Pastor Sponsorship and Training!

This month we want to highlight a critical area of need in our ministry. In the past 10 years we have gone from one church plant in Tonj to seven additional church plants. These have mostly happened naturally as a result of our thriving CHE program and are planted in CHE villages.

In 2019 we ended the year with three additional churches. It is so exciting to see these villages desire a church and hunger after God’s Word.  The men chosen to pastor these churches were not part of our original sponsorship program and are currently in need of support.

We’d like to introduce them to you this month. What a privilege and joy to interview Ps. Augustino from the village of Ariamduar. He attended our church in Maloney for three years before asking Ps. Santino if he can start a church in his village. His village, like most villages in South Sudan, is deeply involved in witchcraft and most people have their family superstitions and false gods that they worship and fear. The opposition he faced to start a church was great and he had curses placed on him and threats made against his life. Relatives even beat him when he refused to attend rituals and sacrificial offerings to the false gods. He started in April 2019 with just his wife and children. Then a few friends and neighbors joined in. By the end of 2019 he had about 120 people attending every Sunday. Last summer we baptized over 50 people from Ariamduar.

As well as senior pastor he also serves with our CHE program in Ariamduar, which we chose as a new CHE village after we heard his amazing testimony. Ariamduar is about 5 miles from Maloney (30 miles from Tonj) and takes about 1 ½ hours by car to reach. Ps. Augustino is married with 4 children and
attends a monthly training workshop and prayer meeting at the IDAT compound. It takes him 3-4 hours to cycle to Tonj and we were thrilled to gift him with a new bicycle.

Ps. Augustino used to attend the CC Maloney church with his relative and friend James (one of the ones who didn’t beat him). James is single and from a village called Palek, 5 miles from Ariamduar. He saw the believers in Maloney had a true faith and changed lives and wanted that for his village also. After the Ariamduar church started last April and seeing how well it grew he started praying about panting a church in his village. In September 2019, Ps. James planted CC Palek with the help of Ps. Santino and Augustino. He is not married, and his family were opposed but he persevered and now has about 60 people every week attending.

Pastoral Training!

In 2012, you may remember, we graduated 13 pastors from a 3 ½ year pastoral training. Four of those pastors are still serving with IDAT, one is serving with another ministry and the others are back in their villages, all over Tonj state, pastoring their own churches.

While we can’t commit to such an intensive teaching at the moment, we do recognize the need for our pastors to receive regular tuition through workshops. We really want help with this need. So many of you came out for one or two weeks when we were training our pastors in 2012 and we’d like to invite you to prayerfully consider this again, if you have a gift of teaching and bible knowledge. You do not need to be a pastor to get involved.

Maybe you are a church that could send a team that could serve in this area while others serve on outreaches and in the clinic. Please prayerfully consider how God might be able to use you to help equip and expand this program. If you can’t come maybe you could donate a special gift to help fund the workshops or take on a long-term commitment to sponsor and/or pray for a pastor. All these are critically needed.

Email us at info@indeedandtruth.org for more information on any of these areas.

Hopeful New Year!

 2019 was a difficult year for our ministry and the IDAT/KUJ family. There are no words to describe the anguish we feel as a body and the suffering Suzy and the kids have personally gone through. The response to love them and Sabet through this and stand with them and the ministry they have poured their lives into has really touched all our hearts and we thank you for your continued prayers for them and this amazing ministry.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:1-5

Review and Vision!

Our ministry is serving in four areas to the community and all are integrated and complement each other. As a team we have prayed and fasted for 2020 and the future direction of IDAT. Here’s a glimpse of 2019 and what we are praying for in 2020.

CC Tonj

The church and Sunday school have grown and we are currently seeing 500 regular attendees each week. Our greatest need is for a project manager to build us a permanent church building. Materials are on site.
Senior Pastor Mabior oversees CC Tonj and 7 church plants in the villages of Maloney, Ariam Duar (new), Palek (new), Bobi, Lul (new), Warrak, and Kunyuk. He has a team of 13 pastors serving alongside him.

Training of our new pastors is critically needed. Join us in praying for teachers to help lead pastors’ workshops.

IDAT Medical Clinic

The quality of the care we are able to provide has significantly improved since receiving back three more Clinical Officers from medical school in Kenya. Also, the installation of our new solar power system means we can run life-saving equipment not available elsewhere.

This year we hope to build an x-ray facility and provide this as a service to all the community not just mothers and children. We are excited to have Zac and Rebecca Soper rejoin our team for a 2-year term. As a nurse, Rebecca will supervise the ward and training of new Community Health Workers.

Community Health Evangelism (CHE)

In 2019 we launched CHE in 4 new villages and this year we hope to expand that to at least 3 more. All of these villages have church plants. It is exciting to see the Word of God going into these remote places as our CHE’s evangelize door to door and come alongside the people in helping them solve their issues, pointing them to sustainable solutions and the cross of Jesus Christ.

We are excited to have Zac Soper join our team and help Jono and Ps. Mabior oversee this life changing ministry.

Sports Ministry

A fairly new but very successful area of ministry for us has been to run the annual soccer tournament. 2019 was a massive success and our pastors were able to share the gospel with over 10,000 spectators and through local radio.

Our Solar Team Are Here!

This last few months have been so stressful with the power going off constantly while babies depend on it for oxygen. Having to prioritize babies because of limited power and the huge monthly bills for running the generator. It was a welcome relief to finally have the solar team arrive and install the system we raised funds for at the beginning of the year.

