This is
one of those months where, instead of saying “What can I possibly write about?”
I’m saying “What can I leave off to make this thing short enough to read?!” Since this is a longer letter I’m putting in
a few headings in case you want to skip the parts you’re not interested in!
Church in Lalonga
A few weeks ago I went to Lalonga for Sunday morning
prayers. I had malaria and probably
shouldn’t have gotten up and driven, but I did.
When I got to the church they all told me that Paul wasn’t around. He had been summoned to town by the commissioner
or something like that and had been gone since yesterday. The ladies in the church all started looking
at me and asking me to lead the singing and preach something. I was able to tell them that I didn’t have
anything prepared, my language is bad, and I had malaria (I got up to vomit twice
during worship!) so they should just do what they would have done if I didn’t
come. I probably could have done
something, but I think that sometimes good discipleship means not taking charge
and just seeing what happens, so that’s what I did.
Teresa
got up after a while and started leading a song, and during that first song a
young boy came over to the tree. I have
never seen this boy before, but this was only my second time back at the
Lalonga church since I got here. I
thought he was just visiting, but then he got a chair and sat up front facing
the rest of the group. When Teresa was
done with the song she had started, this boy started leading other songs. He was obviously struggling and
uncomfortable, but after a few songs he got out a Bible. Paul has been reading through and preaching
on the book of Luke, so they had a short discussion trying to remember which
chapter and verse Paul had finished last week.
The boy then started reading (which was funny to me because he started
in the middle of a story!). When he
finished reading, he asked the group a few questions about what they had read,
and then was done. At that point, I
offered to share something with the group.
I talked about what God had been teaching me in my devotions lately (the
snakes and stones message of last month’s newsletter) and then we closed with
more singing and prayer.
Next
Story: Yesterday I went to Torit to get
some materials for the building work I’m doing.
I remembered that Paul said he was trying to find a ride to Torit, so I
stopped at his house and asked him if he would like to come with me. A ride on one of the “Public Transport”
vehicles costs 1000 South Sudanese Pounds, which is about 4 days’ wages right
now. I fully expected him to
excitedly come, but instead of taking the free ride he said:
“I can’t. We are meeting with the
members of the church on Wednesdays to train them how to do evangelism.” I masked my surprise and excitement and left
for Torit.
On my
way home from Torit I saw Paul walking down the road toward his house so I
picked him up. I was a little surprised
since the church is literally right next to Paul’s house. He told me that they had started meeting in
one of the other villages (Lalonga is made up of like 5 or 6 sub-villages)
because they had people from another village coming. He told me that Some men who used to be part
of another denomination before it just fell apart wanted to be a part of a
church, and were coming for this evangelism training so that they can try to
start a church in their village.
Basically Paul is teaching the people from his church, and two guys from
another village a set of stories that they need to know to share the gospel
with their neighbors, and then making them go out and do it and bring back a
report the next day, and this has spread to other nearby villages too!
These
might sound like a couple of random stories about local believers to some
people, but we are working in a tribe that has had missionaries for decades and
has had very little fruit in the area of church discipleship and
reproduction. When I first came to South
Sudan, there were Bible studies going on in five villages which all eventually
dried up because they found out that we weren’t going to give a bunch of aid and
handouts. In the midst of a frustrating
building project and being separated from my family, I am leaping with absolute
joy after seeing that the church we left behind before our extended furlough is
not only still existing and meeting, but that Paul is discipling young men in
his own village to take leadership when he is not around, teaching his members
how to share the gospel with their neighbors using stories, and including
people from other villages with a view to starting churches in those villages! Praise Jesus.
Building
Project/House Work
The
building project is going along about as expected. I say that with a bit of tongue-in-cheek
because “as expected” in South Sudan involves a few headaches! If you saw the pictures I included in the
prayer calendar email, they were all of various things that I’ve been trying to
deal with or solve! My extension cord
melted, the “builders” made part of our water tower with crooked pillars (to
hold 5 tons of water 6 meters in the air), part of the fuse panel on the pickup
melted yesterday because I drove through a puddle and the fuse overheated and
melted instead of blowing, one of our old water tanks (the one I wrote about
cracking a while back, which I’ve been patching over and over again) just
exploded when I filled it up with water, the cooling fan on our generator
melted and ran into the alternator basically spoiling the whole thing, and the
burned-up truck you see was an issue of road insecurity on one of my trips to town (I wasn’t ever in
danger, it’s a long story that involves a guy travelling at night with soldiers
in his truck which are both bad decisions!).
In the
midst of all of that, the kitchen has all kinds of shelves and creative storage
to make Amy’s days a little easier there, the building is up to “window level”
and we are going to put on the lintels tomorrow for the doors and windows, the
water tower is halfway up, the materials are all here (which is a big deal,
transportation out here is complicated!), and we’ve been doing some evangelism with
the guys working on the buildings.
There is
still a lot of work to do, but I am confident that it is going about as well as
it can go!
Our Family
For the
last five weeks or so Amy has been in Uganda with the kids while I am in
Lohutok getting this work finished on the house. There are so many things that needed to be
done just to relieve the daily stress of living in a storage facility/workshop
with two rowdy boys, and our house is literally set up like a work zone right
now with all of the projects, that it just wasn’t possible for us all to be
here together. We could have come back
as a family sooner, but it would have meant putting off all of this work until
“there is time” which never happens. We
decided to just get it all finished in one go and then be done with it.
Logistically
that seems like the best plan, but it is difficult. Ezekiel has not handled the transitions so
well, with the moving and then me being gone, and has had a few behavior
problems that are really stressful for Amy.
I have just been away from my wife and kids for a month, but I’m going
back in a week and a half to spend some time with them, get some daddy time
with Ezekiel to talk about his behavior, and then do a bit more shopping to
finish bathrooms and such. Please pray
for our family with all of these things going on.
Money
In the
midst of all of that, God has been faithful to us in providing for what we
need. Last month I wrote that we had
lost a few donors because of financial difficulties, which has led to a bit of
a shortfall in our building budget. I
wrote to a few of you individually to ask for help, and God has graciously
provided (in promises at least!) about half of what we were asking to make up. That’s all I’ll say about money here, please
write to me if you would like to know more or want to help make up some the
monthly commitments!
There is so much more I could write. It’s been quite an eventful month, but I’ve
already tripled my “one page only” rule for newsletters! Thank you all for praying, giving and writing
with your encouragement. Both of our
email addresses are below if you would like to write, We always love hearing
from people!
Philippians 1:3-4,
