24/05/2026
Yesterday Joe said that we need to write a blog. What he meant is that we need to post something on our Bookers Without Borders page about this season we find ourselves in. What Joe really meant is that I need to write a blog because, when we came here almost ten years ago and started trying to keep our supporters updated through posts and newsletters and prayer letters, that was my job. I guess it still is my job, but let’s be honest – I haven’t really done a very good job with that lately.
And when I say lately, I really mean the last several years.
When I think about “putting pen to paper” and trying to explain what this season of our lives looks and feels like, I am overwhelmed with the realization that I simply do not know where to start. I miss writing and have been trying to keep a prayer journal as we journey down these unfamiliar paths to a destination that we think we know but do not really know.
But, in the interest of transparency, the America we left in 2017 is not the America we will return to in late 2026, so we are beginning a new ten years in what will likely feel like a completely new country. I suspect we will experience massive reverse culture shock and am trying to prepare myself for the whiplash – but I don’t think you can actually prepare for whiplash, can you?
Joe, Maggie, and I came to Uganda in January of 2017, full of myriad emotions that we had been prepared to experience, and we were excited to be on this roller coaster ride we knew God had led us to take. We had been to our two-week pre-field training, had read numerous books, had prayed and sought godly counsel, had worked hard to fundraise for our initial two-year commitment, had sold our house and pretty much everything we owned, had rented a house to live in for the six months before we left for Uganda, had homeschooled Maggie during those six months, had tried our level best to say “see you later” to our family and friends well, had taken care of things like wills, life insurance, power of attorney in case something happened to us, immunizations for things like typhoid and yellow fever…the list could go on and on, I promise. We thought we were ready for all of it; we were so mistaken!
The truth is that no amount of preparation can actually prepare you for the realities that you and your family will encounter as you step into the unknown of moving from a highly developed country to a developing country. We had been to Uganda several times on short-term trips and thought we pretty much knew the lay of the land. And in a way we did. But in many other ways, we did not.
We came into this experience saying that we wanted to always have an attitude of willingness to learn and to never come across as thinking we already had all the answers or that our way was better or superior to anyone else’s. We have strived to maintain that attitude of willingness to learn and ask questions, and not a week goes by that one of us doesn’t ask someone to help us understand the cultural implications of something, but those things can be tiring and frustrating at times.
So much has changed since we came in 2017. Not just in the world, but in our family. Maggie moved here with us as a 15-year-old 10th grader. As an only child – and a miracle child at that – she had only known life with us in the house she had always lived in, going to the same school she had attended since she was 3 ½ years old, and being near family her entire life. She fully embraced moving to Uganda and thrived while here, but neither she nor we knew all that she would miss during those years from 15-20 and how that would make transition back to the States complicated for her.
We tried to launch her well, but COVID in 2020 derailed all the plans we had lined up for her gap year, and I doubt anyone knows just how challenging it was for her to be in the States without us until we could bring her back here to wait out the pandemic with us. Once the threat of COVID was over, we moved her back to the States, and while there are many people around and near her who love her and want good things for her, they are not us.
She has lived without us now for the last four years, so gracefully supporting us being here while wishing we were with her at the same time. Maggie is now a 24-year-old young lady finding her place in the world without us there, and we are beyond proud of the woman she is becoming. She has had to do most of it completely on her own, and while there have been many ups and downs along the way, she is fun and funny and loving and kind and loyal and brave and beautiful, and we simply cannot wait to be on the same side of the world with her again!
Joe and I have changed a lot as well. We feel our age more these days, and while I know we are not “old,” we are older, and the challenges of the last 10 years have taken their toll on us. We both have much more gray in our hair – well, Joe doesn’t have much hair, but what he has is almost all gray! But I think the real changes are within us and maybe not visible so much to the naked eye.
These 10 years have brought us more joy and sorrow than any other season in our lives, and while we know how much that has changed us, most never will unless they take the time to really watch and listen and ask. We learned a long time ago that not everyone really wants to hear how things really are, and that’s ok – but if you ask, we will surely tell you.
We will tell you how those first few years were so hard and so tiring and so fun and so wonderful. And we would likely tell you that we wouldn’t change any of it – or not much anyway. Those first three years we were at the Esther House with 24 of the most amazing young women we have ever met, and every single day was an adventure. As their mentors, we thought we had so much to teach them, and we did teach them some things. But I assure you, we learned as much, if not more, from them, and those young ladies will always be a part of our family. They still ask me about Maggie almost every time I see one of them, and they count her as one of their sisters.
