History of the OPC Uganda Mission with David Okken
On June 10, 2021, Mr. Matthew Ezzell interviewed my pastor Rev. David Okken about his 17 years on the mission field in Karamoja, Uganda with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The audio of the interview is available below.
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Transcript
Beginnings and a call to Uganda
Matthew Ezzell (00:00): I am Matthew Ezzell, and I’m here with David Okken. David, you want to introduce yourself?
David Okken (00:04): I’m David Okken. Good to be here.
Matthew Ezzell (00:08): And what are you doing currently?
David Okken (00:10): Currently, I’m a pastor, co-pastor with Reverend Matthew Holst at Shiloh Presbyterian Church. We’ve been here since the end of 2018. So still learning my way around, but feel very blessed to be here and be serving at Shiloh. I say here because we’re at the church right now where this interview is taking place.
Matthew Ezzell (00:33): All right, good. So we’re going to basically talk today about your experiences in Uganda with the OPC’s mission in Uganda, particularly in Karamoja. But before we dive into that in specific, I was wondering if you could tell us just a little bit about the history of the OPC’s work in Africa.
David Okken (00:55): Yeah. Unfortunately, I’ve never been real good with the details of the OPCU’s beginning. I mean, PCU’s beginning. The OPCU, I was there for that. But the OPCU has been in Uganda. I say OPCU. That’s the national church. Sorry, the OPM. We call ourselves currently the Orthodox Presbyterian Uganda Mission.
The OPC has had a presence in Uganda since ‘93. And I think the way it started was our Committee on Foreign Missions was in communication with the Presbyterian Church in Uganda and their Committee on Foreign Missions. And we had an interest in sending missionaries there, working with them to help build up that church. And as we spoke with those brothers, the greatest need seemed to be in the East, Eastern Presbytery. And so we decided that it would be most helpful for the church if we had a presence there. It was in ‘93 that the committee called Reverend Tony Curto, and the Curtos went there in ‘93.
Really, we’ve had something of a working relationship with the PCU ever since. Although that relationship has gone through a rough patch, and at one point we were kind of working more independent of them. And it was around that time there was also a group of churches that came out of the PCU and started a church called the OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Uganda. Right. That was not our idea that they would call themselves that. We never intended to go into Uganda and start another Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But it happened that way.
And through the years, we worked with the OPCU as well as the PCU. We were always open to working with other churches as well. But then at some point, and I can’t remember the exact years, after a number of years, we were thankful that the churches of the OPCU were able to work through some issues and actually reunited with the PCU.
Matthew Ezzell (03:24): Okay. Yeah, and that’s definitely something we can talk about in a second because I am interested in the details of why that split happened, because it wasn’t over theological liberalism per se, right? Like took place in the United States. But to clarify for me at least, Dr. Curto had been working in Ethiopia before that some. Is that right? Or did he go to Ethiopia later?
David Okken (03:52): That’s a good question. I’m not sure. I thought that his work in Africa began with Uganda. It’s possible that he did some work before that.
Matthew Ezzell (04:00): Okay, I might be confused there. All right, but the OPC had been involved in Eastern Africa before in Eritrea.
David Okken (04:09): Yeah, we had a work in Eritrea long before that. That’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (04:13): And that goes all the way right after or maybe during the very end of World War II sometime. So the OPC has been in Africa for a long time, but in Uganda specifically since the ’90s.
Okay, so when we got there, we were working with the PCU, and at some point during that time, there was a split between them and the OPC. Maybe we can return to that later. But why don’t you tell us about how you personally ended up in Uganda?
David Okken (04:46): Good. Yeah, I had an interest in foreign missions before ever coming to the Reformed faith or the OPC. I had in college become acquainted with and interested in Wycliffe Bible translation. And as a young college student with no direction in my life, I decided that was the direction God was calling me. I wanted to become a Wycliffe translator, changed my major to linguistics, and I was headed in that direction.
Matthew Ezzell (05:14): Was that helpful?
David Okken (05:15): It was a helpful major. It turned out to be very good, yeah, for seminary. But somewhere along the way, through involvement in church, opportunities to be in Bible studies and end up leading some Bible studies, I began to wonder if I had gifts in preaching and teaching. I had an interest in possible pastoral ministry and maybe church planting and wondered about that. And the more I became familiar with Wycliffe and their strong but more narrow focus on Bible translation, it made me begin to rethink whether that was where God was calling me.
I also, during those college years, became exposed to Reformed theology. I had some friends who were actually in an OPC church in San Diego. And the more I studied and became convinced of things, the more I went through a bit of a shift in my own mind. And that affected my sense of calling. I felt like I needed more training if I was to be in any kind of Word ministry.
And also, as I began attending an OPC church, New Life OPC at that time in San Diego, and decided to go to seminary, it opened up opportunity to be involved in the church. I’m probably giving you way longer answers than you (interrupted).
Matthew Ezzell (06:40): No, that’s fine. That’s fine.
David Okken (06:43): It kind of gave me an appreciation for the role that the church should have in helping me discern my calling, ministerial calling. So I decided, I’m in seminary. Thankfully, the church I was in was very interested in having me intern and began to use my gifts in that context.
Matthew Ezzell (07:02): And you were going to Westminster?
David Okken (07:05): Yeah, so I went to Westminster. When I came to the OPC, I lived in San Diego.
Matthew Ezzell (07:10): Not a lot of choices of Reformed seminaries on the West Coast. Yeah, obviously.
David Okken (07:15): Didn’t really shop around. Just thought, oh, this is great. And it was great. While I was in seminary and serving as an intern, a man who was kind of our one-man missions committee at the church, he thought it’d help us get more plugged into what was going on in the mission field if our intern visited one of the fields.
Matthew Ezzell (07:35): Who was that?
David Okken (07:36): So his name was Wayne Lubitzky. I don’t think he’s at that church anymore.
Anyway, he contacted the home office, and he thought I should go to Eritrea. At that point, things in Eritrea were kind of winding down. It seemed like it’d be a better fit, or the opportunity would be there, to go to Uganda. And it just so happened there were two other seminary students also planning to go that coming summer, which was ‘97. One of them was John McGowan, who’s in our presbytery now. Another was Jason Rampelt.
To make the long story even longer, that summer I went to Uganda and worked with the Curtos for a month doing evangelism and being in the churches, doing some preaching in the churches there. And it was then that Tony Curto encouraged me to consider coming back. He thought I worked well there. So that was sort of the beginning of it.
Matthew Ezzell (08:41): Okay, and it might be a good idea at this point to just talk briefly about what the OPC’s goals were in Uganda. So we heard that they were called in to assist in planting churches in the eastern part of the country. Correct?
David Okken (08:54): Right. Yeah, I can’t remember the dates, but they were looking to establish Eastern Presbytery as its own presbytery. I can’t remember whether they already were when the Curtos arrived, but he was to work with this young presbytery.
And of course, our goal, set out clearly in the Committee on Foreign Missions and its own manual and so forth, is to establish a three-self church: self-sustaining, self-governing, self-propagating. And so Tony Curto was to come, and the OPC, and work with that church, training men for ministry, training pastors, helping work to strengthen the churches of that presbytery, Eastern Presbytery of PCU.
Matthew Ezzell (09:50): Well, I was just going to say, so at this point, the PCU itself is mostly oriented where in Uganda? Was it in the western side of the country? Just for those of us who are not, sorry.
David Okken (10:05): Eastern Presbytery?
Matthew Ezzell (10:05): Well, no, the whole denomination.
David Okken (10:07): Oh, the denomination. There were three presbyteries, the Central Presbytery in the Kampala area, and then a Western Presbytery out in the west. There was a PCA mission work in Bundibugyo, churches from Fort Portal, kind of all over places in the west. And I’m not sure if that Western Presbytery started after the Eastern or not.
Matthew Ezzell (10:41): So what was the state and the health of the PCU when you first got on the ground in Uganda? Was it a self-sustaining church at a denominational level, and you guys were just focusing in on establishing this presbytery? Or was the whole church in need of assistance?
David Okken (11:01): I think that the whole church was still in need of assistance, but I think the Central Presbytery already had sufficient missionaries and help working with them. They already had a school that was being established. When the Curtos went there, what they basically ended up doing was helping start a college in the east, and it was connected to the one in Central Presbytery. So you had Westminster Theological College, two branches basically, one in Kampala, or in Zana, actually, and then the one that Tony Curto started in the east.
Matthew Ezzell (11:50): Okay.
