Archives June 2026

Screenshot

Mission Moroto Stories: Captain Muhindo

When Rebekah took over Mission Moroto in late 2020 there were 35 Karamojong orphans living with her. But once she settled in and the region began to understand that there was now a genuine orphanage with a caring mother in Moroto District, a trail of orphans and vulnerable children began to come out of the bush and beat a path to Rebekah’s door. Eventually, the police began to depend on Rebekah and her huge family of helpers around the world to care for some of the most desperate and vulnerable. One day, Captain Muhindo, the captain of the Rupa Uganda police, showed up at the door with 4 sisters whose single mother had been murdered. He told Rebekah, “If these girls don’t come here they have no place to go.” Rebekah agreed to take them in. Today, these 4 sisters are healthy and happy and doing well in our school. Many times over the next 5 years the police came with similar requests. Now, there are 351 children at Mission Moroto and room for more as the Lord sends them. Their parents were killed in raids, or mine collapses, or Tuberculosis or Malaria or Typhoid or Brusilla or some other tragedy. For some, their parents are in prison or have abandoned them because of food scarcity. They come to us nearly dead from malnutrition, disease, abuse, and neglect. They come to us terribly frightened, hungry, sick, and nearly naked. The transformation that God works in them in an amazingly short period of time with the love and care of Rebekah, Rubi, Papa Matthew, Mama Lisa and the staff at Mission Moroto is simply stunning. Thank you to all of our donors and sponsors around the world for your prayers and support. This mission is NOT POSSIBLE without you. We love you all. We pray for you constantly. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: The Letter

This week, the girls of Ida House here at Mission Moroto wrote this sweet letter to Mama Rebekah. It so captures their hearts and the love that is shared here.

“Hello Mommy Rebekah,

We hope you are fine, back to us, we are also fine. We are grateful for your support. God bless you so so much. You are a blessed mother in Karamoja because we have never seen a kind mother like you. Even our parents will not take care of us the way you take care of us. May the God of Abraham bless you. The way God told you to come and support us from Karamoja is the way God told Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. We are happy when we are seeing you and when you are not around we are not happy because of God and you that is why we are here. We thank you for supporting girls, boys, and small babies. You have provided us everything like food, education, prayers, clothes, knickers, pads, soap, beds, mattresses, smearing oil, boxes, bags, bathing shelters, houses, and latrines. As the Bible says, ‘The hand which gives is more blessed than the hand that receives.’ Thank you for advising us when we do wrong things like fighting, quarreling, abusing, shouting, stealing, and rumormongering. We pray for God to bless the work of your hands and may God be with you wherever you go. Mommy Rebekah, continue with the same spirit. May God bless you and your family, Mommy Rebekah, for ever and ever amen. Be blessed by the Holy Spirit.

Written by your lovely girls from Ida House.”

Only Jesus spreads love like this. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Kolle-Bullen Bible College

“The challenge is highlighted when we draw a contrast with the United States, where there is one trained pastor for every 230 people. By comparison, majority world churches have one trained pastor for every 450,000 people.” – Christianity Today

In 2022 Papa Matthew’s oldest childhood friend, David Kolle, whom he grew up with and rode to Bible college with in 1984 reached out to him with this thought, “I want to start a Bible college at Mission Moroto and I want to name it in honor of my parents and your parents.” We started praying and strategizing how God could make this happen. Finally, in June of 2023 Kolle-Bullen Bible College began in two places. First, we received permission to start in Moroto Prison with a one-year class called Christian Essentials every Thursday. Second, we started holding a class at our new church building at the mission every Tuesday for village church leaders. Both classes were wildly blessed and continue on today with Rubi Hernandez leading the prison class and Papa Matthew and Rebekah leading the class at the mission. We’ve been very blessed to teach systematic theology, Christian doctrine, church history, how we got our Bible, apologetics, Christian leadership, church polity, spiritual gifts, the martyrs, the missionaries, the theologians, the evangelists, the covenants, the art of preaching, verse by verse through books of the Bible, and much much more. We have become a family and planted 24 village churches together. Only heaven knows what the future holds but we are excited about learning more!!! www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Digital Bible Society

