Ministry, Mission Trips

Tonj Academy

 

Today the AID Sudan team went to a local school called Tonj Academy to assess the possibility to have a radio program that would assit the teachers.  AID Sudan is praying about partnering with In Deed and Truth Ministries to put a radio tower on our compound.  This would be a very effective way to reach the local and surrounding community with the gospel, health talks and education.

A local Sudanese school teacher called William Majok had the vision to help students get the education they desperately desire and started this ‘private’ school to help them.  Resources are limited and classes are overcrowded.

Primary Standard 2

A typical sight early in the morning is the children walking down the road with a plastic chair on their head.  If they don’t bring their own they don’t get to sit on a chair.

Some of the children don’t even have  a makeshift classroom but are happy to receive whatever education they can even if it means sitting outside with limited shade from a large tree.  Sabet and AID Sudan’s Andrew Brown share a bible story with the children.

Medical Clinic

Maloney Outreach!

For the past one year we have been taking our medical clinic on the road to a remote village 40 minutes drive away called Maloney.  Every Thursday we pack up our car with everything we need and split out medical staff in half, sometimes borrowing from our compound staff to translate and help out.  It is always a blessing to have a team that can lighten that load, so this week the AID Sudan team helped us out.  In one year we have gone from seeing 25 patients to over 100 every week.  Now the rains are setting in we ask for prayer as it really is a difficult place to reach when the footpath is muddy.  Last year we got stuck so badly we ended up moving the clinic closer to the road.

Drive from Maloney
Ministry, Mission Trips

AID Sudan Mission Trip

What a joy to have a team from AID Sudan come from Houston, TX specifically to encourage the women and find out how they might further help and bless the women of Sudan. A team of 6 women and 2 men spent a week with us going out to villages and schools in the surrounding areas.
Today they shared with some of the church women in the village of Timtok and really got to see how they live.

Ministry, Pastor Training

Simply the Story Finale!

We have just finish with the pastors and what a fabulous three month term we had. They went home Sunday with great joy as they were anxious to see their loved ones.  They will be home for three months to plant their gardens and then return to us in August for a second four month term.

It was an extraordinary last week for the pastors as we ministered alongside the Simply the Story (STS).  The team of four people from Kenya, Uganda and USA, held a five day workshop and taught us to do Inductive Bible Study orally.  We witnessed the Lord working in the hearts of the pastors as they learnt this new evangelism tool.  Simply the Story takes a story from the bible and retells it to an illiterate group.  It is then retold by someone listening and then the storyteller leads the group through the story a third time.  At this point everyone is now quite familiar with the story.  Then going back through the story with group discussion we look for hidden treasures or spiritual observations and learn how to apply them to our life.

We have never before witnessed our pastors involved in such lively discussions and interested in every part of the story, asking questions and eager for their turn to share.  They could easily talk and discuss for more than two hours about a ten verse story.  Some of the discussions just blessed my heart to see the depth of understanding they have reached, making observations and comments that everybody in the group was blessed to hear and sometimes tearing from laughter.

In the last two years we have spent discipling these pastors it was always clear to us we are desiring them to increase in knowledge of the Word for their own growth and spiritual maturity.  Some of the churches they pastor have as many as 500 people and as high as 99% are illiterate, so this has been a challenge.  We have now brought an effective tool that the pastors can use and is suitable for their congregations.   They have bible stories in their pockets that can be pulled out and used at any given moment.  It’s brilliant!

The Lord is so faithful as we prayed for the Lord to help us fill in the gap for those who are illiterate in a way they can receive the gospel and understand it. Last year I (Sabet) was introduced to the method used by STS in a Bible study in Orange county.  I was amazed at how simple it was and yet so powerful.  I had no way of knowing how soon the Lord would provide a way for it to be brought to Tonj.  Suzy met with missionary friends from World Gospel Mission who have been using this STS in Uganda and working with it in over 150 churches.  They offered to help us and send us guys to lead us through the training.  We had over 20 pastors and leaders from four main areas that are surrounding our village Tonj.  Two tribal groups were represented in the training.  The first outcome of this training is to see how blessed the pastors are to see the Word alive and to see how they were touched by the new discoveries they made through the storytelling.  Second, is that I am praying and sensing God is doing a great revival in the Dinka and Lou land for His glory.

Please join us in praying for this tool to be taken  adn used in all the areas that these pastors come from. We are having another chance to train these pastors the next term they are here to be trainers and leaders in their own respective areas.  It was an exciting time to see our Lord Jesus being glorified by his servants who came and spent 10 days with us.  Many thanks to World Gospel Mission’s Joy Phillips and Billy Coppedge for helping to arrange and fund the workshop.  Also our gratitude is to Bramuel, Richard, Emmy and Jon for training us and allowing us to learn from them.  We are so blessed!

Kuj Family, Medical Clinic

Happy Mother’s Day!

“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” Psalm 127:3

Sitting under the grass banda to escape the horrendous heat in rural Tonj, South Sudan, I realized Mother’s Day was here and I needed to appreciate my mum living now in Florida. More and more each year, I treasure my mum, who raised four children. And each year, while working in South Sudan, my appreciation and wonderment is also for mothers worldwide and especially those here in Sudan.

Our soon-to-be-independent nation holds one of the worst maternal mortality ratios in the world at 2,054 deaths per 100,000 live births. That means that 1 out of every 48 babies who are born alive loses their mother at birth. In the United States that statistic is 8 deaths/100,000, or 1 out of every 12,500. That the average woman in South Sudan experiences 7 pregnancies in her life makes this reality even more dire, statistically, 1 of every 7.5 women will die due to pregnancy or delivery complications. Take a moment to think of 8 women you know. If you lived in South Sudan, chances are one of them would die from hemorrhage, sepsis, or obstructed labor.

It’s a grim reality. So why tout these dismal maternal health statistics on Mother’s Day? Because even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, there is progress, offering hope for South Sudan’s future.

Warrap County has only 10% of births attended by a skilled attendant. Our clinic has a full-time African nurse midwife and a missionary midwife from USA even though we seriously lack available medical personnel. Most health facilities in South Sudan are run by community health workers who have only nine months of training and few clinical skills to handle complicated cases, we have an American volunteer doctor and Kenyan Clinical Officer. We are blessed more than others and have much to be thankful for. Every day our clinic saves the lives of these precious women. Our clinic also has JESUS! And HE brings the greatest hope of all.

If you are a Mum, our Mother’s Day gift to you this year is letting you know we commit to reduce the number of mothers who die during child birth, through using our trained staff and trusting in the Lord Jesus for hope. We will work and pray so other children will have a chance to treasure their mums a little more deeply each passing year. We promise to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to each mummy and celebrate her choice to come to our clinic and allow us to help her.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mum’s reading this.

News From The Field