A Strange Silence...

It was six and a half years ago. I spent a summer in Jinja, Uganda, with a group of students from OC, Harding, and Southern Miss. That was an amazing group of young men and women. A few are now in congregational ministry. Several are actively embracing the mission of God through their jobs. Some have answered the call to full time missions back in Jinja or in other locations in Africa.

That summer, two of my fellow servants and friends were the Langford brothers, Adam and Ben. I first met the Langfords in York, Nebraska, at Soul Quest. I remember playing against them in the three on three soccer tourney, Ben and Adam teamed up with one of their friends against my cousins, Brian and Chris, and me. Later, our paths crossed again. We ended up in school together at OC. They were good friends, godly men, Christ-like examples.

This past weekend, Adam was killed in a car accident, along with one of the Ugandan church leaders. He was back living in Jinja, working with a coffee-related redemptive business in Jinja. Adam and Moses were buying coffee from farmers in the mountains of eastern Africa, when their SUV blew a tire and went off of a cliff.

There has been a strange silence in my soul since I got the message. This loss falls almost exactly ten years after another great loss in my life, so I am caught trying to work through more than I thought I would....

Here is the last blog post that Adam wrote on the Jinja website. It is an amazing, if not prophetic, piece called "Suffering: By Proximity or Choice?"

Please pray for the churches around Jinja, for the team of missionaries there (including Adam's brother Ben and his family), and pray for the first generation of missionaries from this team. They are all back in the States now, but are still incredibly connected to the churches in Uganda. Moses, the Ugandan church leader who was killed, was their brother and Adam was an their intern for two summers. Also, please pray for the college interns who served with Moses and Adam over the past several years, as they are experiencing their own loss, confusion, and disorientation.