David Okken (11:51): And
Matthew Ezzell (11:53): So you got interested then in the work that OPC was doing through being at New Life, and you went, visited, and Dr. Curto encouraged you that you would be a good fit there. What was the process like from that point, having an interest and then having been encouraged to pursue that, to then getting a call and actually getting on the field, from the time that you went and visited?
David Okken (12:17): Right. In ‘97, I had a year of seminary left. So I had to finish seminary.
Matthew Ezzell (12:26): I know how that feels.
David Okken (12:28): Yeah. Kind of had an interest also in getting married first, if the Lord should so provide. I hadn’t even met my wife yet.
Matthew Ezzell (12:38): Okay, so you had to find a wife. That was a prerequisite.
David Okken (12:41): God was very gracious, because we met the next year. Yeah, let’s see, now I’m becoming foggy. It was the summer of ‘97 that I was in Uganda. So I finished school, graduated in May of ‘98.
There was an interest in possibly me serving in Uganda, but things had not yet begun. Around that time, the Committee on Foreign Missions, the Uganda mission, was also considering starting the work up in Karamoja. So the timing was good in the sense that I wasn’t ready to go yet, and nor was the church ready to start the Karamoja work yet.
So when I graduated from seminary, I served as a year-long internship which eventually developed into a kind of an assistant pastoral internship.
Matthew Ezzell (13:48): Was that at New Life?
David Okken (13:49): Also at New Life, and during that time I also met Sunshine, and we eventually were married. We were married in September ‘99. Met in October of ‘98, and were married within a year. And at some point along the way, I mentioned to her in passing my interest in foreign missions. No.
Matthew Ezzell (14:12): Did she already have an interest in foreign missions?
David Okken (14:14): She had kind of vowed that she could never marry a missionary or a pastor. Oh, yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (14:18): It wasn’t really a vow.
David Okken (14:22): But no, that wasn’t something she felt necessarily called to do, by any means.
Matthew Ezzell (14:27): It’s extraordinary how many pastors’ wives you meet who have made statements like that in their past.
David Okken (14:33): That’s right. As our hearts warmed towards each other, she warmed up towards the idea of us going. And when we first visited the field, it was questionable. This is after we were married. Her first experience there, there was a kind of a look on her face like, “I could never come here.” And I realized that at that point, if she didn’t believe she could be there, if God wasn’t calling her there, then he wasn’t calling me there.
But she warmed up to the idea of going, and we kind of got excited about it. Turned out to be great. She was a wonderful missionary wife.
Matthew Ezzell (15:11): Great.
David Okken (15:14): And continues to be. Wonderful missionary pastor’s wife. Sorry.
Matthew Ezzell (15:19): There you go. And so you came back. You’re doing this year-long internship. Did you get a call as the assistant?
David Okken (15:31): Oh, no. I was never.
Matthew Ezzell (15:33): You just were functioning that way.
David Okken (15:34): I was just functioning as an assistant. They called me the assistant to the pastor, but I wasn’t ordained as a minister until I was called by the Committee on Foreign Missions.
Matthew Ezzell (15:42): Okay. There’s a Dwight Schrute joke that we’ll leave out of that one. Okay, so who actually called you, and what was the process of that like for the OPC?
David Okken (15:53): So the call came from the Committee on Foreign Missions. And I was licensed. I was a licentiate of the Presbytery of Southern California. So that remained my presbytery. They’re the ones who processed, I went through the process and was examined and ordained by that presbytery, installed at New Life as a missionary evangelist to Uganda.
Matthew Ezzell (16:20): Okay.
David Okken (16:21): To serve in Karamoja.
Matthew Ezzell (16:22): Now, are all missionaries in the OPC installed as pastors or as ministers in local congregations and then sent, or do some of them just have a call from the Foreign Missions Committee?
David Okken (16:35): Yeah, I guess technically, if I made it sound like I was installed, the service was at New Life.
Matthew Ezzell (16:43): Oh, okay. All right.
David Okken (16:44): I wasn’t actually installed there.
Matthew Ezzell (16:45): So you were never?
David Okken (16:46): Yeah, that’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (16:47): I see.
David Okken (16:47): Yeah, sorry, that was confusing.
Matthew Ezzell (16:49): No, that’s okay. I just was curious about that. Okay, so you’re called, and then you’re ordained, and then you buy your plane tickets, and you’re in Uganda, basically?
David Okken (17:01): Basically, yeah. I guess I was ordained in April, and we actually did go in May. So obviously the process, it took a while.
Matthew Ezzell (17:09): Right.
David Okken (17:10): Because when Sunshine and I were married, we served another year and a half. We were married in, is that right? Yeah, because we were married in ‘90. Yes, because it was ‘99, September of ‘99, we were married. We didn’t go until 2001, May.
Matthew Ezzell (17:30): Okay.
David Okken (17:31): So, yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (17:32): Okay, very good.
David Okken (17:34): Part of that was because the mission wasn’t ready for us yet in terms of setting up the work. And obviously, there’s process involved in getting funding together and things like that.
Moving to Karamoja
Matthew Ezzell (17:46): And so before you even got there, though, you had an idea that you might be working in Karamoja?
David Okken (17:52): Yeah. Well, by the time that they called me, the plan to begin the work in Karamoja was underway, and so clearly the idea was that I would work in Karamoja.
Matthew Ezzell (18:03): What were your first impressions of that idea, and then the reality as it set in? Were you
David Okken (18:12): Excited. We were excited about the prospect of going and working in more of a pioneer work, although it didn’t turn out to be quite as pioneer as we thought. But we had the impression that there was really not much there in terms of any exposure to the gospel, any kind of church established. So it was an exciting prospect, having never been there. Karamoja is very different than Mbale. So having spent a month in Mbale and working in the villages down there, I wondered how different it would be in Karamoja.
Matthew Ezzell (18:43): Right.
David Okken (18:43): And so when Sunshine and I went and visited, now I’m forgetting what the exact dates of that were, but it was ‘99, or was it? Anyway, when we went, we spent some time in Mbale. At that point, there wasn’t much by way of lodging up in Karamoja. So our time up there, we never spent the night up there. We just did some day trips from Mbale. And actually, I think we just did one trip, come to think of it.
Matthew Ezzell (19:22): What’s the distance from Mbale to Karamoja for those of us who are not familiar?
David Okken (19:28): Yeah, good. About 120 kilometers. I should be able to immediately convert that. Eighty miles or whatever.
Matthew Ezzell (19:34): Okay. So, short enough, you can do it.
David Okken (19:37): We function in kilometers. And if the roads are good, which they’re not always good, but you can do the trip in an hour and a half.
Matthew Ezzell (19:44): Okay.
David Okken (19:45): So we just made a day of it, went up and saw it. And at that point, the house that we eventually lived in was not even built yet. And the housing, the renovation of current housing that we rented, it was all just getting started. And it just seemed so rural and remote.
And the thought of living there, honestly, Sunshine’s first reaction was, “I don’t think I could ever do this.” The thought of living here, having children, raising children here was just hard to imagine.
Matthew Ezzell (20:20): This is a very rural area of Uganda, right? Because I remember reading that Ugandans look at this as kind of the Wild West, right? So this is the frontier for them too.
Okay, and you said that you had the expectation it was going to be a pioneering work, and maybe there wasn’t previously much exposure to the gospel. Was that the case when you got there? You said that not as much as you thought.
David Okken (20:49): Well, it turned out that there were churches, kind of more Pentecostal
Matthew Ezzell (20:57): Okay.
David Okken (20:57): churches, but also the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church, Church of Uganda, were there with a fairly strong presence, had been for many years. And that made for interesting dynamics there.
Among the Church of Uganda, you had a lot of nominal Christianity, a lot of churches where there’s not much knowledge of the Scriptures and not much of what we would call faithful preaching of the Word of God. But you also have some who were more faithful and evangelical, and so even where we were, there were Christians. There were brothers and sisters. Right. They knew the Lord. And so it wasn’t quite as pioneer as we thought it was.
Matthew Ezzell (21:54): Okay.
David Okken (21:55): But there was also a lot of need, definitely.
Karimojong life and beliefs
Matthew Ezzell (21:59): Can you talk to us a bit about the culture of Karamoja? Because it’s not exactly what we’re used to in the United States, right?
