We greet you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We trust that Father has been gracious to you. We rejoice with all you that have had moments and events of joy in your lives and families; however, we also want to sympathize with those who have gone/ are going through a season of grief and loss. We want to remind you that He knows and He is the source of all our comfort.
A lot has happened recently since our last newsletter and we know that most of you may have already known through our facebook posts what has been happening with us. We want to praise the Lord that finally i (Ruudy) was able to be sworn in this week on Monday as an official American Citizen, bringing to conclusion a process that we started more than a year and a half a go! On Tuesday, we went to Detroit and expedited my Passport processing and got it that same day. Yesterday, we were able to update my social security status to Citizen and was also able to register to vote in the coming Federal Elections! We want to thank all of you who have diligently prayed for us and supported us in any form throughout this process; without your support, we surely wouldn't have managed to go through this alone. We were also blessed to have terrific and excellent lawyers who knew what they were doing and stayed on top of things throughout this process. Now we can move freely back and forth without any restrictions and we are excited that we can now concentrate more in doing our ministry in Uganda without having any travel worries.
Having achieved one of our main goals for coming to America in July, we are now ready to go back to Uganda. We leave Michigan tomorrow Friday the 2nd and fly out to Boston Massachusetts to visit our great friends and also to share with the body of Christ there about our ministry in Uganda. We are very excited for this trip and we look forward to having a great time of fellowship and encouragement for one another there. We hope we will be able to refresh each other and make new friends and contacts. We fly back from Boston to Chicago next week on Wednesday in the early afternoon and then fly out to Uganda that same day by 7:45pm through Qatar Airways. It's going to be a long flight to Doha (close to 14 hours) and then we have a 15 hour layover in Doha and then 5 more hours to Uganda on Thursday. When we think about the length of our flights and layover, it's scary, but we trust that our bodies will be strong enough to survive through these flights.
As we leave, we remember all the great and nice memories we have shared with most of you. We thank you for the meals that we had in your houses, for the coffee time and tea time and time together praising and worshiping our King. We feel blessed to have you as our friend, partner and family. We hope that you will keep praying for us and partnering with us. We pray blessing over you, your family, your businesses and jobs and ask Father to keep loving you and revealing Himself to you as you seek him. We pray healing over all you who are sick emotionally and physically; we ask the Father to send His word to heal all of your diseases and take away your infirmities.
For those of you who can, we would love for you to come visit us in Uganda and see what we are doing and what you are helping us do. Let us know if you are considering this and we can help you plan your trip and give you more guidance. We would be encouraged very much by your visit.
As reported in our last newsletter, i have started another blog where i blog about my thoughts. If you are interested in reading my thoughts, you can check it out here: https://raisinghairs.wordpress.com
As we depart, we would like to share our prayer requests with you and ask you to join us in prayers. Here they are:
- Pray for our flights. That we would fly safely and our bodies would adjust faster when we return so that we can dive in quickly and do the ministry.
- Pray for us to have more faith. We feel the Father asking us to have more faith. For we do not know what lies ahead and that's why we need to have more faith in God, that we would trust Him more and more in different situations.
- We still need more partners for the work of the ministry in Uganda. Pray that we would get new partners and that we would have deeper relationships with our current partners.
- Pray also that we would be wise in our decision making and that we would also live in good health and not have any serious medical complications.
- Pray for the pastors and church leaders we train, that they will learn and be transformed and molded by the Father into the perfect plans that He has for them. Pray for young people in our sexual abstinence program; that they will be receptive to our message and that they will be willing to offer their bodies as living sacrifices for the Lord, ready and worthy for His use. Pray also for the kids in our sponsorship program; that they will learn very well at school and turn out to be good and useful Citizens.
- Lastly, pray for Uganda as we go into election season. Campaigns are starting this month and the elections will be held in February. Pray for the peace of that country and for the people to make the right choices as they ponder on who to elect.
