South Sudan - a troubled nation

The Story:

Mary is one of the key women here. Not only is she leading her people to the life-giving Saviour, but she is also helping them in areas of life skills, business and trauma care.  While we were there we visited with Mary.  She had just returned from a trip to the capital of South Sudan, Juba, about 70 miles away.  We were sitting together for staff devotions and she was sharing prayer requests as she wept.  

She had just returned from 15 days of training in 'PTSD - trauma care'. As she was being trained, she would hear gun fire in the evenings around the place that they were staying. The next morning they would go out and there would be dead bodies, just cast to the side of the road.  This was almost a daily occurrence and it was traumatizing!  As she continued to share, it only got worse.  On her trip back home to Yei River County, where we were currently sitting together hearing her story, she continued to tell us that the vehicles both in front of them and behind them were being riddled with bullets by bandits - people running into the bush.  They did not have too many valuables, but those they had they were trying to hide. With all the shooting and screaming surrounding them, they cried out to God.  God answered their prayers and they made it home without anyone injured or shot.  But this poor woman is just one of many who received such training - and then continued to be traumatized by the unrest in her country.  Her closing words where these: "It is only God who can heal this nation and bring peace to our hearts and our leaders. Let us pray and beg God for this."  My plea to you is that we pray this prayer with Mary, as we continue to empower the church in South Sudan.

Thank you so very much for your prayers and support for the recently ended missions trip to South Sudan.  A team of three of us embarked on a journey to encourage, empower and bless the church of South Sudan. Through your partnership, here are some highlights and activities.

Highlights:

One of the highlights was empowering local Christian business initiatives.  One of those was a clean water project. It has been useful not only as an income generating project, but also as a way to share the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with the community.  This project has been able to provide clean water and the Gospel message to over 300 people. Now, with the new skills and tools provided, they will be able to turn that figure into 1000's.

God is truly doing some great things, as we witnessed first hand. But the security situation continues to grow more fluid. Even now, affecting the areas in which we have been working, inflation is more than 400% since November 2014 and people can hardly afford basics!

Various Activities

Some of the other activity on this trip included: leadership training from church to community and supporting economic and social grassroots initiatives through seed funding.  This remains the key requests from our partners. 

We want to specifically thank those of you who contributed towards this June trip and look forward to your ongoing investment as partners.  To listen to a personal thank you from Gordon, Sharon and Eric: (click here) 

One of the things we are focusing on is investment into the new generation, the youth, both young men and women. To get an understanding of that challenge; (click here)

As we are in transition we remain active in our ministries to the South Sudanese and local refugees.  We are oriented towards Avant, which we are looking to as our new umbrella for ministry at the end of July.  We appreciate your prayers as we expect God to do big things.

We appreciate so much your prayers and support of what God is doing in and through us in the lives of refugees!  For a more detailed trip report  

Impact South Sudan Leader - Eric's Visit with Gordon and Sharon