15/07/2026
A message from co-lead pastors, Jordan and Romi:
June was a hard month for First Love.
Three weeks after launching weekly services, we had to cancel our very first Sunday — we were in the hospital with Jude, who had come down with swine flu. The following week, Robert fell ill too. On June 19th, he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.
Robert was the chair of our board. While we were still in America, he laid the governance groundwork and set up the NPO — bringing decades of corporate executive leadership, along with his legal expertise and experience, and pouring in so much more. But he wasn't just behind the scenes. He set up chairs before service with the same care he brought to our CIPC filings. He held babies. He made sure people had a ride to church and something to eat when they got there. He was simply present, in every way a church plant needs someone to be present.
First Love exists in large part because Robert believed in it and gave himself to it.
It would have been easy to stop in June. Instead, while he was still fighting, we contended for him together. And in the days after he went home to be with the Lord, we held each other up — because that's what he would have insisted on. Keep going.
Hebrews 13:15 calls it a sacrifice of praise — the fruit of lips that openly profess His name, offered not when it's easy, but through gritted teeth and heartbreak. That's the praise we brought before God this June.
Praise before the breakthrough.
Praise when it hurts.
Praise when you don't even know what you're praising through.
Just praise.
With love,
Jordan & Romi