In late 2020 we were planning to head to Moroto Uganda for the first time. We taken over Mission Moroto on September 1, 2020 but due to COVID-19 we hadn’t been able to physically go there yet. Airports kept closing and flights kept cancelling. We finally went there in January of 2021 for a week and Rebekah came home and sold everything and booked her flight to move to Moroto permanently. Just before she left a friend told us about a place in our own Houston suburb called Digital Bible Society of Conroe. They make and sell audio Bibles and much much more. So, Rebekah, Mama Lisa, and Papa Matthew went and visited them just before Rebekah moved. We had such a wonderful time and caught a vision for bringing audio Bibles in Karamojong to the largely illiterate, non-English speaking, Karamojong people. Rebekah went to Moroto and Papa Matthew ordered some audio Bibles that he and Mama Lisa could bring to the mission. While the people of DBS (Digital Bible Society) were preparing the audio Bibles they had an idea, “Matthew, you have sermons that have been recorded as they were interpreted into Karamojong? Right? We will add those to the audio Bibles as well.” It was done and Papa Matthew and Mama Lisa brought the first audio Bibles in October 2021. We handed them out to some of our indigenous pastor friends to share in the villages. One of their sons, disabled by Cerebral Palsy, would take the audio Bible to Nakiloro Village and set it on a stump and play it loud and the people would gather to listen. Soon everyone in the villages were asking for audio Bibles. We were reaching into new and more villages and preaching the gospel and handing out the audio Bibles and it spread like wildfire. Eventually, we brought hundreds of these audio Bibles with as many as 70 of Papa Matthew’s sermons and the Bible in Karamojong, English, Ateso, Acholi, and Swahili. The impact is indescribable. We brought every child at Mission Moroto one and it was wonderful to see them walking around the mission with an audio Bible to their ear. We are always praying for more funds to order more of these Bibles and spread them all over Karamoja. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Months Without Rain

In the spring of 2023, our region had been without rain for months. The people had planted and weeded but now the crops were slowly withering. Every village we preached in would tell us, “Give us rain!” And we would say, “God is the sender of rain. Let’s ask Him together.” and we would pray and pray with the people. Finally, we decided to have an all-night prayer meeting at our church at Mission Moroto to pray for rain. Hundreds came and we prayed and sang and prayed and danced and prayed. At exactly 3 am the heavens opened and a rain like none of us had every experienced poured down. Inside our metal roof church it sounded like a freight train was running through our building. The people shouted and clapped and danced and praised the Lord. The rain continued off and on for the next several days and the crops were saved. Praise the Lord! Now the villagers know how to pray and they do. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Last Rites

In early 2023, we pushed farther north from the mission and were preaching in new unreached villages. In one village, Lokitelekapeth, the elders asked us to pray for a sick woman. To get to her, we had to kneel down and crawl through a thorn barricade around the village designed to keep out raiders. We would crawl through one barricade and then maneuver a maze and then crawl through a second barricade to access the interior of the village. When we reached the village yard we stood up and noticed mounds of earth everywhere. We asked, “What are they planting in the mounds?” The elders said, “These are graves of those who died of hunger this dry season.” We were stunned to realize the whole village yard was a graveyard of fresh graves. We whispered a prayer and then went to find the sick woman. What we found shocked us. This elderly woman’s body looked like a skeleton with dried leather stretched over it. Her face was swollen from infection to twice its normal size. She lay in the dirt with only her 8-year-old grandson to bring her water and food periodically. They asked us to pray. Papa Matthew confessed later that what went through his mind was, “This lady doesn’t need prayer for healing, she needs last rites prayed over her. She is slipping even now into eternity!” But Papa Matthew and Rebekah laid hands on her and prayed for healing. The lady begged us to take her grandson back to Mission Moroto and the indigenous pastors committed to checking on her regularly to make sure she was getting food and water. Rebekah took the little boy back to the mission. A week later, we were having a revival at our church and hundreds were coming from the villages and one of the indigenous pastors came running up and said, “The lady you prayed over is here!” They took us over and there she was! Face healed and looking so so much better. She hugged us and thanked us. We lifted our hands to heaven and praised the Lord! He is kind like that. She professed faith in Jesus and was baptized that weekend. In the following months, we were led to begin a weekly feeding program that we call Jesus and Porridge where we hire a cook and a teacher in each of 24 local villages and we supply maize flour and sugar and feed and educate over 2000 children and elderly 3 times a week. Amazingly, it costs us only $1 per person per month to do this! Jesus is changing a region, one cup of porridge and one Bible story at a time. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: The 12