We will tell you how hard it was to transition from being those girls’ mentors and doing life with them every single day to taking other jobs within the ministry that kept us from seeing them very often. How those new jobs came with a lot of excitement and joy and also how those next few years were so hard and so tiring and so fun and so wonderful.
And we would also tell you that some of those middle years were so hard and so tiring in such unexpected ways that they almost broke us, that we spent a lot of time praying and asking God if this was still where He felt we could best love and serve Him – because we really weren’t sure anymore. Many of you prayed us through those years, and we know we wouldn’t be here today without those prayers. We felt them at our deepest points of need, and we experienced such grace and peace in the moments we felt the most desperate. In those years, we learned anew that God is near to the broken-hearted, and we never doubted His presence.
And we would tell you how the last few years have been beyond description. The hard has been very hard, and our hearts have been broken so many times that I often wonder how God can keep repairing something with so many scars and wounds. But the kindness and graciousness of God have met us at every point of need, and we have also experienced the sweetness of knowing we are exactly where God orchestrated that we would be, that He has opened and closed all the right doors for us to know Him and make Him known, and that we have walked His absolute best pathways. The last few years, in many ways, have been a very real example to us of how God can restore what the locusts destroyed, and we have felt renewed love and excitement for serving and living and loving and working here.
With all of that being real and true, it’s hard to imagine that in just seven short months we will drive out of our lower gate for the last time as campus residents, that we will board a plane in Entebbe to return to America as residents and not just visitors, and that we will embark on a new journey on a new pathway that God has designed just for us. People ask us how we are feeling about all of that, and the only way I know to describe it right now is to say that it’s very similar to how we felt when we were leaving Georgia to move to Uganda.
In 2017, we were sad and anxious about leaving our family and friends and all that was familiar behind. Packing up our entire lives and putting all that we owned in a 10x10 storage unit was hard, and we went through the many stages of grief as we said goodbye to that life. And at that same time, we were so excited about what and where and who God had called us to; we couldn’t wait to get to Uganda to experience all that He had for us here. There was so much joy and anticipation!
That is almost exactly how we are feeling now, and while these emotions are hard to corral and manage, can I also say that it is a gift to have so much that we love here and also have so much that we love there that these emotions are present and real? It is also a gift to have such absolute peace that God has directed our paths to this place and that we have such assurance that this is where He is leading, this is what He has ordained for us. For 10 years we have known that this is where He wants us to love and serve Him best; now He is saying that that season is changing and, just as the leaves fall from the trees and create a barrenness that will give way to new life and growth in the spring, that is what He is creating in our lives right now.
We are deeply grateful for the people who have walked this road with us. Your prayers, encouragement, generosity, and love have sustained us in more ways than we could ever fully express.
Even as I type these words, I know why I have avoided writing this blog. Mine and Joe’s hearts are so raw right now, and on any given day, one or both of us is shedding tears – so much to feel and process and experience. We want to stay fully present here in this home these last months but feel our hearts being pulled to our other home; how in the world do we do this well?
And some of those emotions are wrapped up in knowing we are going home to America but not actually home to Middle Georgia because we are moving to Nashville, TN. How do we figure out starting over in the States in a new city with all that entails – everything from buying new vehicles to finding a house to furniture shopping to new clothes to help us through winter to finding new doctors to a new church…and that list could go on and on. There will be much to sort!
But before we even figure out those things, we desire to leave here well, to enjoy our friends and staff in Uganda the very best we can, and we are not really sure how to do that. God has blessed us abundantly with a community of friends who are like family here; that includes everyone from our Ugandan team members we work with every day to our close-knit foreign national community on campus to the expat community at large in Jinja to the wait-staff at several restaurants in town who have known and loved us for the last 10 years. Saying “see you later” to any and all of those people will not be easy, and we hear the countdown clock to our leaving ticking very loudly.
We do not know all that the next season will hold, but we know the same God who called us to Uganda is the God leading us forward now. And just as He has been faithful in every joy, heartbreak, uncertainty, and transition of these last 10 years, we trust that He will be faithful in what comes next. For now, we are holding all of these emotions with open hands – grief and gratitude, sorrow and anticipation, endings and beginnings; thank you for walking with us on this journey and for praying for us as we take each new step.
