Announcing transition to supporting Orthodox Africa (& expense report)

[EcoMercy International]

Dear friends,

Thank you for your ongoing support of EcoMercy International, which has been going entirely to needs at St. John Chrysostom School via Fr. Stephen Lunagula of the Ugandan Orthodox Church. However, I’m planning to make a change. And I would like to say, right off the bat how thankful I am for Father Stephen. Here’s me with Fr. Stephen in 2018:

He’s been doing a great work for his people and I believe he has been very faithful to Christ. I will always see him as an iconic African and Christian father. Someone who so carefully and profoundly balanced the needs of his family and his church and his neighbors outside the church and was also so tactful and loving toward me. He didn’t find me. I found him and he helped me with my burdens. I initially reached out to Father Stephen in order to ask him to help me take care of about 30 orphans living in the nearby town of Kamuli and he accepted. And I learned a lot from him.

The reason for the change now has to do with my own exhaustion, as I have told Fr. Stephen. At this stage in my life I just do not seem to be able to carry on such an ambitious vision for a charitable organization in Africa, mainly because I was on the trajectory to live there, but it didn’t work out. And also I believe we’ve accomplished some key things for St. John Chrysostom School that will help the community for a long time to come. I spoke about these accomplishments in my previous email: a well, latrines, improvements to the church, kitchens, a dormitory, teacher housing, painting, trees planted, rainwater capturing tanks, etc. Though there is certainly much more work that could be done.

So in this newsletter I would like to announce that I will be making a transition or a “pivot” with EcoMercy International as they say these days. You may find that in the next newsletter I have sent some of your donations to orthodoxafrica.org. I hope you will continue with me through this transition. This is a natural transition because Orthodox Africa has by now accepted St. John Chrysostom School as one of its vetted missions and has already helped Fr. Stephen financially on at least a couple occasions.

I believe I’ve told you about Fr. Silouan Brown of Orthodox Africa (in photo above with Fr. Stephen) in previous newsletters. He reached out to me in 2017 telling me about Orthodox Africa. This was the same year I was baptized as an Orthodox Christian. I began talking to him in 2018 and I really liked his down to earth personality and vision which was similar to my vision. (In fact by now our visions have been influenced by one another as I believe he would also affirm.) And so I asked the board of Orthodox Africa back in 2019 if they would sponsor me to live in Uganda and do church development work there with my family.

To understand why I wanted to do that you have to know that I was and still am very idealistic about both my Christian witness and my practical way of living. I wanted to shine a bright light for the Kingdom of God, (because that’s our only hope.) And I didn’t want to get a mortgage just to be able to have a house to live in, (because the borrower is the servant of the lender.) I didn’t want to serve merely corporate/national interests. I had a rental property, but I sold it and put about two thirds of the money into needs at St. John Chrysostom School. So then I owned no house. I knew I wanted to live a simple life, taking care of land, having been influenced by the permaculture movement. I saw that healing creation is integral to God’s plan for the earth. And God showed me that this healing would not occur through the programs of centralized governments, but through people turning to God in repentance. I then left my job selling solar panels to pursue this simple path of trusting God, beginning to do simple labor with my hands, not because I thought there was something morally wrong with solar panels, but because I was putting way too much energy into selling them to wealthy people. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”

Here’s a solar panel array that I sold in the Redding, CA, area for one home. (Photo from December 2014). Notice the size of this thing! It’s ridiculous.

And below is a tiny system that helped St. John Chrysostom Primary School to have some lighting in the evening. I’m kind of ashamed to put these photos side by side. But the one low voltage panel provided quite a bit of light for staff members.

And here’s a solar panel going up on Fr. Stephens’s house on the school property.

Back to Orthodox Africa: The board members ended up denying my request to live in Uganda with their blessing and support, which I knew I needed, but God answered my needs in another way. My dad decided he wanted to sell his property in Idaho, which was maintained impeccably and he knew that it would get harder to keep it that way. I asked him if he would buy a property with two houses so I could help take care of everyone in the family and he graciously agreed to this to my great relief and thankfulness.

Also, I was accepted by the Western Rite Communities of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia to conduct an official mission, which meets for prayer at my house. See my website here: orthodoxbrookings.org. So all my sins have been forgiven and all my prayers answered. I have what I have always wanted, a public witness for Christ as director of a Christian mission, which happens to be canonical and orthodox, and land to live on and care for, for the benefit of not just myself and my dad and my wife and kids, but for the benefit of others who come to pray at our mission.

(By the way, in the photo below, I’m technically not supposed to be wearing the belt, which as I later found out is only for monastics.)

All this is to say that my need to develop Saint Brigid Mission and study to become a priest is taking all my time and energy. And I truly have nothing left to manage an ambitious charity on another continent. But Father Silouan Brown is doing just that and he has brought Father Stephen Lunagula under his wing to some degree. Saint John Chrysostom School is now an official mission of Orthodox Africa. In fact, Fr. Silouan told me that he recently gave him a sum of money to help with planting a crop on a strip of land along the White Nile River, not far from the school! So that was very good news! In the past, Fr. Silouan has also helped Fr. Stephen with repairing his tractor.

