Carol and I hope you all had a blessed time with family and friends this Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is one of those American holidays we miss because of such fond memories of past times with family and friends. We are grateful for all your prayers for our journey back to our home at Reaching Africa’s Unreached (RAU). Thank you! This last trip was one of our easiest. We, along with 13 tubs full of resources, one suitcase and four carry ons, made it from Austin to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Kigali Rwanda  and to Entebbe Uganda with little disruption or unwanted events. We spent a few days in Entebbe and then flew to Arua, which is the largest city in our West Nile area, where we took care of some business. The next day, we journeyed for four hours on mostly dirt roads to RAU. We are settled and back on Ugandan time which is 9 hours ahead of Central Standard Time. One of our greatest joys has been to sleep in our own bed. During our travels Stateside, we slept in 13 different beds. One week we were in four different beds! It has been good to be reunited with Paul George, Zorah and Josiane and some of our Ugandan and Sudanese friends and to “get back in the saddle again“. The rest of our co-workers and friends we will soon see too, good Lord willing.

 I am happy to tell you that according to the Uganda Ministry of Health, it seems the spread of Ebola in the country has slowed. Thank you for your prayers! Please continue to pray that it quickly dies out and no further suffering occurs. Because of a possible quarantine of those returning to America from Uganda, we needed to pushed the Old Testament Survey retreat we would have been having right now with Ron Zeiner as well as a December Medical outreach in the Metu Mountains and here at RAU with Paul Ortega’s Pearl Haven team into 2023. Here at RAU, we are carefully following all of Uganda’s SOP’s. We have been reminded once again, as in COVID days, that our Lord has no “Plan B“ and he is ALWAYS operating on his “Plan A“. It is our responsibility to fit our plans into his and not expect him to fit his plans into ours. Our Lord is the sovereign of the Universe and our trust is in him! 

Our efforts have been focused on getting into hands of church leaders, ESV Global Study Bibles, theologically sounds books (in Arabic and English), and the 30 Kindle Fires we brought back with us from Delmar Hager’s ministry “Study To Be Approved” — all loaded with Arabic Christian resources for church leaders working in the Republic of (North) Sudan. Please continue to pray for our distribution of these resources. I know the Holy Spirit will use them to strengthen his people and build His church! RAU’s vision and mission is to strengthen local church leaders in addition to those from unreached tribes with whom we are connected. Thank you for your prayers and support in this!

“The printed page is a missionary that can go anywhere and do so at minimum cost. It enters closed lands and reaches all strata of society. It does not grow weary. It needs no furlough. It lives longer than any missionary. It never gets ill. It penetrates through the mind to the heart and conscience. It has and is producing results everywhere. It has often lain dormant yet retained its life and bloomed years later.” 

Missionary Samuel Marinus Zwemer ( 1867– 1952)

Joshua Abraham (picture above in the flowery shirt), a dear friend and co-worker, was recently with us. He is from Darfur, Sudan and lives with his family in the nearby Bidi Bidi refugee settlement. Over the years, Joshua has been a faithful co-worker fleshing out 2 Timothy 2:2 (teaching faithful people who will teach others) from South Sudan and the Republic of (North) Sudan who reside in our nearby refugee camps. He helps us determine which leaders to bring to the RAU “Hall of Tyrannus” for our module trainings. Our West Nile area of Uganda hosts the largest number of refugees on the African continent. Many of these refugees are from tribes which have very few Christians. Your prayers and support are helping us reach these unengaged and unreached language groups through these believers!

Joshua is a brother who has always made the most of every opportunity in getting the gospel out and in the training of leaders, and has initiated a program of pastoral training in the camp with two groups (all who are excellent readers of English) totaling 26. He has led each group through a set of fourteen books of which each member of the group was able to receive a copy from RAU. Five more books were supplemental. They have taken two weeks to go through each book. It was greatly encouraging to hear the stories he told of how each person has been helped along by the teaching received through these books. In December, we are planning a graduation celebration for the completion of this course of study in Bidi Bidi Zone One and we hope to record for you the stories they have to tell! Praise God!

Our other major current focus is to complete the on-campus construction in preparing for the Pryce and Langworthy families to join us as long term as missionaries. As we have written about before, they are with ABWE, the mission organization we are closely partnering with. Carol and I, as well as Zorah,Josiane and Iffeni, are moving out of the mission duplex so that the Pryce’s and Langworthy’s can make it their new home. Zorah’s family will be moving into expanded quarters in the original house which already accommodates Paul George and bunk rooms for visiting teams. Carol and I are moving into a tukulu that has been expanded into a bunkhouse and one container. I have had to put my construction experiences and thinking juices into these projects. We anticipate being in our new locations by the end of December. Any donations for this construction work would be greatly appreciated. Lord willing, the Pryce’s and Langworthy’s will be with us sometime at the end of 2023. They are currently heavily into the fundraising process. Please pray with us that hearts will be touched. Carol and I are rejoicing! We have been praying for many years for long term missionaries who would join us in walking out 2 Timothy 2:2 in our Sub Saharan region of the world.

2)  Pray for the end of Ebola. Pray for on going training beginning again Lord willing in early 2023 in RAU’s Hall of Tyrannus as well as discipleship and evangelism in the Metu Mountains, Moyo District and in nearby Obongi town and Yumbe District, which are mostly Muslim.

3) Pray for an increase in those who financially support RAU on a monthly basis. While we are very grateful for those who give to various projects we especially are grateful to those who give monthly. As the Lord has grown the ministry of RAU our monthly supporters are the ones who are carrying RAU’s Mission/Vision along. If you are not giving monthly, would you please consider helping us in that way? Please take time to peruse our website and see how we have sought to be faithful stewards of the gifts given. It is our desire that any charitable gifts that are given to R.A.U. would not compromise what you are  ALREADY giving to your local church and/or to other cross-cultural foreign missionaries. At this link you can read about RAU’s philosophy on missionary giving and how to give—> https://reachingafricasunreached.org/donations/

The greatest evil is having the gospel and not doing everything within our power to get it to those who do not have it!

Sowing seeds of love and kindness should not be separated from preaching the gospel of sovereign grace but completely intertwined with it!

When at least 35% of the world; “the unoccupied fields”, have no access to the gospel, we (believers) must all do all we can to reach them. We who are saved owe the gospel to every lost person, most especially the 2.4 billion who will not hear unless someone breaks into their “unoccupied field” with no thought of their own life!

Sowing seeds of love and kindness should not be separated from preaching the gospel of sovereign grace but completely intertwined with it!

I am sure that none of us will say when in heaven that we prayed too much, we sacrificed too much, proclaimed the gospel too much, and were too passionate to get the gospel to those who have little to no access to this gospel of grace. Let us together press on to make it our  ambition to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named!

Our goal in our gospel witness is to take our eyes off the “risk” and place them on the cause for the risk. When God compels us like this he often will not tell us the risks…after all there are no risks for the all-knowing, all-powerful God. So let us be AMBITIOUS (Romans 15:20) to see that ALL are reached with the gospel of grace (Romans 1:16) in ALL places…there are no closed doors to the gospel, just some which are more difficult to go through!

Jacob Lee