Archives August 2026

In June 2015, Papa Matthew received a call from a pastor in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa—our adopted daughter Mercy’s birth town.

“Matt, would you please come and preach a crusade, do a youth rally, and conduct pastors’ training this fall?”

He instantly replied, “Yes! I have been praying for seven years that God would let me go see my daughter’s birth home! October? Yes, I will be there!”

Papa Matthew sensed when Pastor Paye called from Liberia that it was a message from the Lord, but he simply could not have known how thrilling it would be to go there with Mercy and meet some of her blood relatives.

Each and every gospel service was on fire! What a joy to stand on that stage night after night and see people flood in from the surrounding villages and neighborhoods to hear the gospel—and then to see the altar packed each night as hundreds came to trust in Jesus. Each day, they visited a different school and shared Jesus with the children, and they also held pastors’ seminars and youth seminars. The Spirit moved in power, and they were overjoyed to be a part of it all. Thank You, Lord!

When Rebekah and Matthew had visited Rwanda in January of that same year, they felt led, along with their Rwandan pastor friend, Ndagijimana, to start a school and call it Mercy’s House in honor of their precious Liberian daughter, Mercy. Pastor Ndagijimana told them about a perfect piece of land that was available for $10,000.

They said, “We will pray.”

In August of 2015, Matthew and Ndagijimana were on the phone when the Spirit came heavily upon Papa Matthew, and he said, “We will have that $10,000 by the end of the month.”

They had no money and no prospects of receiving any, but the message from the Spirit was strong.

A few days later, they were having a prayer meeting with several ministry friends. Mama Lisa, uncharacteristically, mentioned the specific amount in her prayer: “Lord, please give us $10,000 for Mercy’s House Rwanda.”

At the end of the prayer, a young woman approached Rebekah and Matthew. She was shaking, and there were tears in her eyes.

She said, “My husband and I need to talk to you right now.”

The four of them stepped into an adjacent space, and she related how, during the prayer, the Holy Spirit had told her to give the $10,000 she had received just the day before as an inheritance. She had quickly walked up to her husband to tell him what the Holy Spirit had told her, but before she could speak, her husband said, “Yes.”

She said, “You don’t even know what I was going to ask you.”

He replied, “Yes, I do, and the answer is yes.”

Then she looked at Rebekah and Matthew, still trembling, and said, “So, we are giving you the $10,000 for Mercy’s House Rwanda.”

They were humbled and stunned.

Today, there is a Mercy’s Nursery School, filled with some of the cutest children on earth, on that very property.

Now Mercy and Matthew were in Liberia, and Matthew shared the vision for a Mercy’s House with Pastor Paye. He was all in. He told Matthew about some land near Monrovia that would be perfect for a Mercy’s House.

As Papa Matthew held little orphaned Liberian children in his arms as they came to hug him every day, he knew they had to do this!

They finished their trip and returned home, praying that God would allow them to open a school in Mercy’s hometown.

Soon, God provided the money for the land, and it was purchased.

Not long afterward, Papa Matthew and Mama Lisa drove to meet some precious friends for dinner. Matthew had been praying hard for 18 months for a large gospel crusade tour he was planning in Rwanda. It was now just four weeks away, and he didn’t have a dollar to his name. It gave him a headache just trying to work up the courage to call off the trip.

As Mama Lisa drove them to meet the couple for dinner, Papa Matthew messaged Pastor Ndagijimana in Rwanda and said, “I’m so sorry, brother. I want to come so badly, but I haven’t received the finances I have been praying for, so I thought I should let you know now that I can’t come next month.”

He almost instantly replied, “I’m sorry too. But I trust God. I’m sad, though. There were many people waiting for you to come.”

Matthew cried, pounded on the dashboard, and put his head in his hands.

Lisa asked, “What’s wrong, baby?”

He told her, and she asked, “Well, how much do you need?”

He replied, “With everything we have going on in Colombia, Rwanda, and Liberia, I need $50,000.”

She replied, “God’s not broke. Let’s pray about it.”

He said, “I’ve been praying about it for 18 months! The more I pray, the less I have. If I pray for work, the work dries up. If I pray for donations, the donations stop coming. I don’t know what to do!”

She replied, “Then I’m going to pray about it. God’s timing is best.”

She prayed, and they arrived at the restaurant.