Below is a panoramic photo that Fr. Silouan took of Fr. Stephen’s plantation, which shows the nose of his vehicle on the right:

Thus from now on I may just send all the continuing EcoMercy donations to Orthodox Africa, except that I may use a certain sum to help with updating our records and compliance with the State of California. I still haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to do there. If I send money to Orthodox Africa I will also pass to you reports from Orthodox Africa in my next newsletter. Or if you would like to donate directly to Orthodox Africa, please do. I may just dissolve EcoMercy International altogether or I may try to resurrect it in some form. Please pray for me to have guidance regarding that. 

Income & Expenses:

At this moment we have seven people giving monthly amounts between $5 and $50. All of the people giving $100 or more have dropped off over the past year or two since I have been not pushing as hard for donations. May God bless them abundantly for their contributions. I’m thankful for everyone who has even given even a small sum.

As for expenses, I have made three transfers during the past nearly five months since the last newsletter. All these have been earmarked for the perimeter fence which is still not finished. If you would like to donate for that, please do.

2023-11-17	Building project	Stephen L	268.88	(1 million shillings) For continuing the perimeter fence project.
2023-12-11	Building project	Stephen L	539.23	(2 million shillings) For fence construction project.
2024-01-22	Building project	Stephen L	403.34	(1.5 million shillings) For perimeter fence project.

More photos:

Fr. Silouan also sent the photo below of one of the gated entrances we erected. Notice the words, “Happy are those who come in the name of the Lord!"

We also managed to send a computer to Fr. Stephen, which he has given to the staff at St. John Chrysostom School:

Also, please watch this video of Fr. Silouan rolling up to St. John Chrysostom School here:

 https://www.facebook.com/581330746/videos/437976908599892/

Fr. Silouan Brown:

I want to tell you a bit more about Fr. Silouan Brown. He is a character. I love his Facebook posts. Friend him here and here. He works hard and God is blessing him and blessing his work. He believes in helping African priests and their congregations undertake projects that can make their ministries financially self-sustaining, hence donating for tractor repair and expenses associated with agriculture. This is a radical vision that I believe has relevance for us in the United States as well.

He was recently attacked and beaten when someone broke into his apartment in Kampala, Uganda. Someone in Tennessee then read a report about this on the internet and donated some money for land for a mission center. So he is clearly taking up his cross. But if he is to continue help priests such as Fr. Stephen, he will need your support.

He is a monk, which is exactly the kind of person we need to head a charity organization in Africa, not because it’s too dangerous for families to live there, but because he will be able to devote more time to his various mission locations than a man with a wife and children can. He’s someone who loves his country the United States, loves Uganda, and also loves Christian tradition and faithfulness. He’s pursuing a life of being filled with God’s love and energy to save his own soul. 1 Peter 1:9 says, “As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls.” Don’t be fooled into thinking the salvation of your soul is something you receive by making one simple prayer. That could be a beginning. But the salvation of the soul is the outcome of your faith. For those who "endure to the end” (Matthew 24:13). How will you save your soul?

Are you saved?

Democrats say they want to "save democracy," because that is as deep as their tradition goes. For them democracy, or more accurately the power of the crowd or mob, is the only tradition. The MAGA movement says that they love their country and their guns and their Bibles and for the most part I believe them. And they want to "SAVE the country." But every nation needs to appropriate salvation through ALL that Jesus Christ intended, through repentance. We can only save our country and our traditions if we save our own souls. And I just don’t see that happening in the US. Everyone is still so addicted to their individualist, consumerist lifestyles and their vane boasting and hypocritical disparaging of people. God’s blessing does not appear to be on our nation.

We are moving into what you might call corporate, technocratic, transhuman feudalism. According to Wikipedia, a transhuman is "a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans." We’re talking about a future where people are worshiping celebrities as they do now, basking in the glow of their TV and internet shrines, but these celebrities will be even more powerful, having positions in government and not just gigs in Hollywood. They will see themselves as gods. And artificial intelligence will be the new spirit of truth. And those in power will continue to push toward the mark of the beast for all those who buy and sell. We’ve already seen this happening with forced vaccines being required for certain jobs. This is a cleanliness ritual designed to separate people into classes based on this transhuman, technocratic model for society.

We may continue to have plenty of rights on paper in America, but it will not really matter if you are poor and kept poor because your faith is not politically correct. So what will the righteous do? In my opinion, the only way forward is to stop serving the wicked. Which means to stop taking jobs you don’t really want to pay mortgages you can’t really pay to support shepherds who never stand up for anything because it’s just easier to let the antichrist win---and who don’t have any vision, who let the people perish. I believe we need to seek first the Kingdom, give away your wealth if you have to, then do whatever labor our hands find to do unto the Lord. And we need to find out what this verse means:

"And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings" (Luke 16:19).

I realize this is a narrow path that requires change and decision making. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. I believe what Jesus said, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Here’s a video of one of Fr. Silouan’s presentations: https://youtu.be/ZJ_HNfixJ2s?si=dzuMQJ99ePvjsMqc . Check it out!

A blessed day to you,

Martin