Yesterday was a long, long day . . . . Much longer for Scott and Jennifer and the team than for us . . . But here, still long.
This morning, though, I woke with supernatural hope; the people of God are praying because there is no other explanation . . . . . Despite swollen eyes from yesterday’s crying (okay, and it’s continuing today), I feel strong hope.
When the impossible things happen, the things you think God wouldn’t allow, it shakes the core of we are, because most acutely, who we are is based on who He is. And . . .
“He is not safe but He is good.” - Narnia
Though often quoted, that saying never grows old to me. I wonder how many times Christians from the earliest days in the garden until now, and not excepting Jesus Christ, were confronted with the unsafe goodness of God. I must admit I want Him to be safe. I want Him to promise me that the worse what-ifs in my mind can’t come true, that a “Good God” wouldn’t let that happen, but history tells me otherwise.
And it throws us right back to the truth that Ugandans, to believe, must confront almost every day of their lives. Can we trust a God who is not safe, but is good. Can we trust Him through deep sorrow, through total lack of understanding, through hopeless, helpless circumstances so much bigger than us that they dwarf even our comprehension. This is the very reason we go to the “ends of the earth” to tell our dear Babwisi friends the Good News. We want to give them hope in hopelessness, help in helplessness, joy in sorrow. And we do that as we remind them that He has already overcome the world and that His kingdom is coming. Strange to say that Ebola is not so different from a Babwisi perspective than all the other diseases and hardships of their lives; to them it is deadly, mysterious, and unconquerable. Yet Jesus came to conquer, to set captives free, to release those held in bondage . . . And there is no better description of a tribal people still enslaved in witchcraft, poverty, illiteracy and disease.
We thought His Kingdom would come through Dr. Jonah, in some substantial measure, in Bundibuygo. And perhaps it still will. I know with certainty that Jonah is now in the home that God has prepared for him from before the beginning of time, and I imagine that His understanding is perfected and that He now sees the whole story and that He is the only one who smiles because now it all makes sense.
And won’t it all make sense if beautiful, precious, enslaved people see Jesus . . . . Keep praying with Hope.

Dear friends,
Pray, oh please, pray. Tonight our team lost it’s dearest Ugandan friend, Dr. Jonah Kule, to Ebola. Dr. Jonah represented years of personal investment and hope for the sustainable future of mercy ministry in Uganda. Pray for his family, including his pregnant wife and children. Pray for Scott and Jennifer, our team leaders and doctors, still waiting after their exposure to the disease, that somehow, supernaturally they will have peace, freedom from fear, the strength they need to go on. Pray for their children to be held by the Father. We all fear for Scott and Jennifer’s safety. Jonah was like a younger brother to them; a healthy, strong man who got help as soon as he was sick . . . . We cannot believe he is gone.
There is a horrific thing going on here, the kind of thing only Satan could mastermind, I think. Pray for Ugandans, suffering once again in hopelessness, to somehow see Jesus. That is the only way to make sense of what is happening, to think that maybe many will see Jesus in this.
Personally we need your prayers as well. We are struggling hard with the reality of what is happening to some of our dearest friends, with the what-if’s of the future. What does it look like when a faith-filled life can lead you to this scenario. How do we make sense of God right now. What will the future hold for us, for the team, for the Ugandans.
But let’s not pray from a sense of hopelessness, a sense of it’s already over, a sense of let’s just see how bad it gets. Instead, let’s pray with hope, with expectancy, with faith that the God of the impossible can turn this around.
Please, please pray.
Much love,
David and Annelise
Continuing updates on www.paradoxuganda.blogspot.com