KNOWN Spring/Summer 2022

Spring/Summer 2022

DANNY HANNAN’S FIGHT FOR LIFE FAITHFULNESS IN THE MUNDANE HOW ONE LOCAL MINISTRY CARES FOR REFUGEES

WELCOME TO KNOWN , A MAGAZINE CENTERED AROUND KNOWING GOD AND BEING KNOWN BY HIM.

The heart behind these pages is to encourage you.

Our prayer is that when you read these words that you would be reminded of God’s great love for you; that in this cluttered world, the Creator cares for YOU. You are known by Him. You matter to Him. We also pray that the personal testimonies, stories, and articles in this magazine point you to Christ and help you better know the character of God. This new endeavor is a work in progress, but there are core ideas that you can expect from every forthcoming issue of Known. We will always feature a heart story, a missional story, and a family engagement story.

Every heart story will be focused on a culturally relevant topic through the lens of the gospel. The knowledge that God knows everything about us yet still loves us is powerful.

Because of this great love, we are able to confront challenging topics head-on and to not shy away from a topic just because it may feel uncomfortable.

Missional stories will share insights into local, domestic, and global mission partnerships we have here at Mars Hill Church. The more we know God, the more we desire to love like He does. One physical manifestation of this is serving others. Missional highlights in this magazine will better equip you to pray for and help with needs right here in our community all the way to the ends of the earth.

Our focus on family engagement will always be to help parents shepherd their children to Christ. We want to partner alongside you as you help your children know God. The family segments in this magazine will include ideas, resources, and activities for families to engage together in meaningful, gospel-centered family time.

Along with these three segments, every issue of Known will have many other fun, interesting, thought-provoking stories, all focused on helping you Know God and to remind you that you are Known by Him. And if you find yourself wanting to know Him more, please know you are always welcome at Mars Hill Church.

KNOWN MAGAZINE EDITOR Tricia Butts WRITERS Tricia Butts Keith and Lisa Coggins Danny Hannan Sophie Miller Dallas Schmidt DESIGN Sophie Miller PHOTOS Bree Anne Pietro de Grandi Deborah Diem Piron Guillaume Danny Hannan Kristin Marcus Taylor Deas Meles Dwell Mobile Apollo Photography Markus Spike Annie Spratt Todd Trapani Pine Watt WEBSITE pomh.org

CONTENTS

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COUNT IT ALL JOY How does one man face death multiple times and still choose to count it all joy?

“WHAT MATTERS SUPREMELY, THEREFORE, IS NOT, IN THE LAST ANALYSIS, THE FACT THAT I KNOW GOD, BUT THE LARGER FACT WHICH UNDERLIES IT—THE FACT THAT HE KNOWS ME.” Tim Keller

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MAKING ROOM FOR THE WORLD: DWELL MOBILE

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FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP WITH THE WALTERS

A local ministry cares for relocated refugees and invites us to help.

How one covenant family anchors schedules, bedtime routines, and parenting in the gospel.

FAITHFULNESS IN THE MUNDANE

TO UGANDA AND BACK: KEITH & LISA COGGINS

Learning to celebrate submission to Christ apart from platforms, titles, or visible roles in the church.

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One family’s call to Africa and the States and what God is accomplishing on both continents.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Full of homemade canned goods and prepped veggies, my pantry shelves and freezer baskets look starkly different this year as compared to this time two years ago.

In the spring of 2020, we were “flattening the curve” and using restaurant napkins for toilet paper. The empty grocery store shelves really shook me that Spring as they did again later that year after Hurricane Sally and food trucks couldn’t get through with their deliveries. I realized then it didn’t matter how much money you had to buy food if there wasn’t any food available to buy. And in true Tricia form—which is entirely out of impulse and never, ever reason—I became a tad obsessed about growing food in my side yard at home.

dried them, then bagged them in a labeled envelope for planting in the next growing cycle. It was in the process of saving and storing seeds that I first began to really reconcile God’s beautiful design with His meticulous provision for all of us.

The fact that every single plant comes with a tiny copy of itself that can reproduce again and again forever is miraculous, truly! I read somewhere that watering your garden with a hose is fine, but rainwater that has been through the water cycle holds a tremendous amount of

I started following homesteaders on Instagram and watching YouTube videos about what it means for broccoli to bolt (start to flower) and where do the sprouts actually sprout from on a brussel sprout plant (on the stalk—check them out, they are so cute). Every vegetable I bought, I carefully picked out all the seeds, cleaned and

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nutrients that groundwater or processed water does not.

