January is a time of year of dreaming big for what’s to come! It’s an exciting time, full of hope and possibilities. People make resolutions, big life changes, and dare to dream BIG! As a mission here in Mbale, we also want to dream (and PRAY) for big things in this New Year!

We are praying BIG THINGS for 2026. The first BIG thing we are praying and planning for is the Leadership Team. Last year, we started meeting regularly with leaders, who have been discipled and moved closely with over the past decade, to involve them in decisions, planning, discerning, and guiding the overall ministry. These are leaders who have traveled around with us to visit churches near and far, so they have a feel for the needs of leaders from all over Uganda. They are also men and women who we’ve seen fruit of spiritual maturity in their lives – and seen them actively making disciples – so they are able to think of Godly solutions in difficult circumstances. This year, our plan is to empower them more and more as the year goes by, so that their voices grow and their impact deepens. We believe this kind of leadership team is vital to the future of the mission work here in Uganda.

We also have plans to FINALLY break ground on the Apartment Complex! If you have been following along and praying with us over the past few years, then you are fully aware that a year ago we requested fundraising for this construction project that promises to provide financial resources from within Uganda. This is a BIG step towards financial sustainability for the mission work, which is one of our other major priorities. We are still in need of funds, but we hope and plan to be able to give you big updates in the coming months about this!

In addition to those two BIG THINGS for 2026, we also have many other things we are planning for this year:

We intend to hire one or two additional ministry staff members to expand our ability and capacity to train, equip, and disciple! (I hope to have word on this in the coming months.) This is an important decision for the future on the mission work, and we need prayers for wisdom, guidance, and discernment as we have interviews and make these decisions.

We are expanding our Village Savings & Loans trainings this year. Last year, we were able to launch and train 11 VSL groups at 8 churches. This year, we hope to double the impact and be able to launch VSL groups at 16 churches. We have also expanded our VSL trainers. In 2025, we had four people who could lead the VSL trainings. We have increased that to 6 people at the end of 2025, and we have added 2 more trainees for 2026. Our prayer is that by the end of 2026, we have ten functioning VSL trainers so that we can multiply these groups in churches which are eager to be invested.

Another major goal for this year is to include more disciplemakers into our MTI discipleship groups. We are adding FOUR new disciplemakers – leaders that we have discipled and seen them disciple others in their home churches – to broaden our pool of fully equipped and discipled disciplemakers. This not only gives them a chance to pour into others what God has poured into them, but it also allows us to continue pouring into them in a fresh, new way!

In addition to involving additional disciplemakers in MTI, we are also planning to launch up to five new disciplemaking cohorts in different clusters of churches. We continue to pursue localized disciplemaking multiplication. We saw great growth of that in two women’s groups in 2025, so we plan to build on that for two more women’s groups and three new men’s groups.

One goal we have as a mission is to visit a cluster gathering (a group of churches in relative close proximity to one another who gather together for support and encouragement) every month. This gives us the broader impact of visiting with more church members with one visit and have a broader impact to many different churches, while also being able to tackle some real challenges that leadership at these churches continue to struggle with. Our main purpose in focusing on these gatherings this year is to be able to empower the spiritually mature leaders of a cluster to provide more Godly guidance.

We ask that you be praying for these BIG THINGS that we are planning for 2026! We ask that you’re praying for even the small things that we continue to do on a daily basis. Thank you for praying with us!