The week before they arrived the generator also stopped working. Now everything has been fixed including the generator, power on our compound and power in the missionaries’ homes. NO MORE SHOCKS….YEAH!! And they serviced our vehicles.  We now have power 24/7 without outages and no generator needed. A massive thank you to this amazing team!

The impact this solar is having on our clinic children is priceless. Every life is precious to our Lord and therefore precious to us. To be able to provide lifesaving equipment to our patients is so rewarding. Words cannot describe the relief we all have to not worry about the power failing when a child is on oxygen.

IDAT thanks every person that made a donation to this very needed project.

IDAT 2019 Soccer Tournament!

It was a great privilege to host the annual IDAT soccer tournament. After 4 weeks of games we had the final match with the Governor in attendance and an estimated 10,000 spectators!

Hon. Governor Matthew Mattiang Magoodit and Suzy presented the winning team, Lienh-Tong, with the IDAT trophy.  The IDAT and CC Tonj pastors did a great job mingling and sharing the gospel with the crowd. We had an average of 50 new people at church each week.

1 Samuel 12:24 “But be sure to fear the LORD and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.”

Volunteers!

A big thank you to Molly Dittmann who came for 6 months to help homeschool the Macleod children.

Thank you Paul Trotta for helping in the clinic and solar installation.

Thank you Danielle Gottfried for helping with the babies in the ward.

Mama Suzy!

After 20 years in South Sudan the first member of Suzy’s family came to visit her in Tonj, her Mama!! It was so special and definitely something to be celebrated. The Governor of Tonj, Honorable Matthew Mathiang Magordit personally came to the airstrip to welcome her!!

He also took her on a tour of the IDAT Medical Clinic.

On her first day we drove to Bobi, one of our remote CHE villages, and did a medical outreach and Mama Suzy helped with the pharmacy!

Mama Suzy said, “I have never visited anywhere in the world and been made to feel so welcome by everyone, not just my family but everyone , even in the villages. I wasn’t expecting that and I can’t wait to come back!”

New CHE Outreach!

It was so exciting to take our visitors, Scott and Kris Davies from Ridgeview Church in Texas, to our new CHE village of Ariam Duar, about 1 ½ hours drive from Tonj.

Scott helped the pastoral team with sharing the gospel, while Kris assisted Mama Suzy with pharmacy. This was our first medical outreach there and we saw 623 patients, which was a record for us!

The highlight was having so many receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Now with a church plant in Ariamduar we have a place to plug in new believers. Please pray for Ps. James Akec and email us if you can sponsor him for $50 a month as he is new to our pastoral team and disciples the new believers.

IDAT 2019 Soccer Tournament!

This has been an amazing month of outreaches and so exciting to see so much fruit coming forth.

October saw the kick-off to the annual IDAT soccer tournament, which draws huge crowds to every game as 10 teams compete for the IDAT cup.

Twice a week the IDAT team share spiritual lessons on the radio and at every match CC Tonj sends pastors among the crowd to share the gospel. The first two Sundays following the tournament we had 91 and 57 new people in church as a result of that sharing.

Isaiah 26:4 says, “Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock.

Awesome CHE Report!

This year we set out with the specific objective to expand CHE into three new villages, called Malony, Ariamduar & Kunyuk. This is quite a process of meeting local government officials, chiefs and elders in each village, hosting awareness seminars to explain the CHE program and to demonstrate examples of CHE and it’s benefits to each community. After this, each village selects a CHE committee who are trained by IDAT trainers. We have already managed to complete all our objectives for CHE this year ahead of schedule! With the financial assistance from our partner African Mission Healthcare, we have expanded and mobilized our CHE team, equipping them with bicycles and a motorbike.

Malony and Ariamduar are very remote, and the new Community Health Evangelists have already started going home to home teaching preventative health and spiritual lessons to their neighbors. Through the evangelism side of the program they have already planted one new church in their region. Kunyuk is closer to town, but still has a large population living in extreme poverty. We suggested the community selected 20 volunteers to be Community Health Evangelists, but there was so much enthusiasm in the community that they ended up with 60 volunteers! They have also started teaching lessons to their neighbors.

Our target for these new villages was to vaccinate 400 mothers and children during our weekly outreaches and we have already exceeded this number with 637 vaccinations!

Baptisms!

The IDAT Team got to minister to the church plants in the two new CHE villages of Maloney and Ariamduar by baptizing some of their members. Over sixty people came to show their support and listen to the world of God being shared by our pastoral team. Some of the elders of the churches shared their testimonies to everyone there and explained their stories of coming to Christ and the declaration of Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Thirty people from the two villages were baptized that day after which they all celebrated with song and dance giving thanks to the Lord.

Matthew 18:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

New Airstrip!

The Honorable Governor of Tonj, Matthew Mathiang Magordit, invited members of IDAT to join him for the opening of the construction of the new airstrip in Tonj. The town has grown around the current airstrip and children cross it to get to school as well as cattle, and general traffic, making it unsafe. The new airstrip is closer to our compound and will be longer allowing larger aircraft to land if necessary. We got to attend the ceremony and speak about the benefits of having an airstrip for bringing in medicine, teams and evacuations when necessary.

The Governor was excited to learn Hannah wants to be a missionary pilot and offered us free land next to the new airstrip in case we want to build a hangar and keep our own airplane!! All thing are possible with God!!

**Please continue to pray for our medical team and supernatural healings. Pray for the solar power installation team arriving in November and the vision team from Ridgeview Church in Rockwall, TX.