I also came across a beautiful tidbit that told how soil has microorganisms full of endorphins that get trapped under a bare-handed gardener’s fingernails. When you inevitably touch your face, you are releasing those endorphins, perhaps explaining why those who garden seem happier.

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All in all, what began out of an impulse of fear became a place of peace and provision for me. Just like He did for the Israelites in the desert through birds and manna and the striking of rock, He does for me today. From the tiniest seed to water that flows from the sky to the dirt designed with our happiness in mind, the Lord in His loving-kindness provides. No matter what season, through cold snaps and droughts: He provides.

Some of you reading this have questions, mainly: but what about me? And I understand your question more than you know.

A fresh grown tomato is lovely, Tricia, but my daughter died of Covid last year and my life has ground to a halt.

I lost my job with benefits two years ago and all I can find now is minimum wage opportunities. Where is God? I have breast cancer that has metastasized. My youngest son is four. Why isn’t God healing me?

I work as a social worker and the influx of neglected children entering the system is staggering. Why isn’t God providing for the most vulnerable of His children?

Every Wednesday, I sit in a chair alongside woman after woman with unplanned pregnancies. Through their tears, they share their lives with me and it is rarely a happy one.

Many are fraught with abuse and poverty, the likes of which I will probably never experience myself. They look

to me for help and answers, but other than an arsenal of community resources, I cannot magically turn their life around.

In these moments when God’s provision feels fruitless, the only thing I know to do is this: Look at the cross.

The cross bears witness to God’s ultimate provision for us. Jehovah Jireh provides for His children in an infinite number of ways, culminating in an everlasting, sacrificial gift that not one of us deserve. Just as it is unfathomable for me to understand the complexities of nature rising up in my yard to feed my family, our minds cannot begin to comprehend God’s beautiful design in the cross.

I don’t know what you are personally struggling with as you read these words, and I have no answers for you other than to take your face gently in my hands and whisper to you: Look at the cross.

Will all your troubles mysteriously disappear? No they will not. But entering into the habit of looking at the cross will provide hope. The cross where Jesus died to cover our dirtiness can feel complicated at times, but it can also be quite simple. Just look at the cross and the provision it brings. It really is as simple as seed, dirt, and rain.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His mercy and grace.

-Tricia Butts

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“You can never exaggerate the power of the cross.”

A. W. Tozer

COUNT IT ALL

JOY

BY DANNY HANNAN & TRICIA BUTTS

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With two obtrusive pumps attached to his body and strict doctors’ orders to remain in isolation, Danny Hannan went to church anyway. With Covid running rampant in our community, he knew he couldn’t go inside, but he desperately needed to be close to believers.

He brought a retractable chair for tailgating up to the side of the church and sat there all morning one Sunday. He prayed as families and couples and college students trailed inside for services and prayed as everyone went back to their cars and drove home. It was the closest he could get to his church family, to be in fellowship with his brothers and sisters even if from a corner in his chair. But for him, it was enough.

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Fifteen years ago, Danny Hannan was dying of alcoholism.

His drinking had gotten so bad he was wearing two shirts everywhere he went in case he spit up blood on the top one. His doctor told him not to even worry about giving up alcohol at this point since he was so far gone. With a beautiful wife and son at home there was nothing more to do but wait to die.

Doctors were hopeless and grim, but Danny’s sister was not. She encouraged him to talk to God about it. While Danny had grown up in church and believed in God all his life, he hadn’t considered turning to God in this crisis.

On December 26, 2005, he did say a prayer and gave it all to the Lord in that very moment.

The prayer was easy, but what came next was hard.

Danny immediately entered an alcohol treatment facility.

Detoxing from years of misusing alcohol was misery. One night while in the depths of withdrawals, Danny fell to his knees and cried out to God saying, “Save me or kill me.”

Being struck with a sudden heart attack seemed better than this agony. Instantly, Danny felt God come over him in a wave, and after years of restless insomnia, he fell asleep right away. What a gift—to sleep with a soul unburdened.

Upon leaving the treatment center, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Danny and his friends later started an AA group called The Lighthouse which grew so large they needed to find a bigger meeting place. And that is how Danny Hannan first connected with Mars Hill Church. At the time, Mars Hill Church was still meeting in the cafe on Cottage Hill Road. Danny held Lighthouse meetings there and started attending church on Sundays.

He’s been coming ever since.

