Tonj is about 63 Miles away from Wau, which is the biggest city around here. One of the issues the city is effected by is Street Children. Children from 3 or 4 other states goes to Wau and lives in the street, involved in all kind of problems that you could imagine, from stealing to getting abused by people, to some time even getting killed in the street. The city is really effected by it. So some people from Wau decided to round up all the street children and sent them to the state where they come from originally and ethnically. So we have received here in Tonj about may be 30 kids, mostly from the area of Tonj and some from other state and counties. the county here also rounded the small number of the street kids in Tonj town and put them with the same group came from Wau totaling the number to 54 kids.
I was looking for one of the kids I know, so I went to see him in the place where I heard they are keeping the kids, to my surprise I see all these kids in the building that are suppose to be the county offices, still under construction, so they have 1 big hall, they have just a 1 big piece of tarp and nothing else to sleep in. There were some police men guarding the kids, and to keep them off problems. The commissioner of the town is working hard to feed them, but we all see its very hard on him with the limited resources he has.
I started going through the kids, looking for this one kid I know, I started to notice many of the street children are with wounds, rashes and scabies around their hands, and different parts of their bodies, most of them wore torn filthy clothes that filled with lies.
Since We have a clinic, I asked our clinic staff if we could help these kids, and that what they have done. Our clinic staff including Dr. Tom went to the place and saw all the kids and started treatments to many health issues these kids have got. the following day they took the kids to the river made them wash their bodies and then applies this lotion to heal the scabies.
Stephanie Staubs ayoung lady missionary with us here for 3 month, gave money and bought all the kids treated Mosquito nets. We had Donated T shirts from American, donated Harvest Crusade t-shirts as well, that we were very thankful to still have some of them, we gave these kids these T-shirts, and it was a huge Joy for us to see the smiles on these little one faces.
Few days ago I had a meeting with the Director for child protection State level , He came all the way from Kuajok to see these kids, I was impressed by the level of care they have shown during the meeting towards these kids, they have shown seriousness about the kids being reunited with their families and reintegrated them back to the society, a representative of a UNICEF was present as well. Big Job awaits them.
In the meeting they have invited us to help the kids in anyway we can, since they know we are faith based mission organization, they invited us to minister to the kids, sharing the Bible with the children and teach them about God. We happily accepted the invitation, actually we have already felt free to show Jesus film and share the gospel message with them before they gave us the permission to do so. Pastor Kibe and Pastor Santino went one night and showed the Jesus film to the kids, for many of them it was the first time to see a movie about Jesus. Kibe is planning to show more Movies that will teach God’s love and good value to the kids, Walking with Jesus and God story to mention few.
These Children are as young as 7 years old to 13 years old, all boys, In fact, the few weeks we have been working with them now, we have seen behaviors makes us so concern about the little one that are among them, and we pray the reunion would happen as fast as possible to save these little one from the older one influence.
Stephanie and Kibe are going to have continuous ministry with these kids, where they will play kids games and sport event once a month.
We are starting a fundraiser from here in conjunction with some people back at home church in California for the purpose of feeding these kids. It will cost about $100 to feed a child for a month,we are hoping to raise funding for 54 children for up to 3 month, hoping by then they have all be reunited with their families and found homes to live. if you want to donate please go to the website. https://www.indeedandtruth.org/donate.php
Please pray for wisdom, as there are reasons for these kids to leave home, some kids are not happy with the thier families and are not willing to go back to their home. some stories are just sad stories led the kids in the street, we are planning to share some of the stories in the coming weeks, so we really urge you to pray for wisdom as we work with these kids and share the gospel message with them day to day.
Jeamette Lock is moving on as stateside coordinator for In Deed and Truth Ministries. She will continue to be a vital part of our team of prayer warriors and of course a dear friend to our family. No one knows the ministry and how best to pray for us all better than Jeamette. She began her ministry to our family in 2000, before we were even married. Since then we have grown into a family of five and a ministry that employs over 40 national staff. In addition to these wonderful staff we have Dr. Tom, our missionary doctor from Florida and Whitney Smith, a missionary under World Gospel Mission, overseeing the Community Health Evangelism program and numerous volunteers that visit and help out throughout the year.