12/27/2025
WE JUST RECIVED THIS UPDATE FROM MATT GARDNER...
"I want to give a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who has expressed their condolences. Tens of thousands of people spanning across the world have been praying for my family and me. The love is exemplary of Christ’s love, and it has been so comforting.
The viewing of Savannah’s body will be at People’s Baptist Church in McDonough, Georgia, on January 2nd from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm. January 3rd at 10:00 am will be the funeral service where Savannah will be laid to rest. This service will also take place at People’s Baptist Church. If anyone would like to send flowers for the service, they can be sent to Cannon Cleveland Funeral Home in McDonough, Georgia.
I would also like to thank all those who have been constantly asking how they can help. So many donations have come in that we will now have a car when we return to Uganda. People have continued to ask me what else they can help with, so I would like to give a few things they can help with if the Lord touches them to. First, donating toward the funeral would be a huge blessing. We were financially prepared for an emergency on the mission field, but we had never considered a tragedy of this magnitude. I am now buying a burial plot and paying for many other expenses that are required to lay Savannah to rest. Second, we were slowly saving up to purchase and install a battery backup system in our Ugandan house, so that when the power went out, we wouldn’t have to worry about our food spoiling or other issues that come with extended power outages. Now that I will be caring for the children by myself and doing the ministry work, I feel this backup system is even more crucial. If anyone would like to give to that system, it would significantly help me be a single-father missionary.
I would like to publicly thank my sending church: Temple Baptist Church in Dulles, Virginia. They have been second to none during this crisis. I consider myself blessed to have grown up in that church and now to be sent out from them, into the mission field. I would be remiss not to publicly thank BIMI as well. They have partnered with my home church to help me from the moment I made the phone call about the accident. BIMI is filled with special people, and I thank God constantly for leading me to be a BIMI missionary.
I would like to end with a passage I read in the Bible this morning that really touched me: 'Thy righteousness also, O God, is very high, who hast done great things: O God, who is like unto thee! Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side' (Psalm 71:19-21).”