It would be easy to understand if Danny’s story of God’s redemption and faithfulness in his life ended here. A man who should have died gets a second chance at life. We are used to this narrative—we’ve heard it before. So at first take, it’s confusing when we hear this next part—the

part where Danny gets incredibly and unbearably sick with a diagnosis having nothing to do with his past drinking. But 12 years after the miraculous healing of his body, Danny noticed a sore throat he just couldn’t shake. And things got bad again.

When his sore throat became something he could no longer ignore, he went to a doctor who recommended surgery to remove a benign polyp on his throat. The day after Danny went home from surgery, he started spitting a steady stream of blood and when he filled up a plastic cup he knew he had to go back to the doctor. Another surgery was performed to cauterize the cut which was causing the bleeding. Everything was fine until a few days later when he passed out in his home. His wife and son helped him stand up and while helping him move to the couch, he passed out again.

Back in the hospital, doctors ran tests for three days before coming to the diagnosis of Portopulmonary Hypertension (PPH). Doctors explained his heart was enlarged and his heart pressure was dangerously elevated. A normal pulmonary arterial pressure (heart pressure) rate is between 15-28 with 50 being heart attack range. Danny’s heart pressure measured at 101. He was told to get his will in order because the average life span of PPH patients was less than a year and there was no cure.

Danny had been here before, only this time he was experiencing it in light of God’s will. All those years ago, facing death was scary. This time, he had peace.

Doctors again were hopeless and grim, however, the suggestion was made to see Dr. Karen Fagan, the then Chairman of International Pulmonary Heart Association. Danny was told her waiting list was six months, but he was able to get an appointment within the week. Dr. Fagan told Danny that she and Dr. Phillip Henderson had a way to cure his PPH but that the procedure was extremely risky. So risky in fact that the procedure was considered contraindicated by most doctors in America because of the high risk of death associated with the procedure. But both Fagan and Henderson were confident Danny would make a good candidate, and he decided to go for it.

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The procedure involved a liver transplant and to even get on the transplant list, Danny’s health had to meet all kinds of requirements. For the next nine long months, he had to get his heart pressure down low enough to get on the list.

During that time, he got an infection that sent him to the hospital which then became septic. All of this at the same time that Covid had become full-blown. Once more, he found himself very, very sick.

Despite the odds, Danny came through that and was able to be placed on the transplant list. At this time, Danny knew of only two other people who had survived the procedure he was about to go through. His wife, son, and family prayed for and supported him. Danny firmly believes that the prayers of his family, his Mars Hill Church family, his AA family, and of many others gave him the strength he needed to live.

In September 2020, the liver transplant to correct his enlarged heart and elevated heart pressure was performed at UAB by Dr. Sheik. He survived the surgery, but the road to recovery was fraught with challenges.

Covered in tubing and stitches snaking around his torso, side, and back, Danny laid in a recovery bed for months.

Unable to care for himself, he had to rely on the compassion of others. Day after day, orderlies would bathe him and dress him and change his bedding. Nurses would come in for wound care and take his temperature which got up to 106 at one point. He was completely vulnerable, powerless, and helpless. And if you ask how he got through it all, he’ll happily tell you the phrase he repeats on loop throughout each and every day: to count it all joy.

Throughout his life’s trials, Danny has experienced God’s sovereignty in such a way that leads him to honestly count it all joy. In doing so, he has reached a closeness to the Lord unachievable without undergoing the Refiner’s fire. If not for those painful moments of humility and helplessness, he might not have called out for God. He would never have felt that wave-like rush of God’s love.

He would not have experienced this beautiful peace and hope that comes in trusting God.

“It’s amazing how close to God you can be when you can’t do things for yourself—when you have to have God.” Living in light of counting it all joy has transformed Danny’s faith. Prayer is a common thread woven throughout each and every day now. He prays all the time and about everything. Meditation is something he has also worked

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into the rhythms of his faith. Danny explained that when in prayer, he is talking with God then he takes time to listen to God through meditation. He says he rarely asks God for anything; rather, he just asks God to show him what to do. He says, “I don’t know what is good or bad for me, so I just give it to God and count it all joy.”

His desire for fellowship with believers has also been reshaped. Growing up, church was something he would attend, but not much more than that. Through his medical isolation, however, Danny now understands the powerful benefit of being with others who love Jesus. So much so that he would sit in his little folding chair outside the building while we all worshipped within.

Today, Danny is the picture of health. He goes in regularly for tests and check-ups, but is cleared every time.

And while his scars bear witness to the close calls with death, his faithfulness bears witness to the Lord’s great lovingkindness and mercy. To talk with Danny is to be encouraged. He is grateful for things that most of us never consider, like the ability to worship with each other.