David Okken (22:10): Well, the Karimojong were a different tribal group from the group that we had worked with down in Mbale. The Karimojong were not a Bantu tribe like the Bugisu and the Buganda of Kampala. The Bugisu of Mbale, and there are a lot of related tribal groups that are Bantu groups. The Karimojong were a Nilotic or Nilo-Hamitic group who historically had migrated out of southern Ethiopia and Sudan and related to another tribe, the Teso tribe.
They were traditionally a pastoralist, nomadic people, lived off of their cows. Their diet consisted really of wild vegetables, and then milk from their cows and blood. Actually, they would extract the blood without killing the cow. Wow. And they would mix it with their blood. And that really was their diet.
Now, they had taken to farming in more recent years. So the folks we lived with there also depended on farming. But they still loved their cows. That was kind of their most prized possession. If you were to marry, you would have to come up with a dowry to pay for your wife in either cows or goats, so heavy dependence on their livestock.
A violent people, traditional cattle raiders. We used to say they basically operated on the philosophy that every cow in the world rightly belongs to the Karimojong. Okay. And if neighboring tribal groups have those cows, then we have the right to go try to take them. And they would use their spears until they managed to get their hands on AK-47s.
By the time we got there, it was heavy, heavy raiding among the different Karamoja, kind of sub-Karamoja groups, different clans, as well as other tribal groups. And so it was a common thing living there to hear gunfire and to hear of cows being taken.
Matthew Ezzell (24:31): So not exactly a safe place necessarily?
David Okken (24:34): Right. We were told that if you don’t have cows, you won’t be a target. So you don’t have to worry about that. Obviously, it’s unnerving hearing gunfire go off. But that proved to be true. We never kept animals.
Matthew Ezzell (24:47): A bit disappointing, though, if you wanted a cow.
David Okken (24:51): Right. Yeah. The biggest danger for us, there was sometimes road banditry. You might get the potential for being stopped and robbed on the road, the roads that we traveled. But typically the ones we traveled were safer at daytime. The issues were more at night. We wouldn’t travel at night unless we really had to. Other roads where there was more daytime activity, we’d be careful usually not to travel those. So God was gracious. We never had a problem where we were robbed on the road like that.
Matthew Ezzell (25:32): All right, so you get to Karamoja, and what does it look like when you get to this new area? You have this tribal people who maybe some of them have some exposure to Christianity, maybe some don’t. Can you speak to what it looked like to actually engage in evangelistic activity there, and also what was their religious background if it wasn’t Christian?
David Okken (26:04): Yeah, good question. The traditional religion was animism. They practiced animal sacrifice. In animistic religion, you believe, and there was a concept of God to the Karimojong. They believed in the Akuj, they called the God. I would describe that God as much more of a kind of pantheistic, sort of more of a very impersonal view of God. Not God as he reveals himself in the Bible and who is a heavenly Father to those who know him through Christ. More of a God, yes, the Creator. He’s kind of out there.
Their interaction is more with the spirits that they believe are present and influencing, controlling life. If bad things are going on, if suddenly they’re having a problem with diseased cattle, or maybe trees dying, or lack of rain, then there must be evil spirits. And the way they would try to cope with that is to manipulate those spirits by animal sacrifices. They’d come together and they’d cut open animals and do interesting things with the stomach contents and so forth. And then there’d be chanting, incantation to drive away the spirits. And that was life. That was life in Karamoja.
Matthew Ezzell (27:27): What was your first impression of that? Did you witness this firsthand?
David Okken (27:31): Yeah, I remember early on we went and we attended one just as visitors, a sacrifice. I was there with Tony Curto and Herb Prawius, who was our doctor then. And we sat there and we observed, and at the end of it they asked if we wanted to say anything. And Tony Curto got up and he kind of cited the Apostle Paul. He commended them, “I see that you’re in many ways religious.” Okay. He said, but the true and living God is revealed to us. I forget exactly his words, but that he doesn’t require us the blood of bulls, but faith in Jesus Christ, his Son, who was sacrificed.
So it was quite a powerful moment. I was thinking, this is what we’re here to do, preach the gospel to those who are trusting in anything but Christ.
So it was interesting, you mentioned the religion. At that particular sacrifice, if we were to go around and ask the folks there if they were religious at all, probably most of them would say, “Oh yeah, we’re Christian. We’re baptized Catholic.” The Roman Catholic Church had been there for maybe more than 50 years, closer to 100 years. I forget exactly. And the Anglican Church even longer than that. They’d come around the same time. Right. Where we were, the Catholic Church had an even stronger presence. In fact, there were European priests even in the area where we were, and we had friendship with them.
But it was just a very nominal, I’d say, not strong, nominal Christianity. It’s common in Africa for a person to claim kind of a main religion as your religion, whether it be Roman Catholic, some brand of Christianity, if you’re Roman Catholic or Anglican, or even Muslim, and claim that religion, but continue to live completely steeped in the animism.
Matthew Ezzell (29:37): Okay.
David Okken (29:38): And you can kind of tell where someone’s trust truly is. Where do they go in times of crisis? And do they go to the Lord if they’re claiming to be a Christian, or do they go back to the emuron and look to the sacrifices?
And I would say, that’s what we faced in Karamoja, is a high, high percentage of people say, “Oh yeah, we’re Christian. Yeah, well, sure, we belong to [unclear] the Catholic Church, or even the Church of Uganda,” but still continuing as practicing animists.
Matthew Ezzell (30:08): Yeah, so just a lot of syncretism.
David Okken (30:09): Yeah. Yep.
Matthew Ezzell (30:11): Interesting.
David Okken (30:12): And in the Roman Catholic Church, there didn’t seem to be any problem. There didn’t seem to be a preaching that called for turning from animism and trusting Christ. You could do both.
Matthew Ezzell (30:26): So very similar to what we’ve seen in Central and South America with a lot of syncretistic elements even just out in the open in Roman Catholic life.
David Okken (30:36): Yep. Yep.
Matthew Ezzell (30:37): Okay. Interesting.
David Okken (30:38): Or if they would recognize a difference, even if it wasn’t a blending of it in the worship of each, there didn’t seem to be any sense that it was wrong to do both. You could live in both worlds. You go to church occasionally; some even frequently go. But they saw no problem with doing that and then also participating in, even some of the Roman Catholic missionary priests would be initiated as elders in the traditional [unclear] religion.
Matthew Ezzell (31:11): Oh, wow.
David Okken (31:12): And they didn’t seem to see that as a problem.
Matthew Ezzell (31:14): So they were being initiated as priests or elders in the native-
David Okken (31:20): According to the traditional Karimojong social structure.
Matthew Ezzell (31:25): Okay.
David Okken (31:25): And that involved animal sacrifice. Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (31:28): Wow.
David Okken (31:29): They’d probably justify it and say, “Well, we don’t really believe that it’s atoning for sins or anything like that.”
Matthew Ezzell (31:35): This is kind of a classic Jesuit move, right?
David Okken (31:37): Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (31:40): Interesting. That’s very interesting. So they didn’t really perceive Christianity as having any exclusive claims as far as pushing out at least the practice of what they had been doing before. That’s really fascinating.
David Okken (31:56): I would say most of them didn’t think through it all that deeply, your average Karimojong. I suppose if you did think through it, they would say it’s not that these sacrifices are atoning for sins. It’s more just, maybe argued, it’s kind of a celebration.
But they would see it as having spiritual powers. So it’s not a trust in God as the sovereign one, trust in Christ as the one who is Lord over the spirits, and a belief that we’re called to trust in him and that he can take care of us. There was a sense that, no, you had to fight spiritual powers through these things.
Matthew Ezzell (32:33): Right. And it’s not just traditional. It’s not just, “Oh, we just do this because we’ve always done it this way.” It’s, “We’re doing this to specifically ward off evil spirits,” or something like that.
David Okken (32:43): I think so. Some Christians might say, “Well, we don’t really believe that part, but we still-” They would see it as kind of harmless. “We could still do it.”
Matthew Ezzell (32:51): Gotcha.
David Okken (32:51): Still, yeah.
Learning the language and settling in
Matthew Ezzell (32:52): So we talked a little bit about the cultural interactions. What was the language learning process like?
David Okken (33:02): Really tough. It was a hard language. We did okay. I was able to become quite proficient, able to even preach and teach and interact well in Karimojong.
Matthew Ezzell (33:17): How long did that take?
David Okken (33:18): A good couple of years before you felt pretty comfortable in it, I suppose. And we never mastered it with fluency, certainly not native-like fluency. But we were able to function well.