They had a wonderful dinner, and then their friends handed them an envelope and said, “This is really why we invited you to dinner. Please open it.”

Inside was a card that read:

“Never stop dreaming big, crazy dreams.”

Stapled to the card was a check for $50,000 for their work in Liberia and Rwanda!

Matthew’s mouth fell open, and he exclaimed, “What the heck?”

They laughed. They cried. They hugged. Then they headed home.

Papa Matthew quickly messaged Pastor Ndagijimana:

“Hold it!!! A miracle just happened! Don’t cancel anything! I will be there!”

He wrote back, “Praise God!!!”

They landed in Rwanda and headed out toward the western border, where they held stunning gospel crusades. Then they headed to the northern border of Rwanda for more gospel crusades.

On the way, they came down a winding switchback road on a steep mountainside, seemingly always just inches from the cliff’s edge. They wound down and down and down. Just as they finally straightened out on flat ground, one of the tires flew off the van and went bouncing down the road as the van careened to the side.

Wow! Thank You, Lord, for letting the tire wait until they were off the cliff!

The next morning, they held a crusade near the borders of Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. At one of the meetings, a Ugandan evangelist who had crossed the border to attend the gospel meetings walked up to Rebekah and handed her a folded Ugandan flag.

He said, “The Lord has shown me that you will do mighty things in Uganda someday, and I wanted you to have this.”

Rebekah thanked him but thought he must be mistaken.

The meetings were so anointed. The crowds grew and grew until they had to move out into the street under tarps. Some of the men ran down to the local Seventh-day Adventist church and asked if they could borrow their pews. They agreed, and the men carried all the pews out and placed them in the muddy street.

As the meeting was about to start and everyone was praying hard, a whirlwind blew right through the crowd. They all trembled and looked at one another, saying, “You saw that too, right?”

“Yes! Yes, we did!”

They had such a powerful meeting, and then the rains came hard.

They began to wonder if they would have to cancel that evening’s crusade, but at the very moment the meeting was supposed to start, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Papa Matthew preached his favorite sermon, “Recipe for a Miracle.”

When he gave the invitation, the whole crowd of several hundred people knelt with him in the muddy street, praying for miracles.

After they stood, a very old woman came up to Matthew, fell on her face at his feet, and began kissing his feet and praying. He was deeply moved.

Next, a young woman came forward, very large with child.

They said, “Pastor, can you please pray over her? She is 12 months pregnant and cannot go into labor. She is waiting for the baby to die or for her to die.”

Stunned, they realized they were in the middle of rural Africa without hospitals, doctors, or medicine of any kind nearby, and this woman desperately needed a miracle.

They laid hands on her and prayed like never before.

Then the leaders whisked them away to the cars, and they headed back to the capital city of Kigali. The next morning, they flew out for Houston.

When they arrived home after 30 hours of travel, their phones were blowing up with messages from the Rwandans.

The young woman had given birth to a huge, healthy baby boy that very night after they prayed for her—and she survived!

Every year since, on the boy’s birthday, they send Papa Matthew a photo of the little boy and ask, “Miracle man, here is the little boy. When are you coming back to Rwanda for a healing crusade?”

Only God knows the answer to that question.

We serve an AUDACIOUS GOD.

Today, there is a thriving Mercy’s House in Liberia and a thriving Mercy’s House in Rwanda, and multiple churches have been planted.

And, by the way, that Ugandan evangelist was right.

The flag he gave Rebekah that day now hangs in Mission Moroto Christian Church in Uganda.

We serve an AUDACIOUS GOD.

www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: Africa Prequel I

In October 2014, Rebekah, who had been working in Zambia, Africa, for two years, was forced to come home to America. She had been suffering from pneumonia for months, and the antibiotics they were giving her at the village clinic weren’t helping. She could have died. Some of her friends did die. She lay on her parents couch for six weeks as her mom nursed her back to health.

One night in late December, she and Papa Matthew were sitting on the balcony of the apartment, talking and praying, when she suddenly said, “Daddy, you have to come to Africa with me! I want you to see my orphanage and meet my children. You have to preach for Pastor Mbewe, meet Pastor Tendai, and then we have to go to Rwanda and preach for Pastor Ndagijimana!”

Africa seemed to Papa Matthew as far away as the moon. He had never even crossed the Atlantic! He quickly figured out a budget for what it would take to do all that she had asked.