Danny’s life is a reminder that God’s plans for our lives far exceeds what we could ever want or imagine.

So let’s count it all joy, friends.

3 PILLAR RESOURCES

BIBLICAL TEACHING: While he has read many great gospel-centered books on addiction, Danny recommends people starting with the ESV Study Bible and the

Celebrate Recovery Bible. He also mentioned The Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton as being helpful to him.

AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY: No matter what path you have been down, we hope to encourage everyone to be in a community group at Mars Hill Church. If you are struggling in particular with alcohol, Danny suggests connecting with Alcoholics Anonymous in Mobile. The AA Central Office is located on 600 Bel Air Boulevard #224, Mobile, AL 36606, (251-479-9994). The have lists of every meeting in Mobile as well as other AA resources.

FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP: For families coping with addiction, Paths to Recovery by AlAnon and Codependent No More by Melodie Beaty are great resources.

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“Christian contentment is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and be totally at his disposal in the place he appoints, at the time he chooses, with the provision he is pleased to make.”

Sinclair Ferguson

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FAITHFULNESS IN THE

MUNDANE

BY SOPHIE MILLER

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The majority of my life was spent training for the Olympics.

Following in my dad’s sporting footsteps, I began rifle shooting at age nine. Four years later we discovered target shooting was an Olympic sport and my sights became set, quite literally, on winning gold.

As I entered high school and the Olympic dream moved closer to reality, it became almost an obsession and possibly a bargaining chip with the Lord. “God, look how much I could do for you if I won the gold medal and had a literal platform from which to talk about you!” As if God could only use me if I had an ornate medal around my neck. I believed that lie, though, as absurd as it sounds.

I wonder if we have a similar view to serving the Lord within the body of Christ?

Do we view those who have a specific ministry role or title within the church as elite Olympic-level Christians who are really serving God, while the rest of us are just filling the stands cheering them on. Worse, do we passively take part in their efforts?

I wonder how often we, as believers, buy the lie that we’re only serving the Lord if our service looks a certain way or gives us a certain title? Like, if one has a seminary degree and is using it in ministry, then of course they are serving the Lord and his Bride. If you’re a pastor or elder, deacon or Sunday school teacher, then you’re for sure serving the kingdom.

But is that what Scripture says? What qualifies as serving the church? What qualifies as serving the Lord? Do you have to be an Olympic athlete? A pastor?

A community group leader? A children’s ministry volunteer? Are any of those prerequisites for the ability to say “we are serving God”? Of course not.

This is what the Lord desires: a humble spirit and a contrite heart (Ps. 51:17).

And if we were having coffee together right now, I would want to encourage you with one vital truth: your life matters, your obedience matters, and your work matters outside of ministry titles.

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GOD RECEIVES OUR WORK The Lord doesn’t need me to win an Olympic gold medal any more than he needs gloves in the winter. And he doesn’t need you to have any sort of title in ministry to certify service to him. He doesn’t need us to sign up for every volunteer role at church or to have a title to signify our contribution to the kingdom.

we remember that faithfulness in the mundane is just as

It was an unexpected shoulder injury that forced me reluctantly to reject a mailbox full of college scholarships.

But the crushing blow of an unfulfilled Olympic dream opened my eyes to the reality that my worth, value, and “service” to the Lord does not come through what I can or cannot contribute.

task of eating and drinking? But yet, even in those every-

The Lord condescends to receive any of our works as worship and it pleases him to do so.

God desires our hearts, our obedience, and our faithfulness before him. That’s what he is after. But how often do

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glorifying to him as faithfulness on a platform?

Paul tells the Corinthians that whether they eat or drink, or whatever they do, it is all to be done for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). What is more mundane than the daily day functions, the Lord stoops to receive glory from us.

And it is a staggering reality.

That’s not the only way the Lord stoops. Jesus himself modeled faithfulness in the mundane. For the majority of his life on earth, he faithfully served in a carpenters workshop, surrounded by sawdust and wood shavings, crafting projects from trees he created and foreshadowing the day he would be crucified on one, crafting redemption for all who would believe (Mark 6:3, Gal. 3:13).

And following in Christ’s footsteps, whether it is by folding laundry or letters, changing diapers or the oil, we who were dead and have been made alive in him are given the astonishing privilege of serving the Lord (Eph. 2:5).

Jonathan Edwards said of his wife Sarah, “When she carried out her daily responsibilities as unto the Lord, they were found to be as good as prayer.”

When we box in what we believe is an acceptable service to God, we short-circuit the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives and disregard Romans 12:1, which tells us our entire lives are to be a sacrifice to the Lord.

Comparing ourselves, jobs, talents, and titles with others in the kingdom of God is a dangerous thing. God said he has knit his body together with unique members pow-

Author Courtney Reissig picks up on that thought and said, “For Sarah, her faithfulness in her daily work was directly owing to her contented spirit under the Lord’s direction in her life.”

ered by the Holy Spirit to walk in a manner worthy of

Is that your experience? Do you believe that our mundane, normal, Olympic-free lives spent in submission and obedience to Christ is just as honoring to him as someone who sells everything they own to move across the world?

But when we look at others and compare our roles to

Ministry without the title is still the work of the ministry.

A life lived in faithfulness as an employee who works ultimately for the Lord Christ and who spends their days doing their job with excellence because God works excellently is imaging him to the watching world (Col. 3:23-24).

the gospel, for the sake of him who purchased with his blood the only title we need: His (1 Cor. 12:12-27; Phil. 1:27; 1 John 3:1).

see if we’re measuring up spiritually, our focus shifts from obedience to our performance and making sure we are doing enough good to secure favor and right standing before God. When we remember that the good works that save us are Christ’s alone and that we now simply get to walk in the good works prepared for us, the pressure is released (Eph. 2:10). As Tim Keller says, we are then able to work from acceptance, not for acceptance.

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SOMEONE HAS TO WASH THE DISHES We can’t all be in full time ministry on staff with a church or organization or even on a foreign mission field, but at the end of the day, children still need to be cared for, the laundry must be done, the dishes washed, the food prepared, the grass cut, and vehicles maintained.

We cannot escape the mundane, ordinary moments of life, but God’s grace transforms those moments from something that must be endured to something that can be returned to him as worship. The ministry of the mundane, faithfulness in the ordinary, and seeing his grace in every detail of our lives, is an intentional act that is a pleasing offering to the Lord.

What a comfort to know our security, identity, and hope are not tied to an earthly title but to the one who is seated at the right hand of God. May we strive to live in Christ’s declaration that the work is finished and the title of our adoption is secure, and may that truth propel us to do all things, whether in word or deed, for the exaltation of the One who will one day say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And I can assure you that hearing those words will be infinitely more rewarding than any Olympic medal.

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“I trust that there is no mundane moment too small for God’s glory to shine through it.”

Emily Jensen

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Fairhope Campus

! s r e t s u B Pin

MARS FAMILY BOWLING OUTING

JUNE 11 | 3-5PM | EASTERN SHORE LANES

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FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP WITH THE WALTERS

BY BLAKE AND LINDSEY WALTERS

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We are Blake and Lindsey Walters, we have two boys Brody (9) and Brooks (5).

March of this year marked 12 years of marriage for us.

We met at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee. Lindsey’s dad is the lead pastor at a Nazarene Church in Texas and Blake’s parents were highly involved in the Nazarene Church in Mobile. Being involved in church is a big priority to us, because of how it influenced us as children and young adults.

policy during that time. During dinner, we try to discuss everyone’s days and what challenges or victories they experienced. It is very evident to us that the boys love having our full attention, even if it is only for a short time.

It’s good to have that time to connect and stop for a minute. Our bedtime routine starts at seven o’clock, and we read a devotional. Currently we are reading Indescribable

by Louie Giglio, and the boys love it. After devotions we pray with each of them in their rooms; we pray and they do as well.

We don’t claim to know all the answers in regards to disciplining our children. Our biggest goal is to live and walk with Christ daily, to be examples to our children. We often fail at modeling Christ-like behavior, but we make sure we apologize to the boys when we make mistakes. We explain to them that we are all going to mess up along the way, and we can learn from those mistakes.

Sometimes the kids fight, lie, pull the fire alarm at church, struggle to obey and even catch the curtains on fire!

They are kids and they are curious and sometimes even fearless and crazy! During this time in life we couldn’t be more thankful for our Mars Hill church family. We have had tough seasons with our boys when we didn’t know what to do, or we felt like we were at the end of our rope, and our small group was right there praying us through it.

Something we have instilled in the boys since they were babies is a schedule. Our boys thrive with structure, so they know what we expect of them daily. We usually eat dinner between 5:30-6 p.m. and have a strict no-device

So, overall it all goes back to Christ. When we are diligent about having quiet time, praying, doing our devotions, and just surrendering it all to Him, He works in us and in our kids! He is always the answer.

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“God hasn’t just sent you to do his work in the lives of your children; he will use the lives of your children to advance his work in you.”

Paul David Tripp

Mars Hill Milestones

Learn more about how we walk alongside our church family through all the stages of life at pomh.org/milestones.

MAKING ROOM FOR THOSE FROM AROUND THE WORLD: AN INTERVIEW WITH JERI STROADE OF DWELL MOBILE

BY DALLAS SCHMIDT

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Imagine being forced to leave your home and relocate to another country where you do not know anyone or even the language they are speaking.

You no longer have a home, yet all you long for is a sense of belonging in your world that has been completely uprooted. Mobile is the only city in Alabama to which refugees are resettled. They often arrive with a single bag and may know only a few words of English. A few may know each other, but mostly they do not know anyone in this new country. They feel isolated, lonely, and afraid.

Fortunately, for refugees landing in Mobile, Dwell exists to support these families.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jeri Stroade, Executive Director and Founder of Dwell, a nonprofit created to provide refugees relocated to Mobile a sense of home by providing support, opportunities, and meaningful relationships through ministry. The primary goal of Dwell is to promote relationship development between native Mobilians and resettled refugees by creating a sense of community and to assist in creating a new home in a new country.

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Dwell believes in the role relationships play in healing and restoration. Dwell provides a number of resources, including culturally relevant programs created to meet the needs of refugees, and developing a strong network of community partners among local college students and professionals. Dwell also provides Foundation classes that teach skills necessary to join the workforce in Mobile.

These weekly classes include a meal and working in subject-focused groups of ESL, citizenship, driving, and GED courses. Additional courses are taught through Passport to Literacy, a tutoring program for 1st-12th grade refugee children. Dwell also has a youth soccer program for students who attend Passport to Literacy.

Stroade created Dwell in 2015 when she saw a group of refugees arrive in Mobile after fleeing their country to survive and landing in a new world alone. As the refugees’ presence was made known, Mobilians were genuinely concerned for them, but did not know how to help.

Stroade wanted to create a place to bring a sense of home to these newly relocated refugees—and Dwell Mobile was founded.

Upon founding, Dwell began its weekly programs with 25 adult attendees. In 2022, Dwell averaged about 90 adults per week and 25 school-aged children. Dwell also provides in-home service to approximately 40 families.

These services include job placement, emergency assistance, and help accessing social services available to these families. Dwell also hosts a number of outreach events throughout the year created to foster relationships

between the community and resettled refugees. Some of these events include cultural night celebrations and the annual Christmas drive.

Since Covid, Dwell has also seen a need to address food insecurities among refugees and the larger Mobile community. They now host large-scale and targeted food distributions to assist with these needs. Dwell has also partnered with Feeding the Gulf Coast, and last year had four opportunities to distribute over 5,000 pounds of food, whose recipients included 100 Dwell members. The organization also ran six successful targeted distributions in the past year for Dwell families and anticipates a similar number of events for 2022.

Most refugees find out about Dwell through word of mouth within their communities. Some also learn about Dwell from referrals from Catholic Charities—the refugee resettlement agency in Mobile.

When asked how Mars Hill could support Dwell, Stroade said pray, volunteer, and give. A volunteer link as well as a donation link can be found on their website: www. dwellmobile.org. I asked what our church could specifically pray for, and Stroade asked us to “specifically pray for the work of Dwell: offering spaces for the marginalized to belong. Pray that more people who need these spaces will hear of us and get involved (whether they are resettled refugees or people wanting to volunteer or fund our work). Pray that the relationships built through our work would help people see God more clearly.”

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“You have taken refuge in the Lord.

You are a ‘refugee.’ You fled for your life, and have found every sort of aid and protection in Jesus. …

People fleeing disaster have no safe place, are vulnerable, and depend absolutely on outside mercies. But you have found all you need and more than you could ever imagine in the Lord, the only true refuge.”

David Powlison

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TO UGANDA AND BACK

BY KEITH AND LISA COGGINS

In the summer of 2002, Keith and I packed, numbered and labeled all of our household belongings into a 40foot shipping container, put our house up for sale, and prepared our family for a move to Uganda, Africa. We had been married for 22 years and had two sons, Jarrod our oldest, and Nik, who was five and a half years younger than Jarrod.

God had clearly called us to go and blessed us with a group of individuals and churches that committed to join us through support and prayer.

In July 2002, we boarded a plane with Nik, leaving Jarrod behind with Keith’s parents, since he was in his second year of college. After arriving fresh and eager to start our life of serving the Lord at an orphanage in Jinja, Uganda, we received our shipping container (our first adventure: getting it cleared through customs without paying a fortune in bribes and taxes), and we settled into our rented house with all our familiar things from the States.

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Jump ahead 17 years, when the Lord called us back to reside in our homeland of America, we arrived with nine trunks containing all the belongings we would start life again with here and yet, we were far richer than we could ever have imagined being.

improve the education of these children, which led to a discovery: the Ugandan education system is one of exclusively rote learning directed at a standardized test at the end of the seventh grade. By rote, we mean “repetition for memorization without meaning.”

In addition to the nine trunks of material belongings, we had four additional children God had given us. Two sons we adopted, Jonathan and Elisha, and two unofficially adopted, Martin and Alyssa. We had five grandchildren— three from Jarrod, one from Martin, and one from Alyssa, who adopted a boy from his birth. We had a completely different value system. We had grown closer to Jesus.

There were times when, although we had family and supporters, we still felt very alone. As Corrie ten Boom once truthfully declared, we can testify to:

When Keith took over the orphanage as director, he discovered it was near bankruptcy and not registered in the country. For the next three years, Keith and one of our fellow missionaries worked to get the financial situation of the orphanage stable and also to legalize it through registration.

“You may never know that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have.”

Following a thread through the tapestry of our life through the years, we have the privilege of sharing a testimony of our amazing Savior.

We had been on many mission trips in the 1990s. One of the missionary couples we often visited in Uganda had come to stay with us in Mobile. It was during their visit we heard a Bible lesson on Matthew 14:22-23. The teacher said, “When we hear the story of Jesus walking on water and Peter being welcomed to join Him, we learn that Peter took his eyes off Jesus and began to flounder, but today I want to point out another important point. Peter was the only one that got out of the boat, so when he began to sink, he was right there with the Lord.”

That is when the Lord spoke to Keith and told him to get out of the boat, and go! We obeyed.

For the first four years in Uganda, we worked at an orphanage in Jinja called The Good Shepherd’s Fold Children and Babies Home, alongside nine other missionaries. Our focus in that ministry was preparing the youth physically, mentally, and spiritually, to live outside the orphanage as they approached the age of being on their own. We developed strong, loving relationships with these teens. After the first year we became the directors of Good Shepherd’s Fold. During this time, we learned the children in the school were not learning. Many of them as old as fifth graders could barely read and could not comprehend most of what they were reading. I, Lisa, began to research the school system to learn how we could

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The children and staff were from various tribes throughout the country and therefore spoke different languages. Among these were some of the Acholi people whose homeland is in the northern regions of the country. This region, just a few hundred miles north of us, was experiencing a horrible rebel insurgency (the Lord Resistance Army or LRA), and there were only a few missionaries serving the Lord in this war-torn area. None of which lived in that region.

When the orphanage was operating legally and in good financial standing, and most of the teens we had been mentoring and discipling had resettled with family members, we handed the leadership over to a fellow missionary couple as we were being called to go to the northern Acholi region of the country.

The country of Uganda is divided by the Nile River and the LRA rebels would never cross it because they believed, if they did, their spiritual powers would leave them.

We made many trips to the North from 2003-2006 and were warned that, after crossing the Nile, if we did not see anyone walking on the road in the first 15 minutes, then we should turn around because there were likely rebels nearby. At the time, the insurgency had been going on for about 20 years, causing the Acholi children to know only a world of war in which children were abducted and made into soldiers trained to kill their own people.

Twenty-thousand children would migrate into the town of Gulu to sleep on the streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and even the hospital grounds every night of their lives to reduce the risk of being abducted.

All we could think about was how this population lived in a survival mentality, which develops a culture of living in a constant relief or need state. There was little to no evangelism going on there because the rebels were everywhere.

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We were the first missionaries to live in the Gulu area, the largest northern town in Uganda.

We actually moved into a village outside of town called Ochuka. We began sharing the gospel, starting in Genesis and proceeded through the Bible, and were told many of them had never heard this before. Twice a week we would have a Bible study at someone’s compound in the village, an area rich in witchcraft and animistic beliefs.

The spiritual attacks and demonic activity were often heavy enough to feel tangible and the people lived is constant fear and some opposed the teaching of the Bible. Despite the oppression, many repented, prayed to be forgiven, and followed Jesus.

For the next ten years, we self-educated to meet the needs of such a task. We served alongside Ugandans who love the Lord and have been instrumental in establishing a Christian School. The main goal was to ed-

ucate the children through better methods of teaching and learning, and helping the children develop a biblical worldview through Christ-centered school curriculum.

