CHE Update!

This month our passionate and committed CHE team have traveled distances of up to 80km by bicycle and motorbike, passing through knee deep swamps, lion infested forests, and through 3m tall grass filled with sharp seed ‘spears’ that penetrate the skin; they have been drenched to the bone in thunderstorms, been bitten by countless mosquitos, and have fallen off their bicycles many times on the muddy paths. But these guys have not stopped smiling and praising God as they further his kingdom here in Tonj!

This month the CHE team have continued teaching their spiritual and health lessons out the villages, and have also helped run medical outreach clinics which are held under trees or in bush churches. Two days ago members of the CHE team saw 232 patients with Dr. Jono in the village of Bobi, and the community were so excited they didn’t stop dancing for the whole seven hours the team were there! During lunch CHE members from Bobi explained how they have been sharing the CHE teaching with a neighboring village, and as a result 39 people from that village accepted Christ and want to be baptized. They are planning on starting a new church to help care for these new Christians. Please continue to cover the CHE team, villages and program in prayer. Pray for transformation of entire communities.

Investing in Lives!

All of our Community Health Workers (CHWs) are young men and women who have finished high school and need work. They come to us without any medical experience and we train them from scratch. We’ve sent several of our CHWs for medical training in Kenya and also in South Sudan. Gabriel competed three years of Clinical medicine, is our first graduate and is now working full-time in our clinic as a Clinical Officer.

With the high number of patients during the week it has been hard to get quality time to train ‘on the job’ so our volunteer, Amy Neilsson, agreed to help us with this need. We asked our CHWs to attend a training workshop covering the key topics and skills that are relevant and crucial to their work in the clinic. It acted as a refresher course as well as introducing some new knowledge. The response was so encouraging and they willingly gave up their day off on Saturday to participate. It was great seeing everyone so interested and keen to learn and asking lots of questions. Not just educational but also heaps of fun, with a few games and ending on a feast of goat!! Since then they have been asking if we can make it a monthly event!

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” – 2 Peter 1:3

Farming God’s Way!

In our CHE program in the past we have taught ‘Farming God’s Way’ (FGW). This month Sabet was privileged to attend a workshop in Kenya and took a young man from Tonj, called Mattiang, with him to learn.

FGW is about understanding biblical views that change our world view, so when we do farming we are doing more than growing food, we are conserving God’s nature, we are being good stewards and effective with limited resources, we are practicing generous giving, we are able to come out of poverty, we are Farming God’s Way! We learnt there is honor and dignity in farming. Pray for Sabet and Mattiang as they bring what they learnt to others and begin training those in the CHE villages. It will not be easy as change never is and we will be breaking old cultural farming habits and lies that have produced poor yields and replacing them with new and proven methods, producing an abundance and filled with truth and God’s favor! Our prayer is through this amazing program we can help people to help themselves and alleviate poverty one village at a time!!

CHE Update!

Over the past month the CHE program has continued to progress well in the villages of Guaria, Warrack and Bobi. Health lessons on antenatal care, care of a newborn baby, & intestinal worms, and bible stories from the book of Genesis have been taught by our training team to the 12-15 CHEs (Community Health Evangelists) in each village.

These CHEs have been visiting 5-10 neighboring homes per fortnight to pass on the health and spiritual lessons.

Homes or ‘compounds’ in South Sudanese villages typically have between 5-15 people, so the CHE teaching is now reaching over 500 people in each village! During the dry season when the harvesting has finished they will be visiting even more homes. These CHEs are all volunteers who are passionate about improving the health of their community, and spreading the gospel.

“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” 
– Proverbs 21:5

Making A Difference!

Newlyweds Amy and Travis, from New Zealand, are volunteering on short-term missions for five months. Travis, a contractor, has been working tirelessly to help us finish the medical clinic in time for the Grand Opening on October 28th. This week our family got to jump in and help out. We normally spend a day doing an outreach to a specific community but due to heavy rains, this has been increasingly difficult to get into villages. So we agreed to shift our focus to helping finish the New Medical Clinic. For this week’s service project, we were blessed to have fellow missionary kids from Every Village join us for painting the new clinic’s office building!

While Travis has been working around the clock on the clinic, his wife has been overseeing the observation ward and managing the care of inpatients. With August being our busiest month due to malaria, she definitely had her work cut out with every bed full and 3 sets of twins! She diligently helped the mothers with nursing and supplement feeds to insure each baby was 2 kg before going home. She has led some community health worker training in basic nursing skills and monitored the care to each patient.

This has really freed the doctors and allowed us to see more patients. And she has organized our stock control, saving us hours of reporting and paperwork!

The New Ward!

Our new clinic is an out-patient facility but we are very aware of the growing need to accommodate more inpatients. We have the land to build a large ward next to the new clinic. Here’s where YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE and jump in to help. We have an opportunity for you to contribute a financial gift towards us building this much-needed ward and every gift will be generously matched by “Kiwis for South Sudan” up to $25,000!! That’s right, your donation doubled!!! We’ll have enough to finish the ward quickly and furnish it!! We’re also in need of a project manager to oversee the team building this ward. If you feel gifted in this area we are looking for a 3-month commitment, please email us.

Prayer Requests!

• Clinic to be ready for the opening on October 28th.
• CHE’s in the villages.
• Provision for new ward.
• Continued protection over our families and ministry.

CHE Committee!

Our three villages practicing Community Health Evangelism each selected a committee to oversee the CHE’s volunteering in their village. This past month we celebrated the completion of the committee training. God has really shown us favor in selecting the committee members. We are blessed to have such an amazing group of people dedicated to transforming the lives of those around them. They are not paid and serve completely as volunteers. In Guaria, the entire village of more than 500 people turned out to celebrate and honor their committee. This is really encouraging and gives us great hope for a successful CHE program.

The next step is to have each committee select Community Health Evangelists from within their village. Then training of the CHE’s will begin. Hopefully by the end of this year we will have three churches partnering in prayer for each one of these villages. Praying specifically for the Chief, committee, CHE’s, believers, non-believers, IDAT CHE team and the challenges within each community.

Ministry of Health!

God has been hearing our cry and has answered our prayers. Over the past few years we have experienced several challenges when dealing with health officials both from Tonj State and at the national level. This year Sabet and Dr. Jono attempted to reconcile some of those issues but were shut down. Our clinic is privately run and funded so our dependence on the government is minimal. However, we do have to report to them and we also depend on them to renew our yearly license and to give exemption to our medicine being brought in from Kenya. This year we did not get exemption even though our clinic was the only one supplying medicine when the government clinics ran out. Earlier this month though we received a visit from the National Minister, the Hon. Dr. Riek Gai Kok.

He was visiting all health facilities in our area and absolutely LOVED In Deed and Truth and the work we are doing. So MUCH with so LITTLE! He was very impressed and even made a special mention of us on national TV, repeatedly singling us out for praise and encouragement. God has truly done above and beyond what we could have asked or thought possible! Praise Him!!

“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” – Mark 16:15

Get Involved!

God is transforming lives in South Sudan. If you feel God is calling you to get involved, we have short-term mission trips throughout the coming year. Whether you represent a church or have a personal interest, we encourage you to visit our website or email us for more information.

As our ministry grows we are looking to expand our team with long term missionaries. Here are just a few of the areas we are needing help:

• Auto Mechanic
• Construction
• Youth and Children’s Ministry
• Medical Professionals
• ESL teacher
• Sports/Recreation Outreach
• Community Transformation
• Church Development

There’s no better place to be than in the center of His will!

CHE Testimony!

CHE is our Community Health Evangelism program currently running in three villages. Each village selects a committee to oversee the CHE program and the committee then selects suitable CHE’s from within each village to teach spiritual and physical lessons to the community. We have a group of trained trainers who teach these lessons to the committee and CHE’s. The idea is to keep the program as indigenous as possible in the villages. This allows it to be self-sustainable.

Pastor Joseph has been leading CHE training in the village of Guaria, just a few miles from Tonj. He is a pastor on staff with IDAT, graduated from our discipleship school in 2012, and overseeing the church Guaria. On a recent CHE committee training, Anguie sat to listen to the lesson. He was no stranger to Pastor Joseph, who had been sharing Christ with him for the last 3 years. Anguie saw the group of people sitting in a circle and out of curiosity sat down. Anguie, not a believer, has two wives and children who are believers, but he himself never felt a need for God. On listening to the discussion in the circle he found the topic really interesting to him. The CHE topics are holistic, teaching both physical and spiritual truths together. In this particular spiritual lesson they shared the story of the Chief who loved his people and gave his son as ransom to redeem convicted criminals. During the after discussions, Anguie asked if the story was real and where it happened.

That led to the gospel being shared but this time the Holy Spirit opened his eyes and he could clearly see how God had been trying to reach him with His love, not only for him but for His people in Guaria. At that moment he accepted the Lord as His Savior and committed to leave the worship of spirits and witchcraft and turn his life over to the living God who cares and loves His people.

On our last visit to Guaria we found Anguie already implementing CHE lessons promoting a healthy home. God is using CHE to transform lives and reconcile people to Him. We praise Jesus for Simon Anguie and his testimony which has spread throughout the village touching hearts as people hear what happened to him and how it’s changed his life.

“And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” – Philippians 2:13

Prayer Requests!

• Please pray for the Macleod family as they get resettled.
• Pray for the clinic as we face high numbers of malaria patients.
• Pray for our health and protection from malaria.

Grand Opening

It is so exciting, after so many years of praying and building, we are in the final stages of completing the new clinic, comprising of two departments, a pediatric clinic and an antenatal center. The name of our clinic is “Noah’s Place” because like the ark, we pray it will provide safety and hope for pregnant mothers and their children. Dedicated in memory of a special little boy, Noah Mower, whose short life touched so many and will never be forgotten, we pray Noah’s Place will bring life and hope to thousands of women and children in South Sudan.

Our dedication ceremony will be on Saturday 28 October, 2017. We would love to celebrate this occasion with you. We have a special charter flight from Nairobi to Tonj set up for the occasion with a limited number of seats. Please email Rosa Ewing at info@indeedandtruth.org for more details.

Bobi Village!

Bobi is one of our CHE villages about one hour drive from Tonj and in a very remote and rural area. It was the victim of recent tribal clashes between Dinka and Luo. Several homes were burnt leaving a handful of families without food and supplies. As part of our outreach program we have committed to helping these families get back on their feet.

With the rainy season setting in, rebuilding mud huts is quite tricky. We have begun rebuilding homes for three families in Bobi using ready made mud bricks transported from Tonj. We also had a carpenter in Tonj make doors and windows. These families didn’t own much but everything they had was lost. On our next visit we’ll distribute a load of donated clothing and shoes.

Please pray for Monica. Her husband was killed in the recent clashes leaving her a widow with three children.

Cholera Outbreak!

A suspected Cholera outbreak in Tonj East has been confirmed. Tonj East County is about 75 miles north east from where we are in Tonj town.

The Ministry of Health (MoH) asked us to help with this crisis. We sent our driver Deng Malok with the IDAT ambulance full of medical supplies which were very much needed and very quickly ran out.

We also transported 175 suspected cholera patients from remote villages and cattle camps to a designated hospital center in Marial Lou for further screening. Some of these patients died. In just two weeks more than 80 people have died with more than 250 cases are reported. Please pray the MoH can contain this outbreak before it spreads to other areas. Tonj is on high alert.

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” – Proverbs 18:10

Update on Sponsor Kids!

Last year we found sponsors for the 14 children we support that Mama Sabet was caring for before she died. This year we have managed to build four tukuls (mud huts) for these 14 kids and three adults who were sleeping in just three small rooms.

The kids, aged between 18 months and 15 years, will be grouped by gender and age. The younger kids will sleep in pairs with an adult and the older children will share three to a tukul. Our next project is to put in solar powered lights. At night it’s very dangerous not to be able to see scorpions or snakes. Also the older children can do their homework at home instead of staying after school to complete it. There is a borehole for water and once we have electricity we will work on getting a raised water tank and running water pipes into the home to save carrying water and using buckets.

Prayer Request

Please pray for the Macleod family as they return from New Zealand after the birth of their daughter Shiloh. Pray for Amy and Travis who are joining our team for a few months as volunteers. Pray for our health as we enter into the malaria season.