Africa
We interviewed one of our missionaries, Andy Sodestrom, about his involvement in Africa. Read the questions and answers below!
We are excited for the new year, not only in our communities, but also for what God has in store for our partnership in Africa!
What role do you play in Africa?
Kathy and I are involved in holistic community development in the rural villages of Uganda. This extends into the South Sudan civil war refugee camps in Northern Uganda. Our primary role is leadership training and development.
How does Vintage Grace play a role in what you do?
Vintage Grace has been a valuable partner to our ministry in Uganda. We have had people from Vintage Grace join us on 2 mission trips in the past and are looking forward to Pastor Drew being a keynote speaker at our January 2020 Bible Conference. Nick Franco brought his photography skills to Uganda and several of his photos are on our sending agency's media publications.
Vintage Grace helped us to purchase a truck with a dump bed, which has made it possible to reduce construction costs on our rural church buildings by over 30 percent!
More recently, Vintage Grace’s enthusiastic participation in our 838 coffee program raised over $3,000 to provide humanitarian relief to child headed to vulnerable refugee children from the South Sudan civil war.
Your friendship, prayer and financial support has been a great encouragement to me and Kathy, as well as Cyprian and Margaret Masembe, their family and the rest of our FFCM team.
How have you seen God moving in your time as a missionary?
We have seen them ministry of FFCM in Uganda grow to 15 churches, 2 schools, a wedding shop business and 4 farms in the 15 years we have served with them. More recently, we have seen some of our young people who have been discipled through the years become pastors, youth leader trainers, farm managers and church leaders. We are seeing effective discipleship multiplication resulting in church multiplication. We love seeing God leading us Upward (R1. “Waggulu” in the native tongue), Inward (R2. ”Munda”) and Outward (R3. “Ebweru”).
What are you excited about in 2020?
We are very excited to have Pastor Drew join us for our 2020 Bible conference. Our Ugandan team has been praying for him to come for several years and are so excited to meet him.
We are also excited about our expanded ministry in the refugee camps. We are currently in the process of forming a new NGO that will be led by our South Sudanese Pastors. It will be registered in both Uganda and South Sudan as we anticipate the freedom for them to go back to their homeland in the near future.
We are aslo thankful for the opportunity to continue to raise up and train the next generation of leaders in rural Uganda snd South Sudan.
One more thing;
We are praying for and working on a return visit to Vintage Grace from Cyprian and Margaret Masembe.