Medicine Arrived!

What a tremendous blessing to be able to purchase medicine for an entire year, serving over 50,000 patients. A massive thank you to all our partners who give towards this critical need. It costs an average of $3.50 for every patient we treat. This medicine arrived just in time for our heavy malaria season, which runs from now until October.

We are particularly busy right now because government run facilities are striking and they have no medicine. Also, our reputation in the surrounding villages is growing and more and more women are coming for their antenatal care and delivery. This is very exciting; our maternity team have delivered 60 babies so far this month. Our ward has been bursting at the seams and we have added a few beds to accommodate the numbers. If you would like to partner with us in providing medical care to pregnant mothers and children under 5, please donate through our website and designate ‘Medical Clinic’. For less than $5 a patient you can provide life-saving treatment to impoverished families and help keep our clinic open 24 hours a day.

CHE!

Our Community Health Evangelism program is exploding. We are doubling our field activities to reach 6 villages in 2019. In the past we have mobilized teams to persuade villages that CHE is beneficial. But now, because of the testimony of how well our three current villages are doing, we have so many villages that want CHE. We have selected three villages that we feel are ready and this month we will begin the training of the committees that will oversee the program. This is usually elders of the village that are well respected.

Please pray for the new CHE villages of Maloney, Ariam Duar and Kunyuk. Ariam Duar is a recent church plant after Pastor Santino went there with the Jesus film. Because of the extreme poverty, and there is zero development, CHE will completely transform this village.

Jeremiah 32:38-40 says, “And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.”

Testimony!

We want to share with you a testimony of God’s miraculous healing power. Mapet is an 11 year old boy who came to our clinic about two months ago after developing swellings in his neck and abdomen. Our hearts sank when we found rock hard masses the size of grapefruit as we immediately suspected cancer. We organized for him to travel to Juba for biopsy and confirmation of diagnosis, and laid hands to pray for healing.

Unbeknownst to us, he never went to Juba because his Uncle faced a series of unfortunate events which depleted the funds we had provided. Six weeks later, Mapet came to tell us that he never made it to Juba, but that God had completely healed the masses growing in his neck and abdomen. When we examined him we could find no evidence that these swellings had ever been there – such an exciting miracle for our team to witness!

Easter!

It was hard for our family not to be in South Sudan for Easter. But what a joy to see our national pastors and church leaders step up and lead the church though this special time of celebrating Jesus’ Resurrection.

Good Friday they marched to Freedom Square in the center of town and Pastor Muordek, one of the sponsor pastors and an elder of CC Tonj, shared the Gospel with the community and had a great response with several people receiving Christ as Savior.

We’re praising the Lord for record numbers of 1,500 people coming out for the CC Tonj Easter Sunday Service held on the IDAT compound.

Baptism!

After the Easter service everyone walked down to the river and witnessed the baptism of 42 people! What a special day to get baptized and show the world we are a NEW creation in Christ Jesus only made possible by His death and the shedding of His blood on the cross for our sin. A testimony of our faith in the Resurrection and promise of Eternal Life.

Do you remember little Mattiang, the brave boy who had his leg amputated last year? We are so excited, he also decided to be baptized!

“In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.”
– Colossians 2:11-12

Going Home!

Sabet, Agum and Jed arrived back in Tonj safely. Suzy is still dealing with insurance issues and planning to travel on May 29^th with Molly Dittmann.

This month our clinic has hit record number of inpatients already and we are not even in the height of the rainy season. Our 21-bed ward was overflowing this week with 24 patients! Please pray for our team as we deal with so many critically ill patients.

Praise God, we are ecstatic to announce the solar power fundraiser  has been fully funded! This means more children will receive the critical care they need.

Pray for Molly as she joins our team and serves the Macleod family, helping to homeschool their children so they can focus more on the medical clinic.

You can click or copy the link to read her story and help her reach her goal.  https://www.indeedandtruth.org/campaign.php?id=5

Kuj’s Stateside!

One of the first things we had to learn as missionaries is to be flexible! And this past month has tested us in this area as a family and ministry. We’ve changed flights and plans to allow us to be stateside a little longer to aide in recovery and deal with insurance following our recent road collision.

What started out as a spirit-filled, ministry road trip to visit supporting churches and partners in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, unexpectedly took a different path when another driver turned in an intersection without yielding, smashing straight into us!

Even though it was so scary, especially for the children, we are thankful that we were not seriously injured, and neither were the passengers in the other car. It’s a miracle we all just walked away. We were taken to the hospital for precaution and Suzy, who absorbed most of the impact, was given a CAT scan, which showed no internal injury. In the hospital we both felt this was a spiritual battle and we should continue as planned, visiting partners and churches. Battered and bruised we rented a car and continued on the journey. The next day we received word our beloved pet dog of 9 years, Uchi, was sick in Tonj. Very quickly her condition deteriorated, and she died. We had already reached a point of desperation after the crash, the kind of desperation that says, STOP… PRAY!! And as we reached out through Instagram and Facebook, that’s exactly what many of you did. Stopped and prayed with us. The team effort to cover our family in corporate prayer throughout that week was so powerful and we are so thankful.

“I sought the Lord in my day of trouble.
My hands were continually lifted up
all night long.” Psalm 77:2

Sabet, Agum and Jed are now planning to travel back to Africa at the end of April. Suzy and Hannah will travel with a volunteer a few weeks after that.

Please pray as Suzy gets continued treatment and heals from her injuries and as we work through the insurance issues.

New Church Plant!

