In 2013, God called Todd and Cindy Lemmon to missions in Uganda. Since then, Todd has retired from a career in law enforcement and has become a nurse to better care, cure, and heal in keeping with Jesus’ call to “go and do likewise” as the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:37). Cindy has transitioned from school administration to serving the families of cancer patients at Hope Lodge in Jacksonville. She loves serving in child nurseries and teaching women of all ages to sew, and joins Todd in Uganda as often as she can.
The Lemmons now have homes in both worlds, an apartment in Gulu, Uganda, and a small condo in Jacksonville, Florida.
Please get to know the ministers God is using to build this mission by using the buttons above to read about Todd, Cindy, and our Mission Board.
Todd Lemmon
Todd is our executive director, a skilled emergency nurse, and a retired police officer. After spending 25 years in law enforcement in Jacksonville, Florida, Todd was called to take a step closer to those he would help, so he transitioned from “protect and serve” to “care, cure, and heal,” all to be in better proximity to effect spiritual change. A few came to Jesus in the back of his police car, but now he gets a better chance to reach people in their need as a missionary nurse.
How did that change happen? Todd and Cindy both had experiences in their younger years that inspired them to commit to missionary work someday. For Todd, police work was a domestic civil mission and Romans 13:3-4 his marching orders. One day, while standing post at the Hurricane Katrina relief center in Jacksonville, he watched throngs of displaced refugees from Louisiana file past him in long lines to see counselors, nurses, and pastors. It was then that God introduced the suggestion that Todd might do more for the Kingdom than provide civil security.
In 2013, as Todd was nearing retirement, Todd and Cindy read Rich Stearns’ The Hole in Our Gospel, and it rekindled that calling each of them had felt toward African missions years before. As they sought God’s direction for where in Africa they would serve, God was faithful to answer in a way that convinced them it was Him and not merely their own desires. They would serve in Uganda.
Convinced that God could better use a tool that was prepared for service, Todd became a nurse. He served in an intensive care unit, a medical-surgical unit, and most happily in the emergency department. He learned to be missional even in an emergency room in the Covid-19 Pandemic and, once he was satisfied he had the experience and the credentials to be useful, he terminated his American employment and became a full-time missionary.
In 2021, the Lemmons sold their Florida house, rented a Ugandan apartment, and Todd served at a mission hospital in the Kiryandongo District of Uganda. There, he felt the call north, where the indigenous tribes suffer from poverty and neglect more than some others. He studied Luo, the language of at least five northern tribes, including the Acholi and Lango people. He developed a team of those with whom he gathers, worships, and serves to bring the message that “the Creator of the universe thinks you are worth dying for,” a concept unfamiliar to Ugandans who generally believe they are inferior people.
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Cindy Lemmon
God certainly knew what He was doing when He paired Todd Lemmon with Cindy! Not too many All-American women would be willing to uproot their lives and move to Africa, but that is just what Cindy has dreamed of for decades, even before she met Todd. Now she serves as TLC Uganda’s Vice President and Secretary.
Cindy grew up the baby girl in a rural family with two older brothers. She learned how to grow things, make things, sew, cook, get by without extras, and make much out of little. She learned hard work as she watched her mother do for the family while her father laid stone and ran a reputable masonry business, contributing to several of the structures in Jacksonville’s landscape. She learned something else too – how to love no matter what.
As she branched out from her parent’s home, Cindy learned to be dependent only on God. She learned how to part with her familiar tradition to follow God’s lead, and she learned devotion, which she earnestly practiced while following that lead. She learned to trust God’s healing power after being diagnosed with cancer in her 30s and how to walk in His divine health once delivered from it.
When Cindy first met Todd, she was volunteering at the large church they both attended back then, and at which Todd had been hired to provide security and traffic control. They occasionally found themselves together in the foyer with time to chat, and God began to answer each of their prayers in their pairing.
Todd was a single father of two small children at the time, and Cindy captured his attention with a statement she made, “You don’t have to have children for them to be your children.” She has lived that ever since too! As stepmother to their two children, the “step” in the relationship has always been silent. Now grown, their kids still interact with her as children to a mother, and Cindy is a superb “Mama” to the Ugandan family God has sent our way.
Cindy has worked as the headmaster’s executive assistant at a large private Christian school. She can fix, manage, or delegate just about anything, and she really is in her element when she’s managing, directing, organizing and administering. She has also worked at non-profit girls’ organization in resource development, and now serves as a coordinator for the local mission house of the American Cancer Society, the Hope Lodge.
Cindy is a top-notch seamstress. Not only has she tailored clothes to make extra income, she loves to teach her craft, mentoring both girls and women who eagerly want to learn to sew their own clothes or artistic fabric projects. She hopes to put this passion to practice to help Ugandan women become self-sustaining.
Related post: Celebrating Mrs. Incredible on Valentine’s Day (2017)
Follow this link to filter out all my chatter and see what Cindy has to say.
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Our Board of Directors
Allow us to introduce you to our ministry board. These precious folks were selected for their loving hearts, devotion to Christ, and passion for missions.
Melody Bruno once served with Todd in a different capacity, along with her husband, Mike. Melody is a hard-working mother of four. She always has an encouraging word and an amazing knack for looking at things from another perspective. Anyone starting any venture needs someone like Melody on their team, and we know it.
Dennis Cooke, TLCU’s treasurer, and his wife, Heidi, have a lot in common with Todd, including a history of living in many of the same places. Dennis has experience as a former bank examiner, and has sat on the boards of several ministries. He and Heidi are a consistently supportive voice, and both are highly respected for their experience and advice.
April Tapp is a marketing specialist, friendly neighbor to the Lemmons, mother of two boys, pastor’s wife, and aspiring lawyer. Even with so many irons in the fire, she can still accomplish everything she sets out to do, including pass her LCAT while juggling a house full of boys and a Labradoodle the size of Chewbacca.
Melissa Workman has been a consistent source of encouragement and spiritual insight to the Lemmons for years. So it would be inconceivable to venture any new endeavor without her support. She and her husband, David, have raised two boys, both successful entrepreneurs. Behind every successful man stands a woman like Melissa!
With Cindy pointing Todd in the right direction the way any good neck operates a head, this constitutes our board of directors. We could not be happier to have assembled such a positive and constructive team. We praise God for introducing them to us, and for their willingness to work together for missions.
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Spiritual Advisor
George Spencer is our spiritual advisor. He has spent countless hours with us, helping us keep our focus on the vision, our minds right, and our spirit dependent on God, who supplies abundantly more than we could ask or imagine. George was one of the pastors participating in our original ordination or commission* to go in April 2021. George has a huge heart and, with it, he loves God’s children with wisdom and tenderness. He is a pastor, counselor, encourager, and friend. We are grateful for George and his help.
* “Missionary” means “sent for a purpose.” “Ordain” means “to invest with ministerial or priestly functions; confer holy orders upon.”
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Our Scriptural Calling
The following Scripture verses tell a story if you read them through. Perhaps this brief list will help explain why we do what we do.
Psalm 147:3 (NIV)
3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
John 13:34 (NIV)
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Luke 10:36-37 (NIV)
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Luke 10:9 (NIV)
9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’
James 1:27 (NIV)
27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Isaiah 58:10 (NIV)
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
Mark 10:29-30 (NIV)
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.
John 14:18 (NIV)
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Isaiah 6:8 (NIV)
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV)
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Acts 1:8 (NIV)
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
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