“…and when do you plan to leave?”

Heather and I looked at each other uneasy about the answer.

“End of March.” Heather said quietly.

“So you have about 8 weeks to raise $28,000?”

I awaited the doomed diagnosis, already beginning to cringe a bit. Heather and I were sitting across from John Shimer a friend of Maggie’s who had been professional fundraiser before retirement; this was not going to be good news.

“…No problem, you’ll be able to raise that easily, God will provide.”

And with those words John had cured something inside of us, doubt. I think before that I wasn’t 100% sure we were even going to Uganda, but those simple words of encouragement changed something in Heather and I, God WOULD provide, and so we could lean full tilt into this thing and trust that God was not going to let us fall.

John wasn’t done though. He was working hard on a book with a Maggie about African Hospitality Institute. He had asked if we could help on some level as field agents gathering information for the book. My Journalism brain was buzzing with the opportunity, and Heather was excited that she could practice her craft of Photography. If we were willing to help, John offered to support us in a big way. I didn’t know what a “big way” meant but with $0 raised it sounded helpful.

We met with John again a few weeks later to get an idea of what this book was and what our role would be in gathering information. We also spoke with Maggie who was extremely supportive of us being involved. All the pieces were coming together but to be honest I can’t say I was genuinely on board, at least in heart with the project.

Now it’s a well known fact that I hate, on a general principle, Christian books. I can be a bit overzealous in my passions for things and I have been known to go into a rant about this topic or that. Some of these rants my dear wife has had to hear a multitude of times and there are some key topics that I am sure she now winces at when any stranger dares to bring them up. One of those rants if reduced to a sentence would be that Christians read too much Christian living and not enough Bible. Now I’ve been a retail manager for nearly a decade and often we will look at our sales mix, a breakout of what category of product is selling and not selling, and reorganize the store accordingly. Now imagine you walk into any Christian book store, and based on floor plan and space you tell me what the sales mix roughly is for Christian Living books vs. Bible Study. 80/20? Maybe…. If your lucky, and that is my problem.

So I was having some concerns about working on this book, and then Maggie sent us an e-mail addressing her vision for the book. I’ll quote a small edited version for you:

"I have read or pretended to have read, many other self-published books by friends / peers in ministry. Most of them are boring and sit in bookshelves collecting dust. Most of them are so steeped in 'stained glass' 'holy talk' 'christianeze' that no one but friends even try to read them. I want this to be so much more.
I guess what I am hoping for is something that helps to answer the universal questions of 'Is that all there is?" and how does one find true joy and purpose in this life, how does one build a community, how do we dare trust a God that has so disappointed us in the past.

 I believe that there are many people out there looking for the answer to these questions - many that have been disillusioned by the empty promise of financial success, many that are looking for God, but have been so turned off by the Christian community that they can't even imagine that Jesus really is the answer.

I would love for it to be a book that Christian or non-Christian, or least marginal Christian would read and perhaps  see themselves in us as they watch us struggle with these same issues. I think its the 'struggle' to trust - God, friends, strangers with our lives, with our disappointments and the empty promises and then the 'struggle' with stepping out in faith, though that feels like free fall - that in sharing the 'struggle' - my struggle, your struggle, the struggle of donors to support something that seemed doomed to failure, the struggle of even staff to trust this crazy white woman.  It's in the asking the hard questions and struggling through answering them and overcoming huge challenges that this story gets interesting.”

Hopefully Maggie doesn’t mind me quoting her, but the real thing to know is my passionate, anti-christian book mind was dramatically turned by her words. Maggie’s vision for this book wasn't a Christian living book so much as a Book where people’s lives and Jesus are seen, for Christians and non-Christians alike. This was a book I could, and am very excited to be involved with.

So I’m posting this to announce a second part to our mission in Uganda. This is not to distract from our original mission at AHI to support Maggie and build community. In fact I suspect gathering information for the book will better enable us to do those very things. God does not work in confusion, and I am super excited about what He plans for us to bear witness to in Uganda.

As for Christian living books, I am learning from friends not to be so stubborn and have been slowly reading a few Christian books. Some like Total Church and Radical have had a huge impact on me, they opened the Bible to me in new ways that (and I shudder to say this) may not have happened just in Bible Study. Right now I’m reading “When Helping Hurts” in preparation for our mission, and I love the heart of the Author Brian Fikkert.

On the topic of fundraising God WAS faithful. Based on Pledges we have raised slightly MORE than we needed and with 2 weeks to spare! God is so faithful and has made it clear to us time and again that this is HIS mission not ours. 16 days until we depart from Seattle, this blog is about to get MUCH more interesting so stay tuned.

--PHD