Not only was it a really hard language, but because Uganda’s an English colony, had adopted English as its national language, and all of the teaching, the school curriculum, the educated, certainly all government offices, they all functioned in English. So you could have a ministry in English, and that’s what we had in our Bible college down in Mbale. Okay.
But to be able to minister in the local village, you’d interact with a lot of people who didn’t know English. Okay. So it was important for us to try to learn the language, and we did. It was always a struggle, but one worth putting the work in for.
Matthew Ezzell (34:24): Yeah. Okay. All right.
David Okken (34:28): When we would disciple men, in the desire to have a good, well-trained leadership, those men were all English-speaking. So we would disciple them mostly in English.
Matthew Ezzell (34:44): Okay, and you were able to use English resources.
David Okken (34:48): Exactly.
Matthew Ezzell (34:49): All that stuff.
David Okken (34:49): That’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (34:50): That’s nice.
David Okken (34:51): Yeah, we didn’t even have an Old Testament in Karimojong until, I forget what year it finally was completed. We had parts of it, and it was being worked on. Eventually, while we were there, they finally completed the entire Bible.
Matthew Ezzell (35:05): What was the transition like for your wife? We talked about her first impressions. How did she adjust?
David Okken (35:12): She took to it really well. The biggest struggle was just that exploratory trip. Okay. For the first day or so, she went a bit numb. I could just tell that she was-
Matthew Ezzell (35:24): Shock?
David Okken (35:26): Yeah, a little bit of shock. “Can I really do this?” And then she joked at one point. She went from being numb to being really happy, and I said, “Oh, what’s happened here?” And she said, “I’m in denial now.”
But I said, “Look, you have to feel good about this. If you don’t, that’s okay. We’ll stay in the States, and God has plans for us there.” But then somehow there was a turn in her where she not only accepted but became really excited about the prospect of going there. I would say it was a challenging place to live, but she took to it well. She did great.
And especially given some of the things we went through in that first year, she had a pretty scary experience with a miscarriage. Yeah. Our first pregnancy, where she miscarried in the middle of the night, and we lost the baby. That was hard.
But then she ended up hemorrhaging, and we didn’t have our clinic set up yet. The doctor happened to be away, and we did have a nurse, but the nurse trying to get the IV in her, the IVs we had, they weren’t working well. The hoses were kind of old and kinking. It’s a long story, but it became scary, and her blood pressure was low, and we had to rush her to Mbale.
So she lived through some really, that was the scariest night of my life. I thought I was going to lose her that night. But God was merciful, and we got through that, and she did great. Sunshine just did really great over there.
Matthew Ezzell (36:55): Yeah. Wow, that is a scary story, and that points out that where you’re at, it’s not like you have easy access to medical care. You’re pretty far from-
David Okken (37:04): Yes.
Planting churches and opening the clinic
Matthew Ezzell (37:05): And now there’s a clinic there. Yeah. I guess we can talk about that as well when we talk about how the work actually progressed.
So what did every day look like for you once you got there and got settled in, and things started to develop? Eventually, I don’t know where in the timeline, but Dr. Curto is going to come off the field, and more people are going to go to Karamoja as well, correct?
David Okken (37:33): Yeah, early on it was interesting what we went through. The idea was I was going to be there working with Dr. Curto in Karamoja, and we had three ministers in Mbale. It was around that time there were real challenges in terms of what was going on in the PCU and the direction we were going, questions in the minds of many about whether we could continue working with the church at that point.
Matthew Ezzell (38:00): Can you go into that a little bit? What exactly was the direction of the PCU?
David Okken (38:04): Well, there seemed to be a difference in terms of our philosophy and how we saw ourselves coming alongside and helping that church, and what they were looking to.
One thing had to do with, they didn’t seem to quite share our vision for being a consistently Reformed and Presbyterian church. There were a lot of other churches from the States, not even necessarily Reformed churches, different backgrounds, Baptists and whatnot, also interested in coming over and doing church planting. They were coming over and, we felt, influencing the church in ways that weren’t necessarily so healthy. There was a disappointment that the church had in the OPC in that we weren’t really willing to sign on and do everything that they were doing.
It really exploded into a church planting ministry that was going on, but a lot of that involved going in and building buildings and committing to salaries. It almost felt like it was taking on a business kind of life that didn’t lend itself to really true, strong, say, spiritual church planting activity.
Matthew Ezzell (39:43): Okay.
David Okken (39:43): So we weren’t completely on board with that, and there was some disappointment as we were trying to caution and work with the church and remind them of the need to make sure that ministry is being carried out in a way that’s really going to be good and healthy and strong. There was a lot of disagreement, I would say, among us.
Matthew Ezzell (40:16): So just tension mostly over philosophy of ministry type issues?
David Okken (40:21): I would say so. Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (40:26): And maybe some theological attitude in the PCU that the OPC missionaries wouldn’t have been fond of?
David Okken (40:35): That’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (40:35): Okay.
David Okken (40:35): That’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (40:36): Okay. And-
David Okken (40:39): In God’s providence, three of our missionaries ended up coming back, three of the ministers. So we went from having five ministers on the Uganda mission to having just two.
Matthew Ezzell (40:53): Okay. Who were the two that were left?
David Okken (40:56): Dr. Curto and myself.
Matthew Ezzell (40:58): Okay.
David Okken (40:58): So he moved to Mbale. Rather than he and me working together in Karamoja, I was alone in Karamoja, and he was in Mbale.
Matthew Ezzell (41:08): And how long had you been there at this point?
David Okken (41:10): Not even, we got there in May, and this was by the end of the year.
Matthew Ezzell (41:14): Okay. All right. So it wasn’t long, and you were the only guy in Karamoja.
David Okken (41:17): That’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (41:18): Okay.
David Okken (41:19): Until Al Tricarico came within a couple of years. Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (41:25): Okay. So you’re the only guy out there. What are you doing? Are you going out every day and-
David Okken (41:35): In the beginning, mostly language as well as, well, I shouldn’t say that. I had to preach every week. We had a church plant going because Dr. Curto had begun preaching under the tree. A lot of my work was to get that, I took over. At first we were doing the preaching together. When he went down to Mbale, I took that over, and we planted, well, we did. We planted the Nakaale Presbyterian Church plant.
Matthew Ezzell (42:04): Okay.
David Okken (42:05): It was never yet organized, still hasn’t, in terms of having its own elders. But we did begin receiving members and planted a church which was under the mission. While I was there, we had made the decision at one point to be functioning under the mission as opposed to seeing it as a church plant of the PCU because of what had happened in our relationship with the PCU.
Matthew Ezzell (42:42): Okay.
David Okken (42:42): But we did involve some PCU pastors from Central Presbytery when we had our first service where we were baptizing and receiving members. We brought up a couple of men from churches down there.
But that was a big part of my work, to get that church plant underway and do the preaching and the shepherding, the pastoral work of that church plant. I was also trying to make it a priority to be learning language, and also doing preaching at the medical clinic. We haven’t even talked about that yet, but that was-
Matthew Ezzell (43:19): Yeah, when did that come about? Because when you first got on the field, that was not in existence, or it had already begun?
David Okken (43:28): It had not yet begun. It started together. The OPC had a medical missionary in Kenya, Herb Prawius. But when they decided to start their work in Karamoja, they had the idea of having him come over, and so having a medical ministry component to that work in Karamoja because of the need there.
Matthew Ezzell (43:52): And that had been a mark of OPC missions in Africa, to have a medical component from the beginning, it seems like to me, right? Because we had one of those in Eritrea as well.
David Okken (44:01): Eritrea before that, right? And then Kenya. That’s right.
When we went into Karamoja, we actually went to the Ministry of Health and talked to them about our interest in helping serve that way and starting a work. They were the ones that suggested where the need might be. Nakaale, that village, was one place that needed a medical clinic. So we decided that we could start the clinic there and do our gospel ministry in connection with the [unclear] medical clinic.
In fact, we arrived in the field in May, and construction of our housing was still underway. They weren’t quite ready to have us all move up and be in Karamoja quite yet. It was actually not until, I think it was August that year, that the Prawiuses, Herb Prawius, the first doctor there, and his family, and the Okkens, we all moved up together. Then both of our houses were ready for us.
Matthew Ezzell (45:17): So you begin ministering in the church. Simultaneously, the medical mission begins in earnest.
David Okken (45:23): Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (45:24): Okay.
David Okken (45:26): They still weren’t ready to actually start the clinic yet. It took a while. I forget when the actual date of our opening was of the clinic, but it was soon. I think it was by early 2002 that the clinic began functioning.