For the past 10 years we have been ministering in a village called Maloney, through medical clinic outreaches, which led to a church plant. We have chosen Maloney to be our 4^th CHE (Community Health Evangelism) village. A couple of weeks ago Pastor Santino and Dr. Jono went to Maloney to encourage the church and visit with Pastor Kharlo. When they got there, they found another church visiting from a village called Ariam Duar, around 10km from Maloney. A month back Pastor Santino went and showed the Jesus film in Ariam Duar, and the village were very excited to learn about Jesus. At the end Santino preached, and 50 people accepted Christ. Since then they have been meeting each Sunday for church under a tree and have two young men that they have selected as church leaders for pastoral training.

Ps. Santino with the New Church

The people there are in extreme poverty, and there is zero development – the closest borehole is 10 km away in Maloney, so the people are drinking dirty water from a shallow well. When Santino and Jono visited there were around 80 people all worshipping God as they arrived, and it was such a beautiful sight! Next time Pastor Santino visits he will take them some solar audio bibles, so they can start bible study listening groups to learn more about Jesus.

Prayer Requests!

*Pray for our quick healing so we can get back to South Sudan.
*Pray for Molly Dittman. She will travel with Suzy and serve for 6 months as a homeschool teacher to the Macleod children.
*Pray for our pastors, we still have a few needing sponsorships.
*Pray for the new church plant in Ariam Duar.

Babies in Need!

One of the highlights of what we do is witnessing Jesus’ healing power in the clinic. Seeing babies come in convulsing and then going home healed is amazing. Last year we saw 52,561 patients and 26,488 were children under the age of five. Many of these children needed oxygen and were admitted to our ward.

This is Majak Deng. He is currently in our clinic on oxygen and was admitted 2 weeks ago. Since adding our new clinic and ward last year to our existing solar power grid, we have not been able to sustain the needs of children like Majak who need oxygen 24 hours a day. Especially during the months of July and August when we minister to double the patients we normally see. Last year we had to adapt the tubing so we could have four children on one oxygen concentrator at the same time and we constantly had to boost power using the generator. At $5 a gallon for diesel, this is not a sustainable solution.

Can you imagine having to make the difficult choice between babies and who gets oxygen and who doesn’t? All because we don’t generate enough power. This happened so many times last year and it was heartbreaking to tell mothers another child needs oxygen more than your child.

Blessings!

Thanks to a generous partner we were able to purchase a modified incubator that can operate on very little power. This is very exciting for our preemie babies.  It arrived just in time with Mission Aviation Fellowship! A few days later we admitted a tiny baby called Sabet born at 29 weeks and weighing only 1300g. Our volunteer nurse Katherine spent the night assembling the incubator and it has been a great help keeping the baby warm. We know this incubator will be a massive blessing to so many babies and their families. Once our power is sustained, we can add a second incubator.

Update on Solar Fundraiser!

We have a vision to see our clinic fully powered this year. Please pray with us for this need. God’s resources are abundant and we are attempting to build something that honors Him. To help us fully fund our Solar Power go to our website.

Invitation!

We are inviting you to walk this road with us. One of the hardest parts about being a missionary is raising support but it’s out of obedience that we do it. These past few months we have been in USA support raising and working hard, trusting God as we make the ministry needs known. Thank you to so many that have embraced us and partnered with us.

If you are new to our ministry or have been following us for a while, we want you to be PART of our team and what God is doing in South Sudan. We want to invite you to participate in a Kingdom building ministry that is wrapped in the vision of honoring God and fulfilling the Great Commission. This is an investment in the Kingdom that brings a great return. When you partner with us in prayer and giving you are as valuable as any missionary that gets to go and do the physical work.

We are now back in Florida for the remainder of March and would love to connect with you if you are in the Panhandle area. Your prayers make a difference. Thank you for standing with us in this calling.

Home Assignment!

First we want to thank you for praying for Suzy’s family that was effected by Hurricane Michael in Florida. We left Africa and went straight to Florida to help with hurricane clean-up before traveling to California in January to attend the Calvary Chapel Missions Conference. What a joy for our family to be stateside!!  Despite the devastation from the hurricane, we are having a blast, reconnecting with family, friends and churches.

Thank you for making us feel so loved and welcomed. Thank you for letting us share our experiences and testimonies from our past two years in South Sudan. We’re in CA until Mar. 5th and Florida until April 2nd, so there’s still time to connect if you want to get together and hear all the amazing stories of God’s faithfulness. Email us!

Testimony!

Our team shared this amazing story from the field that we wanted to share with you all.  This is Kanna who is from our church, CC Tonj. This year someone cursed her with witchcraft declaring she would die. Recently, an evil spirit came on her trying to kill her. When she came to our clinic it was obvious it was a spiritual attack, so we laid hands on her and prayed for her, claiming the blood of Jesus over her, and that the evil spirit would flee! Hallelujah! Today, she’s completely free and praising God for his deliverance.

So awesome to be able to claim the authority that Jesus gives us in Luke 10:19, which says:

 “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”

Pastor Sponsorship!

One of the areas we need prayer and support is with our pastor’s sponsorship. Our pastoral team of 14 pastors oversee the church plants, serve as assistant pastors to Sabet, work as chaplains in the clinic and medical outreaches, serve in CHE, teach Simply the Story and show the Jesus film in the villages. Six are receiving some salary and eight are volunteers. If you would like to help us provide a salary to each of these pastors, please go to our pastor sponsorship page at: https://pastors.indeedandtruth.org/

We want to raise $200 a month per pastor. Each pastor has 8 sponsorship spots at $25 a spot. That means you can share the pastor sponsorship with others or sponsor one entire pastor by taking 8 spots or sponsor several different pastors one spot each!! This is designed to make the sponsorship affordable for every budget.

Solar Power Fundraiser!

Here’s an update on the solar power fundraiser. We have a $60,000 match, which means every dollar you give will be worth $2!! You can go to our website to follow the progress and/or give through a designation online or memo your check “Solar fundraiser”.