When unwelcome change is knocking down the door, how do you respond? Do you resolve to do whatever it takes to have your way? Do you give up? Do you deny and pretend nothing is happening? Do you pray and wait for God to accomplish what you want? Or, do you trust God’s sovereignty and find contentment in your circumstance, seeking His perfect will in everything?The Apostle Paul put it this way: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
Jesus gives us the peace and strength to accomplish His purpose, even when that purpose may be obscure or confusing to us at the time. We want what we want when we want it but often God knows better and intervenes.
At The Rock, God is taking us to school in trusting Him at a whole new level. Our university scholarship program in Uganda to develop leaders, disciples and role models is in financial jeopardy. It appears we may have to make a tough choice by May 1 between exhausting our scholarship fund to pay for one more semester or have the students take a break from school and help us launch a dairy program at the university. This cooperative dairy arrangement with Uganda Christian University which has been in the works for a year has the potential of producing income to fund the balance of the students’ educations as well as future scholarships.
If we spend available funds just on tuition for next semester, current giving trends suggest we might have no further funds for them after that anyway and The Rock would have to suspend the scholarship program indefinitely. If we purchase the dairy cows, we could leave a legacy for generations of students to come.
On one level, the thought of asking the students to sit out for a term or two and help get the dairy program going breaks our hearts because we so much desire to be a source of stability for these amazing young people, many of whom come from very difficult backgrounds.
On another level, we can see perhaps God’s hand is at work. A major focus of The Rock is teaching Africans to be spiritually and economically free. Perhaps this experience will point out the importance of them trusting God first rather than The Rock. Also, there is no better opportunity for The Rock to model the self-sustainability we teach to Africans than for us to involve the students in helping launch the dairy venture which can fund their educations. That’s in addition to them learning the value of hard work and sacrifice. (We would pay their living expenses during the dairy start up, but not their tuition and fees.
Please pray for us. Perhaps God will provide additional funding for the students to continue school uninterrupted. (Two students are only one semester away from graduation.) Or perhaps God will provide donors who want to get behind the dairy program so we can serve more students for generations to come.
If you would like to participate, please go to www.rockoutreach.org.