Matthew Ezzell (45:44): Okay. And was it your regular habit to be preaching at the clinic?
David Okken (45:49): Yep. I’d be there frequently leading devotions for the staff, and then go down and preach to the patients.
Matthew Ezzell (46:02): So you’re dividing your time between pastoring the church plant, preaching at the church plant, trying to do evangelism related to the church plant, I’m assuming, and then also preaching in the clinic. What was that like? You hadn’t been doing this very long, and you’re already doing a lot by yourself.
David Okken (46:29): Yeah, I guess I didn’t mention that we were doing evangelistic Bible studies also.
Matthew Ezzell (46:32): Okay. All right.
David Okken (46:33): Mostly just Kopetatum, the nearby village also.
Matthew Ezzell (46:38): Okay. And was the purpose to extend out into the villages with evangelistic Bible studies to plant more churches in these villages?
David Okken (46:45): Yes. I also didn’t mention we were working with a church in Namalu, the nearby major trading center, where we had a relationship with a pastor that was already there. It was an independent, more, say, evangelical kind of Pentecostal work. Tony Curto was also doing some preaching and teaching in there, and when he left, I resumed that.
And we were doing a church planting, sorry, Lord’s Day, had a church preaching station in Kopetatum. So for a while, I was actually preaching three different places Sunday morning. I’d wake up early and go to Kopetatum, and I’d go to Namalu and preach there, and then come and preach in Nakaale. It was a full morning.
Matthew Ezzell (47:40): Okay. Yeah.
David Okken (47:41): Yeah, a lot to do. I obviously didn’t have the time to put into the sermons. They were pretty basic, and I’d often just do the same sermon, in part just because that’s the level that the church was. Preaching looks a little different in Karamoja than it does at Shiloh.
Matthew Ezzell (48:08): Right.
David Okken (48:09): But yeah.
Conversions, local leaders, and missionary teams
Matthew Ezzell (48:10): Yeah, and what was the fruit from that in those early days? Did you see conversions? Did you see people joining the church? We’ve already discussed the fact that cultivating church leadership was a priority, but a difficulty.
David Okken (48:31): Yeah. We did see the Lord work. We think of people like even some of our own friends and workers. I think of our sister Dengel Joyce, who’s still there, a faithful, godly Christian. Her testimony would be that she really came to know the Lord under our ministry.
It was challenging to see a conversion. You really have to look at the way the gospel has transformed a life in a culture where everyone would already say, “Well, we were Christians.”
Matthew Ezzell (49:05): Right. Somewhat like the South.
David Okken (49:08): Yeah, that’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (49:09): Less so maybe now, but-
David Okken (49:11): That’s right. So we saw fruit. We didn’t see as much fruit as we would have liked at times, and sometimes we realized that this is going to be a generational work. We’re just planting a lot of seeds that we pray the Lord is going to use to bless over time. In some ways, that was the perspective we had to have.
We saw a lot of disappointing stories where you’d see someone that came to the church and was really excited and showed such potential, and then later would fall away. So you saw exciting things happen, but it was a slow work.
But many instances of testimonies of men, for example, who not only trusted Christ and saw the implications of the gospel for the stand they should take against animism, the pressure that they would face, for example. Okay.
I can think of one man in our church. The story I’m thinking of, it was later on when we began doing evangelistic outreaches in different villages. One man who came to the church as a result of our work in a village called Akuyam began walking all the way to Nakaale for church. He came to us one time and asked us to pray for him because he was sick. The community was pressuring him to sacrifice a cow, a goat, because of his sick child. And he didn’t want to do it.
The fear is that if you don’t do it, not only might it affect your family, that child might die, but it might affect other families as well. And he took a stand. He said he was pressured by the local witch doctor or shaman, sort of, emuron, they would call them. He didn’t want to do it, and he said, “Pray for me.”
We prayed that he’d take a strong stand, and we prayed for the life of that child. And God was gracious. Not only did the child survive, and he stood firm. Stories of that, where someone was able to, willing, because of their trust in Christ, stand firm in the gospel.
Matthew Ezzell (51:39): And these are important things, right? Because the fact that he doesn’t do that, the child gets better, that’s a testimony not just of God’s faithfulness the way we see it. But it’s also an example to these people that he didn’t need to appease this evil spirit for the child to be healed, right? So that works on multiple levels, not just for his own faithfulness, but also as a testimony to the others, I’m assuming, as well.
David Okken (52:08): Yep. Amen. That’s right. So a lot of examples like that, and that encourage us.
One of the biggest challenges was seeing the Lord raise up elders and pastors. We’d have sometimes men that showed real potential, I mentioned earlier, and the struggle against cultural sins like polygamy, which men would fall into that again and be disqualified because of that.
But we see a lot of young men even now that they’re working with that are showing themselves to be godly and faithful and interested in being pastors. So we’re excited about even what’s going on at this point.
Matthew Ezzell (53:04): So if you wouldn’t mind walking us through, maybe if you could pick up some milestones, because you’re on the field for 18 years?
David Okken (53:14): 17 years.
Matthew Ezzell (53:15): 17 years. What did the work progress like from the time you got there until the time you left? Particularly your part in it, but also in general just the work among the Karimojong.
David Okken (53:35): Yeah, particularly in Karamoja. It was a lot of experimenting with different things, whether it be leading Bible studies in villages. For a while, we decided we’d try going into certain villages and spend a week preaching and teaching through, we had a little booklet called The Gospel for Karamoja. Al Tricarico wrote most of it, and that was helpful.
We would do that, and then we came up with different ideas when we saw the challenge it was to see local leaders. It seemed like it was slow going in terms of the Lord raising up men that we thought could be trained up as pastors. So we didn’t want to just continue starting churches that were completely dependent on us doing the preaching.
For a while, we tried to say, “Well, let’s go in, and we’ll just try to work with readers.” You go in, and we’d prepare lessons and work with men that would be readers to teach their village and see how maybe the Lord would use that to encourage more of a grassroots ministry, where there are church plants where they’re not so dependent on the outsiders.
So we did that for a while. For a while we had the readers from a bunch of different villages come, and we’d go over the stories together and then commission them to go out and do it. The idea is that we’d visit and see what would happen with that. Some good came out of that, but nothing really lasted in terms of churches that really grew up out of that.
The other thing we did, we began, even some among the men that worked with us, young men who were helping us as translators and whom we were also discipling and working with, we had them begin leading weekly village Bible studies out in a bunch of different villages. We took an approach where we were doing chronological teaching through the Bible, or telling the Bible stories. Al Tricarico and I did a lot of preparing those stories. We’d teach them to the men who would then go and teach those Bible studies out in the villages. We’d sometimes go along, but we had many different ones going on, so we couldn’t attend them all.
We spent a lot of time doing that and praying. None of them grew up into church plants as quickly as we hoped would happen, for the most part, although some of them still to this day are happening. But we thought it was a good thing to continue to prayerfully be scattering the seed of the Word and pray that it would be a means the Lord would use to immerse many in the Word over time. That ministry is continuing to go on.
Though we didn’t see the church planted quite the way, I had hoped that by the time I left Karamoja, there’d be a Karimojong Presbytery established.
Matthew Ezzell (57:24): Yeah.
David Okken (57:24): Didn’t happen. But we did see instances where young men, for example, who were out there and sat under those Bible studies we would lead would later come and profess faith.
By the time the Robbins came to the field and started the Timothy Program that we’ve talked about, there was one man, Angella Paul, who I had remembered when he was young, sitting there when I taught a Bible study. There he was, years later, working with the mission. To this day, Angella Paul is still working with the mission and believes God is calling him to be a pastor, and he’s still being trained to that end.
So we are encouraged by the way that the Lord used those efforts in ways that we praise him for. Maybe things didn’t go exactly as we expected they would, but-
Matthew Ezzell (58:23): But he was still at work.
David Okken (58:25): God is working. That’s right.
Matthew Ezzell (58:26): Yeah, and so you’re there. You’re the only missionary. The medical mission is going. At some point Al Tricarico comes on.
David Okken (58:36): Yes.
Matthew Ezzell (58:37): When did he come in?
David Okken (58:38): He came at the beginning of 2004.
Matthew Ezzell (58:42): When did he leave? Because he came back before you, correct?
David Okken (58:46): He was there for 10 years. Yep. Wait a second, was it? Yes. I should have been better with my dates here, guys.
Matthew Ezzell (58:53): That’s okay.
