An Update

Hello and Happy New Year! My family and I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas, and we wish you a blessed 2021! Below is an update on Moving Orphans’ Mountains.

Church Connection

In our last letter we mentioned an investigation into some accusations we received regarding the leadership of FOH, which has caused us to re-evaluate our approach and shift towards working through the church and focusing on the Gospel. Over the past several months, God has opened a door that seems to affirm the shift, as we have connected with Pastor Steven Collins of Calvary Chapel in Jinja, Uganda. Due to him being a part of the Global Calvary Chapel Network, we were able to verify his legitimacy through speaking with two African Pastors connected to Pastor Collins as well as two Pastors in the USA who provide them oversight! As an additional bonus, the Pastor at my parent’s church validated one of the African pastors, whom he had previously worked with. After several visits, Pastor Collins reported positive feedback about FOH, and in December 2020, we sent funds to Pastor Steven Collins to purchase food for FOH and deliver it to them along with a Biblical teaching. This marked the integration of our ministry directly with the church of Jesus Christ. This was an important step for us because Jesus Himself said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His church.

Finances

At the time of our last letter, our intent was to continue to provide the support to FOH we were previously, but just to channel that support through a local church instead of sending it directly to FOH. We had already connected with Pastor Collins at that time and had hoped that we would be able to swiftly transition our fund movement methods for minimal impact to FOH. Per Pastor Collins’ advice, we decided to take the transition slowly and leave money out of the equation until Pastor Collins was able to share God’s word with FOH and gauge their receptivity. In addition, we wanted to take the time necessary to validate Pastor Collins. Both of these things took a bit longer than we had hoped, and we decided throughout that process not to revert back to our previous methods because we felt like we could not do that in good faith after God had shown us a much better way and so we had to trust God’s perfect timing.

Further Refinement

Over the past several months, our convictions for this change of direction continued to grow stronger. By January 2021, we no longer wanted to simply use the church to channel support to orphanages, but rather our desire had become to empower and enable the local churches to do the Gospel outreach to orphans/vulnerable children that they already desire to do and are already equipped to do. It was when we finally came to terms with this new approach that God revealed to us some additional information that increased our concern for the integrity of FOH, caused us to lose confidence in the FOH leadership, and further affirmed our change in direction. To be clear, this new information still did not come close to substantiating the allegations we received in 2020, but it was just enough to affirm our movement away from FOH and towards the Church. We are now even more convicted than ever before to devote ourselves to the promotion of the Gospel, and we believe God has placed us where we are to extend the Gospel right into the heart of the orphanage scene. The beautiful thing about how God works is that because of His perfect timing, when we received this information, it actually encouraged us to press forward for the sake of the vulnerable who truly do have real needs that we have seen first-hand instead of running away or becoming discouraged.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

~Romans 1:16-17

What is Next?

Instead of seeking to move the mountains of physical/material needs for literal orphans/vulnerable children, we are going to seek to move mountains spiritually by promoting the work that belongs to the local church – preaching the Gospel to physical orphans as well as spiritual orphans who do not know their Heavenly Father. We are currently in the process of converting our relationship with FOH from a working partnership to one of Gospel outreach. We are trying to iron out some logistics with Pastor Steven Collins for him to continue to minister to FOH, but our hope is that through this sort of pilot program, we can develop a model that can be replicated elsewhere. We are also seeking to eventually diversify this concept geographically and see if God will open any doors to applying this concept of local church empowerment in other life-affirming ways for the benefit of orphans and/or vulnerable children.

There is still much uncertainty, but we are so excited for what God is doing and what God has in store for our organization. Our hope is that God will use us to empower His established church to fight through the complexity and messiness of the orphanage scene to support the poor children stuck in it. We also hope that God will use us to provide the many people who want to help orphans and vulnerable children a safe alternative to sending money to questionable orphanages. We hope to bring glory to God and break through the barriers of darkness to extend the Gospel (in both word and deed) to vulnerable children wherever God will allow.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.

~Ephesians 1:3-6

If you share our heart for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and care about the well-being of orphans and vulnerable children around the world, we invite you to join us in prayer as we forge ahead under the guidance and leadership of the Holy Spirit. There are so many orphans and vulnerable children out there who are so difficult to reach because of this world’s flawed strategies that fail to recognize the power of God in the Gospel. Together we can enjoy the privilege of taking part in God’s will as expressed in Jesus’ words recorded in John 14:18, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”

S

incerely,

Steve