“Rebekah, it would take $10,000 to do what you are saying,” he said.

She replied, “That’s OK, Daddy. God has $10,000. Let’s pray right now.”

He sheepishly bowed his head, and she prayed so boldly that God would give them $10,000 soon so they could go. Then she lifted her smiling face and said, “There, Daddy! We are going to Africa!”

He gulped and said, “Yeah, great, sure.”

They didn’t tell another living soul about that conversation, and yet, two days later, a man mysteriously wired $10,000 into their bank account! They quickly bought their tickets and left for Africa in mid-January 2015.

Oh, the miracles! Oh, the gospel crusades! Oh, the joy!

First, they would spend a week in Zambia and then head to Rwanda. Papa Matthew was blessed to preach in a church in Mashikili, Zambia. The night before, he sent a message to the evangelist who had led him to Christ, and said, “Tomorrow will be my first time to preach on the African continent, and I can’t quit thinking about you. Thank you for leading me to Christ.”

It was a heavenly day.

They had one of the most thrilling and humbling weeks of their lives at the orphanage where Rebekah worked. The children were so loving, and it was humbling to walk through the village and have people come up, touch Papa Matthew, and say, “You are Miss Rebekah’s father. How blessed you are.”

One day, she took him way back into the bush to meet her friends. They would walk up to a little mud hut, and the people would come, take him by the hand, and say reverently, “Will you please pray over our home? Will you bless our home with your presence?”

They would sit and talk awhile, then pray and bless them.

On the Friday morning before they were to leave for Rwanda on Tuesday, they were in the bush, and Rebekah stopped to use an outhouse. When she came out, she was white as a sheet and trembling.

“What’s wrong?” Papa Matthew asked.

She said, “Daddy, I just dropped my passport in the outhouse.”

Oh, my goodness! They had to fly to Rwanda in just a few days.

Papa Matthew, like a Superdad, grabbed a long stick and said, “Don’t worry. I will fish it out.”

He worked and worked, sweat pouring from his brow, and succeeded—in pushing it deeper and deeper into the latrine!

Finally, Rebekah said, “Dad, we need to go to the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka, the capital city.”

They called a driver, waited for him for two hours, then made the two-hour trip to Lusaka and pulled up to the embassy at 2:00 p.m. on Friday.

The guard at the front gate said, “Sorry, this is Friday. The embassy closes at noon on Fridays.”

They turned around and made the two-hour trip back to the project.

Oh, how they prayed Saturday and Sunday!

Monday morning, they went back to the embassy. Rebekah went in and explained everything. Everyone started laughing and coming out of their cubicles as the news spread quickly: “This girl dropped her passport in a Zambian toilet!”

They laughed and laughed and then said, “Don’t worry, young lady. We will have you out of here with a new passport before noon.”

They all jumped in and worked on it, and sure enough, Rebekah and Papa Matthew made their flight to Rwanda on Tuesday!

Praise God!

Their time in Rwanda was heavenly, but one story from that trip stands out. One night, the Rwandan pastor arranged for Papa Matthew to preach on a secular public radio station in the capital city of Kigali.

Rebekah, the pastor, a wonderful interpreter, and Papa Matthew sat down in the studio, and he preached from his heart a sermon entitled “Jesus Is Worth the Fire,” from Daniel chapter 3.

He told the Rwandans how deeply it had touched him to see that they had gone through the furnace of the 1994 genocide, but they had found Jesus in the fire. What a blessing it was to see them healing as a nation and hungry for God.

When he finished the sermon, everyone in the room, including the DJ, was weeping.

The DJ said, “You preach really well, Pastor. Can you please come back tomorrow night and preach twice?”

On the way back to the missionary compound that night, the pastor’s phone kept ringing and ringing. Unbeknownst to Rebekah and Papa Matthew, the radio station had given out the pastor’s phone number after the sermon for anyone who wanted to know more about God.

He received over 100 calls that night from people accepting Christ as Lord and Savior.

The next night, they were so late returning from a visit to the pastor’s sister’s orphanage in southern Rwanda that their scheduled airtime had already passed and the next program was in session. When the DJ saw that they had arrived, he suspended the other program and immediately put Papa Matthew on the air.

Papa Matthew preached a sermon entitled “Can God? Walking in the Miracle,” from Exodus 14, and then recorded a second sermon entitled “Passionate Pursuit of Jesus,” to be aired the following night.