David Okken (58:53): But he was there for 10 years. Yes. So most of my 17 years, 10 of my 17 years there was working with Al Tricarico.
Matthew Ezzell (59:06): And was it just the two of you while he was there?
David Okken (59:09): Well, in Karamoja, the two ministers. Now we also had the Wright family. We had a missionary deacon. Okay. I haven’t talked about that whole component to the work, but Bob Wright was there with his family. He was there actually before I was, but then returned to the States for a while, then came back to the field later in 2001 and ended up staying. He was there for most of my time in Karamoja. We were there with the Wrights on the field with us.
We had a number of missionary associates as part of the work through the years. In fact, when we went to the field that first year, a young single gal, Kristie Scott, worked also with the clinic, a missionary associate. Right. But yeah, let’s see.
Matthew Ezzell (1:00:06): Well, can we talk a little bit about the missionary deacon? Because this is a newer thing for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, right? And did that start in Karamoja?
David Okken (1:00:17): I think that Bob Wright was the first full-time appointed missionary deacon to a field.
Matthew Ezzell (1:00:28): Okay.
David Okken (1:00:28): And part of the need for that was just because the living situation in Karamoja, you kind of needed a full-time construction, maintenance, vehicle man to be helping with that. But he also had a heart for just doing work that would be helpful to the Karimojong and assist the work of the gospel that way.
Matthew Ezzell (1:00:50): And so was he teaching skills to them that would?
David Okken (1:00:54): He was. Yes, he was. He had a real heart for helping teach men skills that would enable them to be able to provide for themselves better. And had men that he worked with in just doing the work of maintaining and construction projects and things like that. Also oversaw a farming project while we were there.
We had another missionary associate couple that came over. Oh, yeah, the Eldeens, who served there for years, who eventually became associate missionaries also. And Craig also worked with the farm project. It was a way of helping the people by employing them to help us farm our land, and we could often pay their wages in grain from our own harvests. And so that was really a good thing. And we did a lot of good work, a lot of gospel ministry, preaching even in that context also. So a lot of that kind of work going alongside the word ministry.
Matthew Ezzell (1:02:00): Okay. All right.
David Okken (1:02:02): But yeah, that’s right. Bob Wright was the first missionary deacon, I believe, of the OPC.
Matthew Ezzell (1:02:08): Okay. So at what point? Al Tricarico leaves. Someone else comes in after him, the Robbins. Is that right?
David Okken (1:02:20): Yes. David Robbins came just a year before we left. No, it was longer than that.
Matthew Ezzell (1:02:29): Okay. How long were you by yourself as the only minister of the mission?
David Okken (1:02:38): A couple of years, because the Tricaricos came. Did they come at the beginning of 2004? I think it was. I need my wife here.
Matthew Ezzell (1:02:51): That’s okay.
David Okken (1:02:52): I should have been more organized with the dates.
Matthew Ezzell (1:02:54): No, that’s all right.
David Okken (1:02:55): It was all 2002 and 2003. The Proctors came to Mbale before the Tricaricos came. So I was the only one in Karamoja, but Phil Proctor was on the field and working in Mbale.
Matthew Ezzell (1:03:18): And was there any outside involvement, or involvement from the Ugandan church? Did you guys ever call them in to help? You mentioned that you had them come in when you brought in new members. After that period when you first got there, did you have any more productive interactions with the PCU?
David Okken (1:03:44): We didn’t. It wasn’t long before we were working mostly with the OPCU, churches that had come out of Eastern Presbytery, and we did have some involvement. In fact, a couple of men that I was training, hoping would be elders in our first church, in the church in Nakaale, and it didn’t work out for one reason or another. But I was taking them down to some of the organizing presbytery meetings of that Mbale of OPCU, just so that they’d be familiar, knowledgeable and familiar of what was the history of the church.
And so we did have a relationship with the church in Mbale of OPCU. Sometimes we’d have ministers of that church come up and preach for us up in Karamoja. So yeah, there was some involvement that way.
Matthew Ezzell (1:04:41): Okay, but the church plants that the OPC had there were not connected to the OPCU. They weren’t in that presbytery or under?
David Okken (1:04:53): The church plants, you mean down in Mbale or up in Karamoja?
Matthew Ezzell (1:04:56): In Karamoja.
David Okken (1:04:57): The idea was that we would start our own church. I always envisioned that we would see the Karamoja church, when it’s established, be part of the indigenous church, likely the OPCU.
Matthew Ezzell (1:05:08): Okay.
David Okken (1:05:08): And I think that’s probably still,
Matthew Ezzell (1:05:10): But it never got to the stage where they were organically connected to that OPCU presbytery.
David Okken (1:05:19): Correct. Yeah, we never had any elders or ministers yet. We still had sort of a church plant the entire time under the mission.
Matthew Ezzell (1:05:25): So there are no elders or ministers that have come out of the work at this point?
David Okken (1:05:31): Not yet in Karamoja. Right. Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:05:33): It’s difficult.
David Okken (1:05:34): Yeah. It was disheartening. Yeah.
Returning to the United States
Matthew Ezzell (1:05:39): Yeah, maybe we’ll return to that a little bit as we talk about some reflections that you have. We’ve carried through pretty quickly through this 17 years here, but at what point did you decide it was time to leave?
David Okken (1:05:59): Yeah, good question. For a few years leading up to 2018, we were beginning to wonder. We had always figured probably around the time, well, I shouldn’t say we always had, but at some point we began to think that around the time Caleb might be ready for college or that age, it might be time to transition back.
We were thinking about parents back home. Both of us, our parents were aging. Sunshine’s in particular. She didn’t have siblings. She was an only child. She does have a half-brother who’s her father’s son, but he didn’t have much of a relationship with his father. So when they’re getting older, probably we’re going to need to be closer to them.
Matthew Ezzell (1:06:59): So, it’s mostly family considerations.
David Okken (1:07:02): That was a big consideration. It wasn’t the only one. We also,
Matthew Ezzell (1:07:06): It might be helpful for us. Go ahead.
David Okken (1:07:08): Well, thinking that by the time they’re ready for college, we didn’t really think that remaining on the field while sending them back would be the best thing for them. And just knowing that that was sort of on the horizon, I think there was also a desire to be in pastoral ministry myself back in the States.
So we began wondering and praying, and it seemed like it was the Lord’s will by 2018 when we just decided that that would be our last mission. We actually ended up extending that last term.
Matthew Ezzell (1:08:02): Okay.
David Okken (1:08:02): But I decided that we’d pursue a pastoral call stateside at that point. Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:08:09): Okay. It might be good to note that you did have three children while you were in the field here.
David Okken (1:08:15): Oh, yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:08:16): Were they born in Uganda, or?
David Okken (1:08:17): They were all born in San Diego, actually. We had planned to have children in Uganda. The first one that we planned to have there, we lost. We had a couple of miscarriages in Uganda. And because of experiences Sunshine had, where she became considered high risk in terms of her pregnancies, we decided it was better to deliver stateside. In God’s providence, it worked out for Megan’s birth that we were on furlough anyway.
Matthew Ezzell (1:08:51): Okay.
David Okken (1:08:53): But for Caleb, we had lost one, and then his pregnancy, we thought we miscarried. It’s possible that Caleb had a twin that the Lord took, that we lost. We don’t know that for sure. But we had to get her back stateside for his birth. And then Megan, we were stateside for her when she was born. Wow.
And then we also lost another baby after Megan. And she was just kind of sometimes considered high risk in her pregnancy at that point. We just decided for Jacob to be stateside again.
Matthew Ezzell (1:09:29): Okay.
David Okken (1:09:30): So, yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:09:31): Yeah, no, that’s understandable.
David Okken (1:09:34): There was a period where we actually moved to Mbale. While Al Tricarico was in Karamoja, we were living in Mbale, and I was commuting. Because it seemed safer for Sunshine. She did not do well with malaria in pregnancy, we learned. And it seemed more prevalent up in Karamoja, was certainly our experience.
And so we decided, while we were still trying to have children, we’d live in Mbale. And so we did that for a couple of years. And then after Jacob was born, moved back up to Karamoja.
Matthew Ezzell (1:10:12): Okay. So you’ve got all these factors in the back of your head, and you decide to start looking for a pastoral call in the United States. Obviously we know where you ended up, but you ended up coming back to North Carolina here, to Raleigh, to minister. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that transition. Some more difficult pregnancy things involved.