Since there was no curriculum other than the government issued, rote-based curriculum, we set to the task of researching how we could legally create a Christian curriculum from African perspective.

Living and working among a different culture is not only challenging, it necessitates a surrender of our own cultural ways to better understand the one in which we were living and serving. Through years of prayer, research, asking, and interacting, Jesus opened our minds and an understanding to some degree, emerged: Africans (tribal people of all kinds) live and think communally and collectively and learn from the direction of ‘concrete to principle,’ as opposed to how us as western, individualistic people learn: ’theory to application.’

Through this, we birthed Roots to Fruits Christian Curriculum for Africa.

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By using the minimum-required content of the Ugandan national curriculum and the guidelines of their syllabus (per the Ministry of Education and Sports of Uganda), we developed this biblically-shaped school curriculum. Lisa, along with other missionaries and qualified Ugandans, simply rearranged the content and added additional relevant information. This adjustment better suits the methodology of building knowledge on knowledge to more effectively teach critical thinking and comprehension skills for future learning. But, in a society deeply embedded in fear and survival, our vision was to help prepare the soil for the seed by offering the truth of God’s Word and praying it would awaken a hope in them.

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with more schools requesting it from other African countries: Liberia, Zambia, and Rwanda.

Just recently, the Ugandan government changed the laws governing non-governmental organizations. Our organization, Our Call Missions, can no longer be classified under ‘International’ and will be changed to ‘Foreign.’ This places the control in the hands of nationals, even though the support comes from abroad. Therefore, we have moved ourselves and the curriculum under the umbrella of Global Outreach International Mission agency.

We developed and used the curriculum in our school for nine years and the graduating children exhibited a higher standard of learning than any school in the region.

The most repetitive testimony from parents and teachers was that the children behaved differently. As word of our school and subsequently the R2F curriculum spread, other schools began requesting to use it.

We are closing out Our Call Missions and handing over Uganda-based leadership of Roots to Fruits distribution to a fellow missionary, freeing us to relocate back to the States in order to continue completing the development of the curriculum and assist in seeking further funding and organizations that will help distribute it to other countries that will allow its use in their private schools. Our team in Uganda will continue to sell and distribute R2F on the ground there.

We piloted the curriculum for four years in several schools with similar results. Although there are always battles against any change, the local government in various regions of Uganda have allowed its use in private schools and declared it legal. We now have the curriculum in 42 schools including two in South Sudan and one in Malawi,

Upon re-entry to the States as residents (October 2019), we found ourselves starting all over again. Where friends and family our age were moving into retirement, we were having to seek means for additional financial income, since living here is about five times more expensive than living in Uganda.

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Keith went to work as a security guard at Airbus and I have remained at home working on the curriculum. Keith still helps through typing and administrating. After two years of living back in our home country we still feel as though we are on a furlough, but just recently the Lord has impressed on us that we are not home. We are here for a very short time. Jesus is coming back soon and we must be busy about His business.

Because of that, this story of our ministry and mission work is not about us, it’s about the urgency of reaching as many people as possible with the Good News of Jesus and making disciples until He comes. We are all on mission.

Prayer requests: • Please pray for God to send committed volunteers to help with the writing of lesson plans in the upper grade levels in several subjects of R2F. The content is gathered and outlined; the format is established.

We just need the lesson plans written out.

• Pray for our teachers in Uganda as they learn to use Roots to Fruits and to deliver it correctly to the children.

• Pray for Jesus to mold and shape the minds of the children for transformation (Romans 12:2) • Pray for the schools in the countries using the R2F curriculum to remain open.

3 PILLAR RESOURCES BIBLICAL TEACHING: Other than reading many missionary biographies, there were two gospel-led books in particular that helped the Coggins more than others: The Peace Child by Don Richardson and The Book that Made Your World

by Vishal Mangalwadi.

AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY: Engage with what the Coggins and other missionaries continue to do in Africa by subscribing to their newsletter. If anyone would like to receive a quarterly newsletter from Lisa and Keith, please let them know by sending your name and address to them through email: klcoggin@gmail.com.

FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP: Commit to memorizing Jeremiah 17:8, the focus verse for the Roots to Fruits Christian Curriculum produced by the Coggins and used in African schools: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

-Jeremiah 17:8

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“May there be a day where we are reconciled In a way neither one of us can explain By the power of the One who can.”

Ani Chaucer, Juva: A Collection of Words

BIBLICAL TEACHING. GOSPEL COMMUNITY. FAMILY DISCIPLESHIP.