Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins are revealing a surprise detour their lives took in 2025. The couple, along with their four children, moved to Uganda for six weeks, in response to a vision Rhett believes he received from the Lord.
“It’s a strange story,” Rhett concedes on the That Sounds Fun podcast, recalling what happened when he was in church.
“We were in a time of prayer and repentance, and [the pastor] gave a list of guided questions to ask the Lord,” Rhett remembers. “I’m sitting there, my eyes are closed, about to take Communion. I don’t think I’ve ever had a vision in my life. I actually don’t know what it would look like to have one, to be honest with you. …I was closing my eyes, and I saw our family in Uganda. It wasn’t really in a house. I just knew that the six of us were in Uganda.”
The family has close ties to Uganda, since Rhett’s oldest daughter, Wlla Gray, was born in Uganda, and adopted by Rhett and Akins in 2017.
“I just saw the six of us standing on this road,” Rhett shares. “And I know the road. It was a road that we were on the first time we took our kids to Uganda.”
How Thomas Rhett Told Lauren Akins About His Vision of Moving to Uganda
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Rhett admits he wrestled with telling Akins the vision, knowing she would press him to keep praying about going to Uganda. But he ultimately told her, and they began praying about moving.
“It would turn into a stressful argument for him and I, because I was like, ‘If the Lord’s callng us to do it…” Akins remembers. “He’s like, ‘But what if I didn’t see it the right way?'”
Akins recalls a “lot of fear” around the potential relocation to halfway around the world, especially with Rhett’s busy touring schedule. When Akins went to Uganda with the Love One International, as part of her role on the agency’s board, she met a little girl, much like Willa Gray, and thought they might adopt her. To adopt in Uganda requires the family to be in the country for about a year, a challenge for the family, but one they were willing to do.
“We were doing it. This was happening,” Rhett remembers. “Everybody had been talked to … We committed to doing this.”
A few months after they set their sights on moving to Uganda, Akins recalls their plans starting to “fall apart” a bit.
“Nothing crazy happened,” Akins says, admitting that she didn’t feel the same confidence about adopting this little girl that she did about Willa Gray. It wasn’t until another couple expressed interest in adopting the same child that Akins realized adoption wasn’t the right choice for them.
What Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins Say About Expecting Their 5th Child
Akins became pregnant with their fifth child, but the desire to move to Uganda didn’t change, so the family spent several weeks in 2025 living in the African country. Rhett and Akins opted not to find out the gender of their fifth child, although both now say they believe it is a boy.
“Consistently, across the board, everybody I know, and even strangers, are like, ‘It is a boy,'” Akins says.
“I need to go back and count. I think it’s 14 people have had dreams that I’m having a boy,” Akins says. “A couple of them were children. Willa Gray was one of the first. And the other one was one of our really good friends’ little girl. She came out of her room, and she was like, ‘Daddy, I think Miss Lauren’s gonna have a baby. And she’s gonna have a boy.’ He was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ She was like, ‘I had a dream. Lauren’s having a baby, and it’s going to be a boy.’ And then one of my brother-in-law’s really good friends, his mother, who I never met before, had a dream.”