David Okken (1:10:45): Yeah, well, that’s right. When we decided that that was going to be our last term, I kind of put the feelers out, filled out the MIF, Ministerial Information Form, whatever it is that the OPC has for pastors interested in seeking calls. And I was contacted by Pastor Holst.
At that point, we were kind of thinking we wanted to end up somewhere more out west. Right. Because both my parents and Sunshine’s were still living out there, San Diego and Prescott, Arizona. When the Lord didn’t seem to be opening up doors out that way, and I’d been contacted by Shiloh, I began talking to the search committee, the elders and the deacons, and seemed like it could be a good fit here. They seemed interested in me, and I became more open to the idea of being out here and interested in the church. And so the Lord opened up that door.
And we ended up coming back and actually doing, I guess it was the spring of ‘18, a candidating visit here. It was on that trip that we also found out that Sunshine was pregnant.
Matthew Ezzell (1:12:04): That’s right.
David Okken (1:12:06): We were very surprised by that, didn’t expect that, had not planned that. It had been ten years since we’d had Jacob and thought we were done having children. But we thought, well, here’s a surprise that is a blessing from God.
And so Sunshine was pregnant. That was just going to be part of our remaining time in Karamoja and then the transition back here. Thought that one of the first big events living in Raleigh would be the birth of our baby. The Lord had a different plan. When we actually returned from the field and arrived in San Diego, we found out that DJ, as we named him after, had trisomy 18, had a genetic disorder, and had significant problems, a lot of defects. The biggest one being that he only had basically half of a functional heart. So we learned that it was very, humanly speaking, barring a miracle, unlikely that he would survive much past birth.
And so that kind of changed our plans. We’d planned to come out, arrive in Raleigh earlier. But because of Sunshine’s pregnancy, and it would be difficult to travel, we ended up staying longer in San Diego, and did stay until he was born in October of ‘18. And the Lord was very gracious, and through a very difficult process, the church was wonderfully supportive of us, Shiloh as well as the church broadly speaking.
And he was born, I think it was October 17th. Now I’m even forgetting that date. Shame on me. But he only lived for 40 minutes.
Matthew Ezzell (1:14:05): Wow.
David Okken (1:14:06): Before the Lord took him. I think it was October 17th was his birth, the day that he was born and the Lord took him. It was a precious time we had with him. Family got to see him and a lot of tears, but also tears of joy knowing that the Lord is a God to our children and we could trust that DJ was in his arms. So yeah, that was a big event we went through.
Matthew Ezzell (1:14:34): So your transition from Uganda to here in Raleigh was not an easy one either. Obviously a very emotional situation that had just developed, but as far as the ministry goes, what was it like to transition from Karamoja to the Research Triangle Park area? It’s a little bit different.
David Okken (1:15:09): Yeah, very different. A bit of a learning curve. To be honest, as I reflect on it even now, I think that a big one is we’re such a different place. North Carolina is so different, and that’s true, but also it was just an adjustment. Pastoral ministry in the States looks different than missionary life in Uganda. The church was and has been wonderful and was very kind, patient, and so it’s been a huge blessing that way.
But it was a big adjustment, mostly for the kids, I would say, because it was easy for Sunshine and me to take to life and work here and keep busy. The kids, life was very different. The church was wonderful to them as well. The children of Shiloh were very welcoming, and they were able to make some good friends. That’s been a huge blessing.
But it was just different from being in Karamoja where you lived on a compound with the other missionary kids and then the African kids who were just continually with us. Yeah. To coming back to life in the States where you’re not quite seeing friends every single day.
Matthew Ezzell (1:16:31): Yeah.
David Okken (1:16:32): And it was different. And they missed the only home they ever knew. Sunshine and I, we’d been through major transition in our life. We’d gone to Africa. And for them, all of life they knew was living in Africa, other than furloughs where you were with cousins and grandkids. To actually come and settle into life and be in our home, and it suddenly sunk in: this is it. This is life now. And it was hard.
And probably the cultural component. Children who have been raised on the missionary field are known as third culture kids, where you feel like you don’t really belong to this culture. You never really belonged to the culture where you are missionaries, and you’re in a sort of culture all your own. And so it was a challenge, but they’ve been able to work through that. I think they’re doing well. So we’re thankful.
Matthew Ezzell (1:17:28): What’s been your continued contact with the mission? Because you stayed in contact, obviously, with the people you knew over there. And right at the end of your term, there was another missionary deacon and his family that came to the field, correct?
David Okken (1:17:45): Right. Yeah, the Van Essendelfts. I think we had five months with them. But in that brief time, we got to know them well. And our children, Caleb especially, really became close to a couple of those children. So he actually recently was back visiting the field and stayed with the Van Essendelfts. Yeah, they are still there.
I’ve never been as good as I’d like to be just staying in touch with old friends, but we’ve stayed in pretty good contact. And Caleb’s been the best, actually, in terms of being in communication with those on the field. We continue to pray for them. We’ve communicated even through Skype and whatnot with missionary friends who are over there, and they’re doing well.
Of course, the Robbins were there when we left. And then more recently, another missionary family has also gone. The Folkerts are there living in the house we lived in. It was renovated for them. So we’ve had communication with them, and the work’s carrying on. We do pray for, and we are knowledgeable of, what’s going on still. And so in many ways our hearts are still there.
Challenges and encouragements
Matthew Ezzell (1:19:07): Right, and there’s been some challenging circumstances since you’ve left on the field in Uganda. And there was a major missionary moral failing, which we don’t have to get into the details of, but was that in Karamoja, or was that in?
David Okken (1:19:25): That was in Mbale.
Matthew Ezzell (1:19:27): Okay.
So the mission in Karamoja wasn’t so much affected by the issues surrounding that?
David Okken (1:19:33): I mean, it affected the whole mission deeply. Yeah, we had a close relationship, of course, with that family and ministered together both in Mbale and in Karamoja. So that was really, really hard for all of us. And even since then, another minister, the Robbins, have made the decision to return.
Matthew Ezzell (1:19:58): To come back.
David Okken (1:19:59): To the States. And so it’s always hard, different reasons for that. But seeing families come and go, it’s never easy, not easy on the work. And so, yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:20:12): Right. And they’ve also had to deal with COVID-19, like we all have.
David Okken (1:20:15): Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:20:18): What was their reaction to that? Was it similar to the United States where you had many people with a spectrum of views on this issue, or was it all pretty unified?
David Okken (1:20:27): I would say there was a spectrum. I can’t speak so much to the Ugandans and their feelings about it all. I’m sure there were different beliefs about how the government handled it. But there was a pretty severe lockdown. And it’s still going on. They’ve just recently made a decision again to go into a lockdown, I forget, 40 days or something, where you’re not permitted to leave your district.
Matthew Ezzell (1:20:59): So, they’re still kind of in this lockdown.
David Okken (1:21:00): And churches aren’t allowed to meet again. Yeah. So it’s been tough. And I know that even on the missionaries working through those things, preserving team unity, there are challenges that you face with those things. So it has been hard. Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:21:19): Well, okay, so we’ve taken the timeline pretty much all the way through from when you got out to the work and your time there, what that looked like generally. What are, just as we wrap up, some successes that you were particularly excited about? And we may have already touched on some of them, but just those big things that stand out in your mind: this is one of the things that we did well, or the Lord just really blessed while we were on the field.
David Okken (1:21:50): One thing I can mention, even just the time in developing gospel materials, and we did a lot of translating of things. One exciting thing that happened right before I left was we actually completed the translation of the Karimojong Westminster Shorter Catechism. Okay. So that was pretty exciting. And David Robbins did a really great job keeping us on task. And I had more experience with the language, and so he wanted to complete that while I was there to be helpful.
We had kind of a translation committee, working with the Karimojong themselves, but also all of us being able to think through and explain. I mean, it’s not easy to translate terms like “effectual calling” into Karimojong, as you can imagine.
Matthew Ezzell (1:22:43): Yeah, how do you say “the chief end of man”?
David Okken (1:22:46): That’s right. Yeah, but we managed to do it. And I think it’s been very useful and helpful to the church. In fact, we’ve heard recently that they’ve been making use of it, not only by our own church, but the Charismatic Episcopal Church, for example, in Uganda, in Namalu nearby. So we did work with other churches more broadly, like we do pastors’ conferences and stuff. We did one on the Trinity and a lot of things like that. So that’s exciting.
I guess I mentioned earlier, even more recently hearing that Angella Paul is still on task and wants to be a pastor and is doing well. He recently married. So I think he’s growing up, maturing, and seeing men like that who are able to rise. We didn’t talk much about polygamy. We still can, but the Karamoja culture and its perspective on marriage, so unbiblical. Seeing men changed by the gospel, able to rise above that and have a godly perspective on marriage and a godly marriage. Well, recently, that brother did marry. And just seeing the difference that the gospel can make in the life of a man like Angella Paul. That’s exciting. Yeah.
Marriage and polygamy
Matthew Ezzell (1:24:30): Yeah, well, while we’re talking about successes and failures, for that matter, in some sense, tell us a little bit about polygamy in Karamoja and what that culture is like and how they think about marriage. Obviously that’s a problem for us as we understand that that disqualifies you, at the very least disqualifies you from holding office. That certainly complicates matters when it comes to finding church officers, but just in general, what is their understanding of marriage? And why does that make it challenging to encourage Christian marriages?
David Okken (1:25:09): Right. Yeah, polygamy was common. There was even pressure, social pressure on a man, if he’s able to have more than one wife. Because, for one thing, there’s status symbol involved. If you have more wives, you have more children. Daughters are sold. Sounds horrible to say it, but that’s kind of how it is, seen as possessions. And you receive a dowry from a prospective groom for your daughter. Plus the fact that if you have a lot of children, they have responsibility to care for you later. So it’s sort of a Social Security.
So it was just such a common part of culture that asking Karimojong not to even consider that, it felt almost like you’re asking them not to breathe. Right. And the pressure, even when you would see young men who could see the Scripture, they could see that this is what Christ calls them to, and they could even agree to that, and then later sometimes fall back, whether from pressure.
Sometimes you felt like, have these men even been honest with us from the beginning? Have they been lying all along and not even really planned to truly follow the Lord in this, or did they just really become weak? Many instances where a brother might fall into that sin and then come back and say, “I’m sorry, it was wrong,” and then you wrestle with, well, how do you treat someone like that? Yeah. And we had men confess their sin to the church and so forth. So that was challenging.
Matthew Ezzell (1:26:58): Yeah. What’s the policy of the mission as far as once someone has fallen into this? It makes it kind of difficult to,
David Okken (1:27:07): Yeah.
Matthew Ezzell (1:27:10): There’s no going back really, is there, in some ways?
David Okken (1:27:13): Yeah. The position, of course, if a man came to Christ with two wives or three wives, our position was that he had a duty to continue married to those wives, care for them. He was not qualified to be an elder.
Matthew Ezzell (1:27:33): Right.
David Okken (1:27:34): But he could be a Christian, we suspect.
Matthew Ezzell (1:27:39): Yeah, well, and telling him to put away those wives, for instance, would cause kind of an issue, wouldn’t it, culturally, and just for their safety, for their well-being in general? Could you speak to that a little bit?
David Okken (1:27:50): Yeah, no, we didn’t believe that that would have been right to tell them to put away those. We didn’t believe that the Bible required that. You’re right. It would have been really not good culturally, so we’d have to really be convinced that this is what Christ commands. But we didn’t believe we could do that.
And truthfully, even if a man who was a faithful Christian fell away, but then took a wife and then later repented, our position wasn’t that, well, now he needs to put away that wife. If it’s understood socially, culturally, this is a man, this is his wife, then he was in that same category. He was now required not to love her any more than his first wife. He needed to be faithful to her.
Sometimes there was the pressure, if there was a bad marriage, rather than like our culture where you just quickly divorce and remarry. No, you just take another. And sometimes the first wife can be just completely neglected. So there was a lot of instruction required in terms of marriage, the duties that husbands had. And it was hard, because sometimes it seemed like, well, you felt like, well, you’ve made it too easy because all you have to do is just purposely sin and then say you’re sorry and you can have as many wives as you want.
And so we wrestled through that a lot and frankly continued. I’m sure they continue to. You have to rest in, the Lord is the one who is Lord over our hearts, and he’s going to work in his people, and you leave it in his hands ultimately.
Matthew Ezzell (1:29:34): Has that been the major factor that’s led to the situation where we can’t get any elders and ministers? Is that the major thing that’s keeping us from?
David Okken (1:29:44): A big factor, yeah, because some of what we thought were really gifted, qualified, faithful men fell into [that sin]. Not the only factor, though. I can remember another man who showed such potential. But in his case, it was drunkenness. He just could not overcome that. And that was heart-wrenching also.
Lessons and prayer
Matthew Ezzell (1:30:10): Yeah, a very difficult field, and particularly difficult, I think, or I would imagine, for a Reformed church with principles like the OPC. We already talked about how staying true to what we believed in brought tension between the OPC missionaries and the indigenous church.
But what do you think are some lessons that the OPC specifically, but also just other confessionally Reformed churches, maybe NAPARC churches or European churches that might engage in this kind of mission work in the future, can learn from your experience, or just the OPC’s experience in general, in an area of the world that has these kinds of problems, has these kinds of barriers to planting churches?
David Okken (1:31:02): Yeah, good question. I think there’s a major lesson just in perseverance, because it’d be easy to say that if we’d gone in and done this differently or this differently, we’d avoided all these problems. And certainly, with some of the moral failings, even of our own missionaries, we could have done a lot better by way of just, boy, accountability. Just holding each other accountable. And none of us are above falling.
I do think probably what we’ve learned in terms of investing in the young men early on, it probably would have served us well from the very beginning. I think it’s been good what we’ve learned in terms of really discipling young men while they’re young.
Matthew Ezzell (1:32:26): Maybe before they get to the age where these temptations are coming upon them so quickly.
David Okken (1:32:32): Yeah, I think so. I think with the Robbins, really, and the work they did with the Timothy boys, really taking them in and as part of their education, training them well, that seems to have really been able to bear some good fruit that we’re still seeing. So,
Matthew Ezzell (1:32:56): I think that’s a helpful thing to consider. I’ve heard it said in other contexts that that’s one of the things that the American church doesn’t always do well, is just focus on the young men. These are going to be the people who are going to lead the church, Lord willing, in the future. And the more time you can invest in these brothers, probably the better in the long run. So do you think we’re making headway towards our goals in Uganda? Yes. Maybe that’s not a fair question.
David Okken (1:33:26): And then now that I’m here. No, I think so. We have to believe it’s the Lord’s work and we want to be faithful, but we have to believe he’s building his church. Christ promised that he would, and I think that we are. I think that we are.
Matthew Ezzell (1:33:46): Yeah. You see potential for us to rekindle a better relationship with the PCU and areas like that? Is there any headway being made on those things and staying true to our desire to have the indigenous church maybe at some point be able to be a little more unified?
David Okken (1:34:13): Yeah, well, that OPCU did rejoin while we were there.
Matthew Ezzell (1:34:23): Okay. All right.
David Okken (1:34:24): And is part of PCU again. Yeah. So that was encouraging. And there are always going to be challenges and struggles, but I think that things are going well as far as that goes. And I would think at this point, the goal would be that the Karamoja work, the church as it’s established there, is also part of PCU.
Matthew Ezzell (1:34:50): Okay.
David Okken (1:34:51): So I can’t speak directly to where they are in that process right now.
Matthew Ezzell (1:34:56): Great. And then maybe lastly, just to end out, how do you think we as members of the OPC more broadly can pray for the Ugandan mission and also for the missionaries that are there working still today?
David Okken (1:35:13): Yeah, good. I really pray for the missionaries. Pray for real unity. Pray that the believers there will be faithful, resist the temptation to compromise and fall back into the cultural sin patterns, thinking particularly of these young men who are working with our missionaries, really doing the work of ministry. We believe God raising them up to be ministers, that they would be faithful, that they’d be faithful. That’s a big one.
And that God would give us wisdom as we continue to serve him there. Wisdom, unity among the missionaries, and that he would raise up just the right servants to go there. At this point, I’m not even sure what the immediate plans are in terms of the personnel who are on the field there, whether there’s plans for anyone to go back right away and take up the work that the ministers who are now back from the field had been serving. But certainly pray for our church as we send men to go over and do that work.
Matthew Ezzell (1:36:42): Thanks for sitting down with us and talking about your experience in Uganda. It’s been good to hear. I’ve known you for a few years, and I think this is definitely the most me and you have talked about Uganda, which is kind of weird, actually. So you’ve helped fill in that 17-year period of your life that I didn’t know anything about. So thanks for being willing to come and sit down and talk.
David Okken (1:37:09): Thank you, Matthew. My pleasure.