Again, on their way back to the missionary compound, more than 40 people called the pastor to say they wanted to follow Jesus.

The next year, in 2016, they returned to Rwanda and preached all over the country…

But that’s for another Africa Prequel!

www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

In late 2021, some of Rebekah’s employees were out in the bush collecting tall grass to repair the roofs of mud huts. While there, they came upon a small village with a fresh grave. Nearby were the dead mother’s two little boys, both deathly ill.

The older brother, five-year-old Keem, had hands and feet so severely covered with jiggers—a parasitic infestation caused by sand fleas—that he could no longer walk. He could only crawl on his knees and elbows. His little three-year-old brother, Adome, was lying nearby on a mat, barely breathing and riddled with malaria.

The employees rushed back and told Rebekah what they had found. Rebekah herself was undergoing treatment for malaria at the time. Our vehicle was up on blocks, so Rebekah and one of the employees walked to the village, even though Rebekah was having great difficulty breathing.

When they reached the village, the boys’ elderly grandmother told Rebekah, “If you don’t take these boys now, they will die.”

So they began discussing how in the world they were going to get these boys the help they desperately needed. They called an engineer who was building Rebekah’s dining hall and who owned a motorcycle. He came, picked them up, and brought them back to Mission Moroto.

After cleaning the boys and treating Keem’s hands and feet, Rebekah realized that Adome was far too sick to be treated there. She called a motorcycle taxi and raced to the hospital with him. Adome would stop breathing every few minutes, and Rebekah would shake him to get him to breathe again. She told the motorcycle taxi driver to go as fast as he could.

They were traveling so fast that they nearly collided with another vehicle, barely missing it. As they raced toward the hospital, Rebekah prayed under her breath:

“Lord, this child is either going to die in my arms, or we are going to die together on this motorcycle, but I am getting him to the clinic because I don’t want to bury another child. Either we make it to the clinic, or we die together, and I’m good either way.”

They made it.

At the hospital, the medical staff gave Adome the best malaria medicine they had, and afterward, Rebekah brought him back home. Rebekah was too ill herself to sit beside Adome’s bed throughout the night, so she called one of the house matrons to sit with him and make sure he kept breathing. Then Rebekah went to bed.

The next morning, she awoke and rushed over to the dormitory. She was shocked and thrilled to find both boys sitting on the veranda, happily playing.

Keem’s recovery took longer. For two weeks, he endured excruciatingly painful wound dressings that required several staff members to help hold him. Rebekah would even tape socks over his hands to help prevent the infestation from spreading. After about a week, Keem was able to walk again, and by the end of two weeks, his wounds had completely healed.

Soon afterward, we realized that Adome’s knees had become deformed from severe malnutrition. We knew that eventually he would not be able to walk properly, run, or play like the other children. When he was old enough, we took him to Kampala for surgery.

Today, you would never know there had been anything wrong with his legs. He runs and plays just like the other boys.

Keem and Adome are both doing very well in our school and are loved by all.

Thank You, God, for Your constant kindness to us—and for Your kindness to the desperate and suffering people of Karamoja. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Adome Michael

Keem Joseph

Mission Moroto Stories: The Ministry Stories We Rarely Tell

In early 2022, after a year and a half, hundreds of documents, countless meetings, many tears, and thousands of dollars spent trying to get Mission Moroto registered as an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) in Uganda, Rebekah was told that she needed one final document: a recommendation letter from the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Kampala, eight hours away.

At that time, she also had two children who were scheduled for surgeries in Kampala. Because of a recent serious bus accident, it had become difficult to get a bus from Moroto to Kampala. Rebekah decided to hire a private driver and rent his vehicle because her own vehicle was in pieces in the yard at the time. The driver had been recommended by a friend.

Rebekah, the two children, and a caretaker, Sylvia, left very early in the morning, but because the vehicle kept overheating, they didn’t reach the capital until 9:00 p.m. The heat, the bumpy roads, and the constant weaving in and out of traffic caused Rebekah to vomit out the window multiple times during the journey.

The next morning, they took the children to the hospital. Although the children were scheduled for surgery, the hospital kept delaying the procedures for reasons that were never explained.

While they waited, Rebekah and the driver went to the embassy to obtain the required document. The embassy informed Rebekah that she could not enter without an appointment, something she had not been told. They explained how to make an appointment, but the next available opening was a month away.

Rebekah called the driver to come pick her up. Unbeknownst to her, he had taken the vehicle to a mechanic, and the wheels had been removed because the owner had instructed the mechanic to replace the wheel bearings.

Rebekah told him, “You have one hour to put this vehicle back together.”

As she was speaking with him, her phone rang. She was informed that the children would not be having their surgeries after all.

After arguing with the driver for an hour, they finally picked up the children and the caretaker from the hospital and began the long drive back to Moroto.

The vehicle overheated even worse than before. Rebekah warned the driver, “Put coolant in it. You’re going to blow up this engine. Look at that temperature gauge.”

He replied, “No, this is just how these vehicles drive.”

As they entered Jinja, a town just outside Kampala, at about 7:00 p.m., the engine blew up.

Rebekah gathered the caretaker and the children, flagged down a motorcycle taxi, and asked the driver to take them to the bus station. They would have to take a bus back to Moroto.

When they arrived at the bus station, they were told, “There is no bus going to Moroto, but there is a bus going to Soroti, the closest major city. Unfortunately, it’s completely full—not even one seat is available.”

Rebekah pleaded, “I can’t stay on the street overnight with these children. Please let us on the bus.”

The attendant replied, “If you’re willing to sit on the large sacks of chicken feed, we’ll take you.”

So Rebekah, the caretaker, and the two children climbed onto the sacks of feed and quickly fell fast asleep.

They arrived in Soroti at 2:00 a.m. Although Rebekah had been there before and had stayed at a hotel within walking distance of the bus station, this bus stopped at a different location, and she had no idea where they were.

They walked to a main road, hoping to figure out where to go.

A motorcycle taxi driver stopped and asked, “Muzungu (foreigner), what are you doing out on the street in the middle of the night? Don’t you know this is very unsafe?”

She replied, “Yes. I’m looking for a hotel where I’ve stayed before, but I can’t remember its name.”

He asked, “What does it look like?”

After she described it, he smiled and said, “Yes, I know that one.”

He called another motorcycle taxi, and together the two drivers took Rebekah, the caretaker, and the children to the hotel. Rebekah paid him twice what he normally would have charged to express her appreciation.

They woke the gate guard, who let them into the hotel. After getting some much-needed sleep, they found a small shuttle bus that took them the rest of the way to Moroto.

The following month, the children had their surgeries at a different hospital, and Rebekah returned to Kampala and received the document from the U.S. Embassy—but that is a story for another time.

The driver later took Rebekah to court, trying to make her pay for the blown engine, but he lost.

Our God is great.

www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories

Mission Moroto Stories: The Karamoja Cluster

We thank God that, in His gracious kindness, He prepared us, empowered us, trained us, equipped us, provided for us, and directed us to this beautiful place called Karamoja.

The Karamoja Cluster is a transboundary pastoral (herding) region spanning northeastern Uganda, northwestern Kenya, southeastern South Sudan, and southwestern Ethiopia. It is home to related Nilotic-speaking peoples such as the Karamojong, Turkana, Toposa, Nyangatom, Dassanech, Jie, Dodoth, Bokora, Tepeth, Matheniko, Pokot, and Pian.

The population is estimated at approximately 2.35 million people. The breakdown is as follows:

* South Sudan (Kapoeta region): ~780,000
* Uganda (Karamoja subregion): ~585,000
* Kenya (Turkana and West Pokot areas): ~962,000
* Ethiopia (Nyangatom and Dassanech): ~108,000

Total: Approximately 2,350,000 eternal souls.

Mission Moroto places us within one of the largest pastoral cultural regions in East Africa. Although only about 2.3–2.4 million people live in the core Karamoja Cluster, it includes more than a dozen closely related pastoralist groups spread across four nations, making it a strategic region for cross-border evangelism.

Unlike anywhere else we know of, Mission Moroto is home to children from many of these people groups, including the Matheniko, Dodoth, Tepeth, and others. We believe with all our hearts that God has established us here as a forward operating base in the Karamoja Cluster to raise up educated, multilingual missionaries who will be sent to their own indigenous peoples as evangelists, carrying the gospel across East Africa to tribes even more remote and unreached than those we are currently serving.

Will you please continue to pray for and support us? We believe God is raising an army of love that will change nations.

www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories