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This month our family celebrates our nine year anniversary of arriving on the East Africa field. We arrived in Uganda on January 5th, 2009. Our family was just Vicar Shauen and Krista at that time. Shauen's work was primarily to teach a Theological Education by Extension (pre-seminary) course to lay leaders in the Lutheran Church Mission in Uganda. At the time, our host church body had one ordained pastor, three missionary families (of which we were one), and about sixty congregations across Uganda. Pastoral candidates went to seminary in neighboring Kenya. As a vicar (intern), Shauen was committed only to an 18-month assignment in Uganda, having already spent six months of his two-year vicarage building our network of support in the States with the possibility of that vicarage assignment converting to a first call at the end of our term.
Today, the Lutheran Church of Uganda (they changed their name as they felt they came out of status as a mission into a full-fledged independent church body) has twenty ordained pastors serving 140 congregations. They have a bishop (that one pastor who was there when we first arrived - Rev. Charles Bameka), their own seminary, and LCMS missionaries serving in their midst.
These years have brought great challenges and sorrows. We lost two children to miscarriage and had several deaths in our family in the States, watching our family grieve from afar and feeling helpless. We initially dealt with government bureaucracy in one country but expanded to dealing with it in many countries and at much higher stakes. We watched field budgets shrink year after year after year and struggled with our own account. We suffered as we watched fellow missionaries in Africa leave the field until we were just a handful left. There were many, many times we almost departed the field ourselves.
But these years have also brought great joys. Our family has also grown - adding four healthy and happy boys over the last nine years. And Shauen's responsibilities have also grown (which is, indeed, a joy too) - from Vicar Shauen co-teaching the TEE class in Uganda to Shauen being responsible for a field office and work in Kenya and Tanzania (his first call) to Shauen serving as area director for eastern and southern Africa. We saw students in Shauen's TEE class go on to seminary, graduate, and now serve as leaders in the church in Uganda. Shauen made visits to refugee camps and rarely-visited congregations where he lost track of the number of baptisms being performed. Shauen has explored new relationships with emerging church bodies and had the privilege of sharing meals with bishops and presidents of church bodies much larger than the LCMS. We have seen the work grow and change as new opportunities opened up and as the LCMS emphasized sending new missionaries - there are now well over a dozen missionaries serving under Shauen. As we look back on the ministry highlights shared in our newsletters, we are amazed at what God has done - and continues to do.
This year as we work towards our ten-year anniversary of deploying to the field, we look forward to what God has in store. We look forward to watching our boys continue to grow and thrive. We look forward to working with the amazing and great missionary team that Shauen has the privilege of leading. We look forward to discovering the new opportunities God has prepared for the Gospel to be shared. We look forward to investments of time, energy, and resources "paying off" in changed hearts, baptisms, and God gathering His people into His church. This year again, God will do His mighty work here and we pray to rejoice in it.
Thank you for walking with us in this work. You are a fundamental part of this work the church has put before us. Your prayers, encouragement, and support have enabled us to survive the difficult times and to rejoice in the great times. This is your work. We are just the folks who get to do it on your behalf. Thank you for sending us and keeping us here - we love what we get to do!
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