Happy New Year!
As we celebrate the New Year, we thank God for YOU our partners and supporters. It’s because of you we are now going into our 22nd year of serving in Tonj, South Sudan!! We are so grateful for the way you supported us in prayer and partnered financially with the vision of In Deed and Truth Ministries. What a year 2020 turned out to be! Here’s a recap of how the Lord used US and brought beauty from ashes in 2020 and impacted an entire community for the Kingdom of God:
We treated over 28,000 children as outpatients, and over 7,400 pregnant mothers. We delivered 324 babies in a safe environment, vaccinated thousands of children and cared for 1,263 that were admitted on our ward.
We provided over 9 tons of medicine and 24-hour care, 7 days a week.
Every single patient was prayed for and heard the gospel, so many charms were removed, and many prayed to receive Christ as Savior.
Before discharging patients from the ward, we pray with them, over them, bless them and where possible, plug them into a church.
In 2020, four new Community Health Evangelism (CHE) Centers were established, increasing our CHE impact from 6 to 10 village communities.
20,070 physical health and spiritual lessons were taught at homes in the CHE villages by our CHE volunteers.
640 people have committed their lives to Christ and six new churches were planted in 2020.
Despite the COVID-19 lockdown and not being able to have church for several months, our pastors still met once a month to encourage each other.
They also ministered in the homes of their church communities. And prepared the new church land for CC Tonj to start meeting. With the new church plants and we now have 13 churches!
When church restarted in September, we had record numbers in attendance. A total of 37,366 people attended an IDAT church in 2020. Newcomers to the church total 2,523!
We are praising Jesus for the 3,258 people that received salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. We ended the new year visiting all the churches and baptizing new believers, making the total of baptisms 796 in 2020.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19
For several months we were affected by tribal conflicts which left homes and food stores burnt, displacing 7,000 people and creating a humanitarian crisis.
Some of our pastors were displaced from their villages and three CHE centers were also displaced.
As people fled their homes, they ended up in Tonj with nowhere to shelter and no food.
The Lord worked this for good and used our displaced pastors to bring the needs of the community to IDAT. Between the insecurity and flooding we were able to feed and sustain over 4,000 Internally Displaced People (IDP’s) and provide shelter to 500. We will continue to support the food and shelter needs throughout 2021.
So many responded to the message shared about Jesus being the bread of life, including a witchdoctor.
We ended the year on a high with the IDAT Soccer Tournament being the best we have done so far and such a positive impact on the youth.
During the course of the tournament approximately 53,000 were evangelized through the radio broadcast, over 70,000 attended the matches and heard the gospel message. There were 3,716 new commitments for Christ and 2,112 re-dedications.
Please pray for our 15 sponsor kids that lost two of their homes and possessions in a New Year’s Eve fire.
Together we made a difference!