Over the last 5 years we have discipled and trained every willing Karamojong heart that wanted to serve the Lord full-time. We’ve had to test the spirits and see who was a true follower of Jesus and who was simply attracted to titles or financial support. We’ve prayed hard and trusted the Spirit and weeded out many of the tares and God has richly blessed us with The 12. These 12 pastors are serious, hearty, strong, humble servants of the Lord. They are 7 men and 5 women whom we have taught and trained and faithfully serve our 24 village church plants. They go out on motorcycles to our Jesus and Porridge Program during the week where we feed and teach over 2000 village children. They each go to 2 or 3 villages on Sunday and preach the word and counsel and train and so forth. They all come to Mission Moroto every Tuesday and we have a Pastor’s Class. Over the years, Papa Matthew has taught through the 20 centuries of church history. He has taught them about every theologian in history, every heretic, every martyr, every missionary, every church leader. He has taught them about how we got our Bible. About where each collection of manuscripts was passed down and how 400 years after Jesus it all came together in one book called The Bible. He has taught them systematic theology (doctrine of God, of Christ, of Holy Spirit, of the church, of salvation, of the covenants, of end times, and so forth). Mama Rebekah has taught them verse by verse through the gospels and some of the epistles. We have a blessed time every Tuesday and then we share a meal together. We’ve encouraged them to begin to train an assistant so that eventually we can have 24 pastors and more as the Lord provides! Lord willing, in the years to come we will be able to train up some Karamojong missionaries to go out to the hundreds of unreached villages beyond where we minister now. Praise the Lord! www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: 16 Sermons in 2 Days

In January of 2026, Rebekah planned and organized for Papa Matthew to visit and preach in 16 villages in 2 days. They started near the base of the mountain and worked out to the plains. Village after village the people gathered and cheered. Papa Matthew preached this. “I want to tell you the best story in the whole world! And it is a true story! But to start, I have to go way back, before there was an earth, sun, moon or stars. Before, anything else existed there existed a heavenly Being we call God. God existed in 3 persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God in 3 persons. And they were sooooo happy. They were a factory of love and joy. The Father loved the Son and the Holy Spirit and the Son loved the Father and the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit loved the Father and the Son. Everything about them was love and joy and goodness. And as we know, true love always shares so they didn’t want to keep all of this love and joy to themselves. So, they created angels. They created the heavens and the earth. They created everything good. And then they did something even the angels were stunned by. They gathered together some dirt and formed it into the shape of a human. And then they did something truly scandalous. They breathed into the body of the human the breath of life and it became a living soul. The human was called Adam (a Hebrew word for reddish dirt). Then God split the human and made from one half an Ish (man) and from the other half an Isha (woman) and the dirt people were made in the image of God! God loved the humans so much. They lived in a beautiful garden and God would come in the cool of the day and walk with the humans in perfect love and harmony. BUT God had an enemy! One of His angels wanted to be like the Most High. He wanted to receive worship. He hated the dirt people and was jealous that God loved them so. Satan knew that God is all powerful so Satan couldn’t hurt God but maybe he could hurt the people God loved. He crept into the garden. He lied to the humans. He told them that God was holding out on them. That God knew that if they ate the fruit God had told them not to eat that they would be wise like God. He told them that they could be like God without God (what Satan himself wanted). Sadly, the humans believed Satan’s lies and they disobeyed God and sin and all things bad came into the world. Suddenly there was death and hunger and disease and war and all the things we hate. Satan thought that God would kill the dirt people and then he would be done with them. But he underestimated the love and mercy of God. God lovingly told the woman that from her body would come One who would repair the damage done between humans and God. And many years later, the second person of the Trinity, the Son Himself, came into the womb of a human woman, a virgin named Mary and was born. He was both dirt man and God!!!! Only He could bring heaven and earth back together. He grew up and showed the human race what the love of the Trinity looked like. He fought Satan, He healed diseases, He fed the hungry, He released those oppressed by demons. He was the announcement that the Kingdom of God had come. And finally, He went to the cross as the ultimate sacrifice for sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us. On the cross, through the shedding of His blood and His death, He took all the sins of the world upon Himself and destroyed the power of death and the power of sin, He defeated the power of darkness and restored humans to relationship with God (at this point the people are cheering and clapping and dancing). He died and was buried and three days later He arose from the dead. He spent 40 days teaching His disciples about the Kingdom of God and then He floated up to heaven. And then the Father and the Son sent the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to live inside of us dirt people who repent and believe! Now, the Holy Spirit is filling us dirt people with the love and joy of the Trinity and through us the love of God and the Kingdom of God is expanding through the earth. And someday, Jesus Himself will return and will remake the earth like new and heaven will come down to earth and we will live with God in love and joy through all eternity.” When Papa Matthew is finished the people cheer and clap and dance. Then those who want to profess their faith in Christ come and kneel down to be prayed over. Then those who need healing kneel down and are prayed over. Then we move on to the next village down the road. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: The 800

In the spring of 2023, we had been blessed to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to many formerly unreached villages north of the mission. The villagers began telling us wonderful stories of what Jesus was doing to their villages. Stories like, “We have been fighting with this other village for years but now we have laid down our weapons.” Stories like, “We now take up an offering on Sunday and give to the sick and poorest of our members.” Stories like, “We prayed for rain and/or healing and Jesus answered!” We were stunned and thrilled at how Jesus was working. We finished our large church building at Mission Moroto and to celebrate the opening we had an all-night prayer meeting the weekend of Easter 2023. At the prayer meeting the grandmoms and grandpapas started asking if they could get baptized. Rebekah scheduled a 3-day revival meeting at our church so Papa Matthew and the team could preach and make sure everyone understood the gospel clearly and understood baptism clearly. To our great surprise and praise to God over 1200 villagers showed up on June 9, 2023. We sang and danced and preached and testified and ate together day and night for 3 days. It was a preview of heaven for sure. On Sunday June 11, 2023 we began hauling the new believers requesting baptism to the river. We stood on the bank of the river as the people all together professed their faith in Christ aloud and then Papa Matthew, Rebekah, and several of our indigenous pastors began baptizing. This went on all day and at the end of the day we calculated that we had baptized about 800 new believers! Only Jesus can move people like that. Only our God can perform miracles like that and we praise Him. Since then, we have been blessed to baptize over 900 more but we’ve never had another single day like the day of The 800. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Nile River Baptism & Sad Encounter

In July of 2023, Papa Matthew and Rebekah and a couple of Ugandan pastors were ministering in Juba, South Sudan and we were invited to baptize some new believers in the Nile River. It was a glorious baptism service and as we walked up out of the river we saw that a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered so we began to share with them about Jesus and some of them prayed and asked to be baptized as well. The pastors complied. But one young man in his late teens stepped out of the crowd and walked straight up to Papa Matthew and said in an otherworldly voice, “Man of God! What do you have for me?” Papa Matthew immediately recognized that he was a demoniac so he reached out to lay his hands on the young man and pray for him. The young man jumped back and yelled, “Don’t touch me!” Papa Matthew said, “I want to pray for you.” The young man yelled, “Don’t pray for me!” Then he began to quote scripture rapidly, and sing old gospel hymns loudly while sneering. Matthew asked, “Where did you learn these?“ He replied, “I went to religious school as a boy.” Papa Matthew said, “You know, Jesus is what your soul has always longed for, submit to Him!” The young man said, “I have a demon.” and Papa Matthew said, “I know and I can help with that. Let me pray for you.” He shouted a curse and stepped towards Papa Matthew aggressively. Rebekah took hold of Papa Matthew’s sleeve and began leading him back to the vehicle. The young man followed asking, “Are you afraid of me?” Papa Matthew replied, “No, you are afraid of me.” The young man flinched and stepped backward. Matthew went on, “I’m walking away for your protection but I’m going to pray for you anyway.” The young man said, “You have to give me something.” Matthew said, “All I have to give you is prayer.” The young man cursed and walked away. We still pray for him today when the Spirit brings him to mind. 😢 www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Mama Ruth

In the fall of 2022 we decided to step out on faith and begin the church building at Mission Moroto that we had been dreaming of so we put all the money we had in the world into building the foundation and pouring the floor slab. Rebekah and the children began to march and pray around the foundation. We had a mission team from the U.S. come in December and they walked around the slab and prayed. In January 2023 the money came in and we built our beautiful church building. Easter Day 2023 was opening Sunday of the new church. The whole Mission Moroto family was enjoying a wonderfully anointed service when suddenly a first time visitor, Napeyok Ruth, began to manifest demon possession. She began to scream and attack all the people praying around her. Our pastors quickly attempted to restrain her but she was too strong for them. Rebekah stepped up and laid her hand on Ruth and said, “Come!” Ruth obediently followed Rebekah outside and for the protection of the children Rebekah took her to the gate of the property and told her, “Come back tomorrow and I will help you.” Then Rebekah returned to leading the worship service. The next day, Ruth returned and all the pastors and Rebekah prayed over her at length and she was delivered. From that day to this, she is absolutely the happiest woman any of us have every known. She professed faith in Christ, was baptized, and has served as a house mom at Mission Moroto for a few years. She is always singing, and smiling, and skipping, and dancing. She cares for some of our sickest children and is a wonderful mother to them. Every time she sees someone from the Bullen family on the property she yells and comes running smiling for a big hug. She is a bright light at Mission Moroto. Praise Jesus! www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: We Wanted to Kiss the Ground

In July 2023, Papa Matthew, Rebekah, and two Ugandan pastors, one of which knew South Sudan and could speak Arabic, traveled to South Sudan to visit and encourage believers, and for Papa Matthew to preach in several churches in the Juba area. We knew it was a violent and troubled area, but we had felt compelled for years to go there. We crossed the border into South Sudan after much wrangling with the local officials, even though our paperwork and visas and everything were in order. Immediately, we realized we were in a different world. The roads were horribly potholed and for miles upon miles upon miles there were burned out greyhound style buses, and overturned semi-trucks and bombed out cars and bombed out buildings. For hours we drove through this and prayed. We finally made it to Juba and were able to share in some churches and encourage some people. We were blessed to join in a baptism service in the Nile River. We started to receive messages from Mama Lisa who was back at Mission Moroto that a sickness had spread through the camp and children were lying everywhere on the sidewalks and around the buildings too sick to rise. Mamma Lisa and the staff were treating them as best they could. We realized we had to get home so we started back toward Uganda. It was then that it got really crazy. Rebel groups and gangs had set up intermittent roadblocks to rob or extort money from passing vehicles at gunpoint. We would show them our papers and pay the “toll” and then move on to the next makeshift “checkpoint.” At one point the gangsters in second-hand ill-fitting military uniforms demanded the passports of our Ugandan pastors. Papa Matthew waited respectfully in the vehicle with Rebekah but soon it became apparent that they were threatening the pastors and refusing to return their documents. Then Papa Matthew heard the Holy Spirit say, “Ok, your turn.” He said, “Yes sir!” He stepped out of the vehicle, walked straight up to the largest man who was a head taller than Papa Matthew and said with authority, “Give me those passports” and the man immediately handed them to Papa Matthew. Then the man said, “Who are you?” Papa Matthew said, “I’m here working for God and you are disturbing my people.” The man said, “Oh, you’re a pastor, don’t you know you have to follow the laws of whatever country you are in?“ Papa Matthew said, “Of course, can I see your credentials? By what authority are you disturbing us?” At this point, the man blew up and began screaming and shouting. Papa Matthew turned to the pastors, handed them their passports, and said, “Get in the vehicle. We are done here. Let’s go.” The man screamed, “I will send the militia after you!” Papa Matthew said, “See this white Land Cruiser with Mission Moroto on the side? Send them, we won’t be hard to find.” And we drove away. Thankfully, we were not stopped again and when we reached the Uganda border, we wanted to get out of the vehicle and kiss the ground we were so grateful to be back in Uganda 😂 When we got back to the Mission, Rebekah knew the medicine needed, and bought it, and the children were fine shortly thereafter. Another thing Papa Matthew and Rebekah brought home from South Sudan other than the memories was Typhoid and we have been fighting it off and on ever since. 😂 We’ve never been back to South Sudan but we have paid the way for the Ugandan pastors to go back and evangelize multiple times. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Driving With Malaria

A couple years ago, we had a mission team from the U.S. visit. They were a family that had visited years before the Bullen family was part of Mission Moroto. They were very excited about going up to Kakingol Village on the mountain to play The Jesus Film for the first time for the Tepeth people, an ancient and remote tribe that preceded even the Karamojong people in the region. The problem was, Rebekah‘s Land Cruiser was the only vehicle that could make it up the treacherous climb to Kakingol and the door of the vehicle had blown closed on Rebekah’s leg the previous week and she was not able to drive with a damaged knee and Papa Matthew, legally blind from a Traumatic Brain Injury and 25 days in a coma years ago, is strictly forbidden from EVER driving anything anywhere 😂. Mamma Lisa knew how to drive the Land Cruiser but had never driven up the almost impassable, steep, switchback rockslide of a road to Kakingol Village but she was willing to try. To compound matters, it had rained hard the night before, all night, and the next morning before the trip up the mountain. So, in four-wheel-drive, Mama Lisa, Rebekah, Papa Matthew, the Visitors, and a pile of Rebekah’s teens bounced and slid and spun and flew up the mountain throwing mud in all directions. We finally made it to the top and the people got to see The Jesus Film, hallelujah. The younger visitors also wanted to travel up higher in the mountain to another village where the vehicle could not go, so our pastors took them on motorcycles. One motorcycle crashed, but thankfully, no one was injured. They made it up and were able to minister on the mountain. All the while, dark rain clouds were rolling in. Uncharacteristically, Mama Lisa stayed in the vehicle the entire time asleep on the seat. At one point, Rebekah went to check on her, and found that she had a fever. We knew the rain was coming again so Mamma Lisa woke up and drove us back down the crazy, twisty, turning, sliding mountainside and took us safely home. The next morning, Mamma Lisa got tested at the clinic and she had Malaria. Dr. David Livingston, the rugged pioneer missionary who first brought the gospel to the interior of Africa was famous for saying, “We walk with Malaria” so we started teasing Mamma Lisa that she drives with Malaria 😂 Later Rubi and Papa Matthew took the visitors to town and they were blessed to speak on the radio. Praise the Lord, the family of Visitors later paid to build a new church building in Kakingol. When the building was complete, Papa Matthew grumbled, “We built this building way too big! We’ll never need this much space up here!” The next week we had a revival there and packed out the building with over 400 Tepeth people and scores were saved and baptized. Papa Matthew blushing, looked up to heaven and said, “Yes, Lord, Oh me of little faith.” 😂www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories