, there were snakes. But they were not filling my room like they were in my nightmares. Yeah, there were snakes. But I can say that fear of those things has not been an overwhelming deal. God has given grace in the time of need. And even as we experienced the tribal conflict that, you know, put us kind of in the direct line of fire, I know that if I had imagined that, I would have felt more fear than I felt in the actual experience of it. And I know that's because God gave grace in our time of need. And that also gives me great hope as I look forward, because we still are in an area that is a tinderbox. At any time, conflicts can rise up. Bad things can happen. We live close to an area. We've been going to an area called Yume, which is, you know, high majority are Islamic, and they're very radical in their thinking. and they're getting more so. So, I mean, it's not, to me, far out of the realm of possibility to think that they could become so irritated with us that they could send, you know, somebody to do something. I mean, it's just one of those things, but I'm also, it's giving me hope that as I tend to imagine, you know, things that could happen, that if they do happen, I know that Jesus, our high priest, will give us grace in our time of need. So that's the thing that has been the most, probably the biggest blessing, is just learning that our high priest is faithful, he sympathizes with us, and he does give us grace in our time of need. Thank you. Well, the greatest gift and grace to me in this ministry is my wife, Carol. We've been married for 33 years, and it's such a blessing to have her there with me. I went many times before we moved, and the grace of God and having her there as a helpmate has been such a precious blessing for us there. The Lord has really opened the door for us. He's made a way for us to minister in Northwestern Uganda and in the area of South Sudan and the Congo. Northwestern Uganda, just a little bit of geography about it first, is an area that Idi Amin was from, who was a Muslim. And in the late 80s, he took control of Uganda and was very bad, emphasis on the bad part. And then after he was thrown out of power, As it is in Africa, in most places in Africa, it's a, if you do something bad to my tribe, we get you back. And so when he was kicked out of power, the people in Central and South Uganda had a lot of retribution that went on in Northwestern Uganda, which is also called the West Nile region of Uganda. and did a lot of physical violence towards the people. And now even up to this day, they've withheld that area back as far as medical things, education, roads, structure, the whole works. And so Uganda is you know, Central and South Uganda is doing better than Northwestern Uganda. As far as the gospel goes, Central Kampala area, South Uganda, there's many more Christians and evangelicals there. However, in Northwestern Uganda, where we're at, Christianity is few and sparse. And the vision really came into our hearts. You know, we always, as Carol mentioned, she grew up as a missionary child in India. Her parents were missionaries there and her grandparents. And we went in 81, right after we were married, thinking that this is where we were going to be. And our oldest son was born there. They wouldn't give us visas, so he had to go back, and we weren't ready. We needed to be established in a local church and trained and matured. And we looked back, We know from the beginning, I can honestly say growing up I grew up on a farm in Iowa and did construction work in my 20s and went back to school in my 30s and got my master's degree in my 40s. We look back at all these events in our lives and she became an RN and we say, God you're preparing us for this very place that you have sent us. Yes, we have gray hair, and it's not just for young people to be missionaries, that God prepares us, and we feel like God has been getting us ready for what we've been doing there, and we're so grateful. We're so very, very grateful, and it has been difficult, and as you said, you know, we were blessed with a fourth grandchild that was born While we were back, the Lord held it back so that two days after we were back, a little bear of grace was born. And so, yes, it's been difficult to leave grandchildren and children, but God's grace has been in the middle. And we count it a joy. Sometimes people will say, well, they talk as if they feel sorry for us. Oh, you're gone. Yeah, but this is a privilege and it's a joy to be there in this area serving the Lord. And the Lord opened up the way for us to get land. And when I went up there the first time in 2007, I saw that the Lord was saving many, many people. We'd go into the villages, and the Jesus film was being shown throughout the village areas, and people were coming to faith. And I asked one of the pastors at that time, I said, okay, this is great, this is great, but now what do you do with them? Because the Bible, and I'm going to be sharing a little bit later, it says, go therefore and make disciples, not just converts, but disciples. And so discipleship is the key thing, and so we're called to do that. And the pastor told me, well, we don't have many pastors here. We just look at who maybe is the most mature among these people that are saved, and we assign him as becoming the pastor. Well, that's good and bad, of course. There's a lot of passion and zeal, and as I traveled up there more, saw the need that there really needed to be discipleship training. And that's how Reaching Africa is Unreached was visioned and birthed. It was because of that to say, we want to come alongside people that God is raising up as leaders, and we want to come alongside you and strengthen you so that you can be A blessing to your congregation and your congregation can be a multiplying congregation. And so that was our vision in heart is to come alongside the evangelicals that are in that area and say we want to be a strength and a help to you. And the Lord opened the door to buy land and we got 17 acres there now. And in the last two years, we've basically cleared the brush, and we've built a guest house and a training center we call the Hall of Terranus after Acts 19, 9 and 10, which I'll be sharing a little bit more about later as well, in the service, where we can come and we bring pastors in, church leaders in, evangelists in, and we just stay with them four days. And we're with them four days, and we have nine sessions, and we study the fundamentals of the faith, the basic solid groundwork areas that you have to really believe if you're a Christian. And then if you're a pastor, you need to be able to teach that to your people. with the idea that you're teaching it to your people. And out of those people, then they're going to go and teach others. Because I really believe that discipleship is the key. Multiplication is the key in reaching the northwestern part of Uganda, reaching Austin, Texas. discipleship is the key and God has blessed us in the opportunities to be able to do that and we're looking to continue to do that. We had a container that left in August of 2013 and it finally got to our place unloaded at the first week of February 2014. It left, and it went, it made it to Kampala, and it was loaded full of literature and other things, and we got it through customs, but it finally made it there. Praise God, it made it there, and it's set. We had 1,100 of these global study Bibles that were in it. We had 3,000 or 4,000 books from authors you'd all be familiar with, R.C. Sproul, John Piper. George Gilbert, through the Gospel Coalition International Outreach, they supplied those. And so we're able, when they come, we're able to give them a packet of books as well. And we teach them how to use the study Bible as well. And the blessing is, Because we have this question a lot. Well, it's in English, yes. But Uganda and South Sudan was under the British for a long time. And so even now, they do their education in English. And so most people, most pastors will have varying levels of ability with English. And so that's why the English literature is still very, very helpful for them. And we're looking to spread out in our Moyo area. Italian Catholic missionaries came into that area in 1914, I think it was, and so it's predominantly Roman Catholic, maybe 90%. The Bennett's Gospel track is, we went through that real fast, by the way, we need to get more in that area, the Moyo area, but we go 50 miles, or not even 50 miles, 25 miles to the west, and we go to Yumbi. And Caboclo, which is the heart of where Idi Amin grew up, that's anywhere from 95% to 99% Islamic. And then we have Obungi that we're working. So our strategy is we're in Moya, we bring pastors in from these areas. We've had like almost 50 pastors and evangelists from Yumbi come in, for instance, but we also want to establish branches there in Yumbi and Obungi and Moyo so that we can have areas where we can go to them because most probably, I think it's safe to say 99% of the pastors have to work, they have their own gardens and they can't get away for long periods of time or can't even get away. So when we bring them we actually transport them to our place, we feed them and upkeep so that they can actually come. We want to have outreach places in these areas as well. And so our ministry is a discipleship ministry, literature ministry. The Lord has opened up avenues also to do medical things because as I said that area has been held back. medically speaking, and so when people give specific money for medical needs, we've been able to locate children with cleft palates. There's been two that have been operated on, and we just, there's places in Kampala, which is south about 300 some miles, that has hospitals there, will do the surgeries free, but they never can have the surgeries because these people in the west now can't get there. And so what we do is we transport them to Kampala, and then in their hospitals they have to pay for their own upkeep and so forth. We help them that way. And so there's been money given so that we've been able to do that with cleft palates. And by the way, that's been very effective in our outreach, too, because one of the cleft palate children is from a Muslim family. And when you help a Muslim family, you're helping the Klan. you're helping the village, and you're helping the whole community. And so it's a real witness for Christ and an avenue to reach out. Club feet and drilling of some wells and things like that to the Lord. So the Lord has opened that part up too as a ministry for us. We praise God and thank you for your prayers. Keep praying for us. I have just a short video. It's kind of an overview. We have till what time, Max? Okay, so if we maybe show a video and then if there's maybe some questions, is that okay, too, after that? Let's see if I can make this work. Let's get the volume. And in the first part of the video, the first pictures go back to 2006. in 2007, and you'll actually see one clip of the books that the pastors get in here as well. Okay, let's see how we do. Can you all hear that? Okay. Reaching Africa's Unreached's vision and goal is to come alongside the church here in North Uganda, South Sudan, Northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and even regions to the north with the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what we want to do here at Reaching Africa's Unreached, is to strengthen God's people, primarily pastors and evangelists, church leaders, with the gospel and the fundamentals of the faith. They can go back to their congregations and strengthen their congregations and be a multiplying congregation to go out into their own villages that are unreasonable to gossip. you hold us up out of sin. And through Jesus Christ, we've been brought into a relationship with a holy God. And that's something worth praising him on. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I want to thank God so much for this organization, RAU, that has come to our place. So I want to pray that you can partner with them and bring for us the gospel so that you strengthen us. First thing is we need to know, like in 2 Timothy 2.2, that we first need to be told so that we can be able to tell others. arouse so much that we are able to tell others what we are learning right now. But it's not yet enough. We feel that we need to be strengthened and we need to be empowered by such lessons, which will be a blessing of God. Thank you so much. Now, I thank God. After 27 years, God brought Jacob Lee, the family, to be as my right hand, training the people of God for the kingdom of God. I just want to say thank you very much. for what you're doing here, and God bless you more and more. Also, send us more books. We need the Bibles. We need other materials. They are very, very useful. God bless you. This is a sad day here in a forgy right next to Reaching Africa Sunreef. This is a church that's about a quarter of a mile from us, an Anglican church. And there's been trouble on the border here. We're just a couple kilometers from the border between the South Sudanese and the people in Moyo. And the people in Moyo marched by today. About 15 Tukalus have been burned. It's a nice church where around 50 people meet and worship the Lord. Just making this video to document it and then also to ask for your prayers for this area. It's a tinderbox right now. you We're so grateful for how the Lord has opened up the door for the gospel in these places. I don't know if there's any questions that you may have at this time. We have, what, five minutes left? We have plenty of time. Plenty of time, okay. Yes, sir? Do you have any copies of Christians? No, sir, no. In our area primarily is the evangelical, or to quote DeBorn again, it's a term they use there. The Anglicans have been there the longest. We work closely with the Anglican Church in the Umbi area. The Pentecostal Church has grown very rapidly there with some of the good things and some of the real bad things. The prosperity gospel has come in there a lot. And there are a number of small Baptist groups working there. So depending on which area we go into, those kind of groups have been. I would estimate that evangelicals, churches like Dayspring, are less than 2% in the area. And if you would bring in the reform distinctive, it would be far, far less. So the door is wide open. You can drive in areas for hours, as much as we could drive from Austin to Seguin, where we grew up, and be no churches. And you might find a pocket of churches here and there. uh... like in the Umbi area you'll find uh... we go into the Anglican churches because Anglican churches have been primarily working in Umbi and you go and we've had fellowships of six hundred people but it's like a little oasis in the midst of uh... the muslims there we've been able to translate uh... john piper's gospel track quest for joy into a ringa and give it right out on Umbi in Umbi street right next to the mosque and because it's in it's in a ringa And it has pictures from Yumbi, these Muslims. It's just a glorious sight to see an Iman reading a John Piper track in his own language. And we've done door-to-door, it's not really door-to-door, it's tukalu-to-tukalu, or hut-to-hut in Yumbi itself, right around them, and had some very, very engaging conversations with them. But the Lord is, not as much. We need to keep praying for him. He was drawing closer. We had one of our workers who was a Muslim imam who was a young fellow who was sent actually from Yumbi to our area in the mosque and we were hiring him for physical work and at the same time giving him gospel tracts. literature, and there's also a Boda driver that was doing the same thing, but I think the Muslims were getting afraid, and they bought him a motorcycle, and now he's doing taxi service. My theory is that they thought he was getting too close to us, but we still see him occasionally, and we're still praying that God will open his heart. Yes? How close were you to being actually attacked there when we were praying for you? How close was it? We were right there in the middle of it. Literally, I mean literally, Richard, right in the middle of it. Because we're like a couple kilometers from the border. And just a little bit of background, maybe some, there was, it was just a tribal conflict. Cuckoos from South Sudan are on the South Sudan border side and Madis are on the Ugandan side and they've been mixing and intermingling but they were not getting along with each other. Some political things happened and so much so that they started rioting and burning huts down, they burned the church down. That church is only a quarter mile from us and one night we had we had two attempted breaches on our compound, yeah. One with gunfire. And so we were praying and we couldn't leave because we had up to, I think one night, 26 or 28 women and children there that they had no place to go. They really had no place to go because in some situations they were cuckoo women married to Madi men or Madi women married to cuckoo men and so they didn't have any place to go. Tribalism is an ugly, ugly sin. It's one of the devil's worst. That's the whole reason that South Sudan is fighting even now. after they got their independence in Rwanda, the Tutsis and the Hutus killing each other. And so there's still tension there. It didn't look like we were even going to be able to leave for a while, but it calmed down somewhat. They brought soldiers in, although we have gotten word from our coworkers that the tensions are increasing again. So please keep that in prayer. Yes, sir. quite a few surgeries on people. And the famine was so bad over there that these kids never got in a vehicle. Anytime they saw a vehicle, they ran from it because the children who were orphans were killed. They were hunted down and killed for food competition. How bad is it still there in the way of the famine? Famine is not so bad there now, although with the conflict just across the border in South Sudan, because of all the fighting, they haven't been able to grow as many crops. And so the hardship is there. And they have refugee camps for people in our Ugandan side from South Sudan. Fortunately, You know, there hasn't been a drought as far as weather and things like that, because it is pretty much hand to mouth. I mean, if your crops fail in your season, then you don't have food to eat. And the Lord is, in his common grace, has kept the rains going. So it's not that bad. The history is there. Just south of us in Ajumani, they still have large camps conflict there, and the UN is involved, and there are lots of ministries that send food there. So there is kind of a mixture. Like right where we live, it's pretty much a Garden of Eden, and everything grows well, and there's been enough rain. But I think it's kind of like if you go a little bit to the north in South Sudan, In the 90's it was real bad in our area as well because Joseph Coney who was a warlord in that area was the same type of person who would go into the villages of our area and we have first hand accounts where he'd go in and slaughter the adults and take the children and make them into his soldiers. But he was chased out in 2006 after a peace accord was signed in 2005 and so he's somewhere Central African Republic or Congo. Yes? How many people have you actually seen come to the Lord through your evangelism and the pastors that you've trained to evangelize? About how many have you seen come to the Lord? That's a good question. I mean, we're primarily working with pastors. When we do evangelism, we go into the Yumbi, like we went to Yumbi that time for the door-to-door evangelism. We broke up in groups, four groups. And at that time, in my group, we talked to many, but there wasn't a single conversion. I think we planted a lot of seeds. Another group, there was like four, and another one, there were six in that outing. And then when we do outdoor, we do always that associated with a local church where we go in. We had the Land Cruiser, which has been a real blessing. George Whitfield style, I got a platform on top of the Land Cruiser, we drive right into the village markets and we preach from the top of the Land Cruiser. And a lot of these areas, especially the Muslim areas, they're often the distances listening, and we've had it where in one open market we had like, was it 18 I think it was? But that was a really, that was a move, in other places we don't see any come to the Lord. but you know we're there hoping and praying that the Lord is planting a seed in their heart and then probably working with the local church then to disciples and a lot of them come up afterwards quietly when they're not being watched by other Muslims and have lots of questions and especially the women their common thing is well we want to follow Christ but we're afraid of our husbands. Yeah. in evangelism, and he'll write us and say, I'm meeting with so-and-so and doing one-on-one discipleship, and that there are other Muslims, too, that want to profess Christ and are just afraid, is what people are saying. But I think that's our biggest hope and goal, is to try to strengthen the people that live there so that they can have that one-on-one evangelism, because you don't want somebody being saved and then just being left to their sins. That's why we're always working with the pastoral group. The Jesus film was great, but there's been a lot of evangelism, people going in and evangelizing, people get saved, and then there's no follow-up, there's no discipleship. It's brought a lot of error in different extremes, especially in the Moyo area. That's where we're really emphasizing on our part, you know, the discipleship of karma things. Is there any, mostly you're ministering to Muslims, but is there any tribal traditions in worship like animism and other things like that that you have to overcome? That's mixed into it all. Even in the Islamic areas, they have their tribalism, animism, We've seen witch doctors saved. We've been actually in their stones. I've seen where their stones, where they do the sacrificing. And he has a crucifix right on his neck. And so in our area, it's primarily Roman Catholics, like 95% Roman Catholics. But then you go to asylum, and it's Islamic. And then you go to Obungi, and there's a lot of witchcraft. Witchcraft and animism is, in that area, stronger. And that's predominant even among Christians thinking. Some even born-again Christians, you find out, oh, they went to the witch doctor, you know, for some problem. Or they think there's a certain mountain that if they go to that mountain. Yeah, that's what the more Pentecostal ones, that you go to this prayer mountain and that type of thing. Yes? Jacob, are the local Christian pastors that you're discipling in danger or experiencing persecution from Muslims or other groups there? Yes. And especially the Yumbi area, there was a pastor that was a couple months ago shot. and his wife, and in 2006, in UNB, two American missionaries were killed there, which is not too long ago. And in our area, in the past, the Roman Catholics have actually teamed up with the Muslims against the Evangelicals, which is a strange combination, but it's all because they're afraid of losing power and grip. They haven't done that so much recently, but they've changed their strategies to put in more gospel-type songs, but it's still pre-Reformation, Roman Catholic, and they will beat people up. And our pastor who worked with Obungi has been beaten and his life threatened. We have some land that we bought there and his life is threatened. And he's actually a member of parliament that's doing the threatening. And so we're having to deal with him because we think of Obungi and Yumbi and Moyo being the triangular parts that we want to really set up as headquarters. And so pray for Obungi and his name is Godfrey and he has physically been beaten, yes. What about threats to you personally? Not that we ever hear about, but I know that we're connected with all of that. And like Paul with his Roman citizenship, being an American has some great advantages. I mean, the police and the military are trying to look out for us a lot. Of course, they're always looking for favors, which I do certain things. nice pocket knifes back and flashlights and things like that for them. But we haven't felt that. And when we went to Obungi, the police would not let me go into the area where we bought land because they were worried for me there. I think indirectly, there is a greater fear of Americans there, even though we're the only ones in our area. In South Sudan, across the border, there's an American lady. But keep praying, that's always a possibility. What's worse, though, is things like malaria. And the Lord has blessed us. We're not taking any malaria meds, because we didn't want to for 15 months. We've been popping a pill every day, and we didn't want to do that. And the Lord has not gotten malaria once. I got it one time. And so that's one of our main issues. Malaria. And by the way, Ebola is way on the other side. I think you all know your geography. I tell people that in Texas, you're closer to Ebola than we are in northwestern Uganda. I ran out of time, I think. We encourage any of you during our fellowship time before the worship, if you are interested to come and talk with the Jacobs, they're gonna be speaking in our worship service today. And so we just absolutely rejoice their ability to come in. Let's go to the Lord and ask his blessing. brought Jacob and Carol here this day. We ask that you would help us to see here in Dayspring what we can do and how we can help. Bless us now, Holy Father. Come and be with us as we bring worship to you in the coming hour. help our hearts and our thoughts to be putting away the cares and concerns of this world, and to remember the great grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our supporter and who is our great high priest. Bless us now, Holy Father, in your blessed name. Yeah.