Prayer Update

To our supporters,

Thank you so much for all the well wishes and responses. It means a lot. This was not in the plan. We have so much more to do here. Jeri's hospitalization was not how we intended to leave Africa. Our plan to leave involved establishing a reserve fund to purchase return tickets getting set up back in America. Part of Jeri's reason for returning was to fundraiser toward that investment. Now this emergency is thrust upon us. We need to get home and money we would have received and saved over time is required immediately. We likely have a month before Jeri's recuperation plan is in place and our affairs in Uganda are settled.

Would you consider a final gift to bring us home? We will always serve the kingdom but this is going to take us out of full-time service. We have a lot to process and get though before we settle back in the States but in the diminishing capacity which Jeri sees herself facing we don't see a way to continue forward as donor supported missionaries.

We felt God had a third act for us but didn't know how and when this season of service would come to a close. The return of Jeri's MS may be the most definitive answer possible, short of how we began this journey fourteen years ago. We thank all of those who have supported us through prayer and giving. You have been the most generous people we could ever know and we are humbled by your faithfulness. We will be here until we get enough so if you can't give one lump sum please continue to give monthly until we save up the total amount.

May god bless you exponentially as you have blessed us,
The Clarks

Please Pray: Jeri is in the Hospital

It was going to be a lovely brief trip back to America with the opportunity to deliver a friend's baby and connect with family and supporters. Even before Jeri really got to see people her Multiple Sclerosis (MS) put her in the hospital. She is currently at East Texas Medical Center finishing up a five day steroid treatment and looking forward to several weeks of rehabilitation.

Jeri's last bout with MS was a flare up July 4, 2011. After a summer of follow up meds and a fall of recuperation the MS went into remission and she has been symptom free for almost five years. We came to Africa with a clean bill of health and are grateful for the health God gave her for as long as He did. Without presuming too much we count it as grace that she was in America during this attack and had availability to adequate medical resources. There is no treatment here and would likely have required her to be medivacked to South Africa.

As she moves toward recovery we will try to match her progress with our next step. She cannot come back to Uganda. So if Jeri can't come to the family the family must go to Jeri. I spoke with her this morning and then sat down with the children. We talked about what our next steps might be. They miss their mom and now even more so that she is hurting. They are also very sad about leaving this place. Over the past two years of other expats coming and going they had finally began to firm up friendships. But they want to get home to be with mom.

I sat down with the Hopeland Director soon after and wept on their couch for hope and God's guidance. We are going to start settling our affairs here. We wanted to email you before we posted on Facebook because you have been so faithful to pray in the past. Please pray for Jeri. She needs healing. We'll send out another update soon. Thank you.

March Update from the Clark Family

Welcome to March. If you are reading this and you have not seen my wife find her on Facebook and seek her out. When you meet her tell her we miss her in Africa. If you have the time, buy her coffee or a meal. She is on assignment now to deliver a baby and visit those who sent us but she can still take time to make connections. Please keep her busy. The more she has to do the less she might miss us. It was unforeseeable that her making this journey alone would amount to her feeling like the sole survivor of the African Expedition. It is the blessing of our era that we can reach across oceans and communicate almost daily but it isn’t the same as wrapping your arms around them and squeezing. I fear Jeri is not getting her quotient of daily hugs. She normally gets hugged daily by six different people, so y’all have to make an effort to compensate.

Keeping us busy here is the Sustainable Agriculture School. Eleven Africans and one white girl from central California have come to Hopeland to learn how to transform the agriculture practices of this nation. This is the same school that brought us here in 2014 and now I am on staff. For our family this is the fulfillment of the vision to bring transformation to Africa. Last school the ratio of foreigner to local was five to seven. Almost all of those seven students were able to direct one or two new students for this class. Clearly the white people didn’t agriculturally evangelize as effectively. This school was never intended to transform Americans. They are welcome and the skills we learned are good solid sustainable techniques but this is a school in Africa for Africans. As a staff we can’t wait to see what these new students are capable of next.

The children are back in the routine of homeschool, volleyball, and the local homeschool co-op. They are moving through their workbooks, some donated math textbooks, computer teaching programs, a local language teacher, reading books on their internet tablets, and once a week I lead the world history lesson. Zoe has stepped up to cover Jeri’s absence as well as finishing up her own high school curriculum. If she keeps up this pace she will graduate from school this spring and be ready for the next adventure in life. We couldn’t do this without her and also can’t wait to see what she is capable of next.

Thank you for persevering with us to see this realization of vision. It might have been enough to just be here and grow food to feed people. Seeing this school forming and repeating has gone above our expectations. When this school finishes this summer our participation (your support also makes you participants) will be a part of the blessing these Africans bring to their nation. These are relationships that have eternal consequences. Thank you for sending us to be a part of it.

Oh yeah, she is learning how to drive.

February Update from the Clark Family

As we look forward to 2016 we find ourselves surrounded by those God sent us to serve. Whether that serving looks like sharing the Bible, teaching sustainable agriculture, or investing in our neighbors. We aren’t starting up a Ugandan Shark Tank but sometimes it does look like we are just handing out money. The reality is, we are here because people sacrificed and continue to sacrifice to fund God’s direction for the life of our family. That direction is beginning to look like sharing our resources to ease the burden of our neighbors. The big picture is to bring tools and opportunities so that the community can free themselves of poverty, more about that later.

In the shadow of the Powerball Lottery fever, which we felt even over here, we find ourselves both envying and pitying the winners. Everybody asks themselves, "What could I do with all that money" and "What would that money do to me?" It remains to be seen if the winners will defy the odds and make positive choices to improve their lives and the lives of those around them or follow the path of so many before them and allow the money to drive them to ruin. Without a single winner taking home the full billion their odds are less intimidating but substantial nonetheless. Even with Uganda’s high inflation our regular income doesn’t make us billionaires but it does give us more resources than our neighbors and with those resources come responsibilities.

Throughout the past decade of donor-supported-full-time-volunteer-service our financial solvency has had its ups and downs. We followed the Apostle Paul’s advice and learned to be content in times of less, less than less, and then times when we were just broke. We can proclaim with confidence, have faith my brothers and sisters in your most desperate moments God will be with you and send relief. You may still have to go through those seasons of shame and uncertainty, but every time God will show himself to be faithful.

We, like most other folks, often felt the squeeze during the Christmas season. In Uganda the juggernaut of spending and decorating is nowhere near America’s level of enthusiasm but they do value returning back to their home place and eating the most expensive meal of the year, the Christmas Chicken. You know Christmas is coming in the States when you see twinkle lights and hear carols here you can tell because every minivan taxi is loaded down with live chickens heading for the cities. The chickens aren’t anything special, by American standards they’re quite small, but pound for pound they are the most expensive and sought after dish. They care more about their Christmas Chicken than we care about our Thanksgiving Turkey. Last Christmas, because of the generosity of so many of you, the local ladies in Jeri’s Bible study group got to take home a Christmas Chicken. Your response was so overwhelming they also received extra shillings to truly make their holiday meals a Christmas feast. It was a small donation in American dollars but the hope it brought on this side went far and beyond. Is it a temporary fix to give these women a couple of meals to feed their families? Yes, but if you have walked through a season of financial uncertainty you know the anxiety of being overwhelmed. You look ahead for the encouragement of change and see nothing but darkness. In that dismay even the small flicker of a single candle can give you hope that you can endure and that God will provide. Your support allows us to be agents of God’s provision.

We didn’t anticipate this addition to our budget when we arrived but now eighteen months later we see how God is allowing us to contribute towards this community. Our first intention is sharing the Word and training people to use what God has given them to meet their needs. Part of that training is the next School of Sustainable Agriculture. Beginning this Friday, ten young Ugandan men will start their twenty-week journey towards stewarding the creation God has given us. Joining those young men will be one of the ladies from Jeri’s Bible study. She has a small plot just around the corner, speaks good English, and a desire to improve the life of her family. We are signing her up in faith that the funds will come for her tuition, just under $600, and know that this training will impact the entire community. If you didn’t get a chance to help with the chickens perhaps you can help Nora participate in this school.

Nora and two of her girls

Right after the school gets started Jeri heads back to America. She is scheduled to help a previous client birth another baby. What an exciting opportunity to bring another life into this world and eat In-N-Out hamburgers, we will miss her. The children continue their homeschool journey and build relationships with local friends, Zoe and Dora even joined a volleyball team. If you’d like to see Jeri while she is stateside message her on Facebook. 

We do what we do because of you. Thank you for your continued support.