Our visitors from Mississippi went to Lalonga one day and showed the Jesus film. Most of the people who came were from the church but there were a few new folks there as well.
We’ve had a busy month! Many of you who get our emails saw the updates about the pickup. I was leaving the house one day to go to Torit, and the alternator in our truck was bad, so we tried to pull-start it and somehow ended up with a seized engine! After a trip to Uganda to get the mechanic and three days breaking in my new shiny workshop, the truck was fixed and we were able to make our scheduled trip to Uganda. If you didn’t get the details and want them, write me an email and I’ll send them to you.
Last month I wrote about a visitor we had who helped get a motorbike and grinding mill for Paul and the church in Lalonga. A week after those visitors left I flew to Juba to meet and escort another team from a church in Mississippi who wanted to come and see what we were doing, help us with some work on our house, and encourage our family. It was a great week with the team and we even went and showed the Jesus film to the church in Lalonga.
The week after the team left, I was in the office with Paul working through the last weeks of his first term of Bible School. I have been going through a Theological Education by Extension course with him, and he just finished the books “Following Jesus” and “New Testament Survey 1.” At the end of Following Jesus there are a few lessons about evangelism, ways to do it, who should be doing it, and where it can be done. This went well with the final lessons in New Testament 1 which were about the book of Acts.
Paul started expressing to me his wish to be doing more outreach, evangelism and discipleship than he is already doing. He is already as busy as he can be with his family obligations and the work he’s doing through the church, but he sees more needs and feels bad for not meeting them. I encouraged him that we should be praying that the Lord of the harvest would raise up more workers, and then I told him a story. In my story, I came to South Sudan at a time when there was a lot of activity going on to try and start churches. Over the first couple of years most of that work just fell apart. I came back last year and did mostly building, but there was this one guy (it’s Paul) who was growing and even starting churches, and asked me to teach him Bible and Theology. I spend every week preparing lessons that are meant for a group, but I’m preparing them for that one guy. Sometimes we meet and I’m not completely prepared or he hasn’t finished his homework, but we just keep doing it anyways. The last few weeks my thoughts have been filled with “What are you doing here?” and “You’re wasting your time and not accomplishing anything” but we’re continuing on because God is working through this one guy. Then, last week we went to that one guy’s church and showed a Jesus film, and even then I was wondering why we were there, why this team had come to visit, and if I was really doing enough. Then, at the end of that film, when the team got up to greet the church (as people always expect them to do), something happened. After the team shared their names and greetings, some of the women from the church stood up to speak. The first woman said “It is good for you to come here and encourage the missionaries. There are two ways that we can follow in this life, the Way of Jesus and the Way of Satan, and we need to be repenting, following Jesus, and sharing the gospel while staying on the Way of Jesus.” A second woman stood up and said “We all have to be sorry for our sin, confess our sin and turn away from it, and the missionaries are here helping us learn how to do this.”
Another thing the team did while they were here was helping us with some work at our house. This is a picture of the bars we built for our kids that week. Danny said he knew how to weld, but I’m pretty sure Scott did most of it!
Both of those things are great to hear from members of the church, but for me there was something special about it. You see, all of that stuff that those ladies said to the team were word-for-word quotes from the material that I have been going through with that one guy. That means that, even though sometimes it feels like we’re working harder than we should for something so small, that one guy is going back and teaching what he is learning to his wife (the first woman to stand up), who three years ago was too timid to say anything to the group, and to the other people in his church. We want to see big results and numbers from our hard work, but lots of times God starts movements with these seemingly small-scale things, so let’s be faithful to what He’s given us to do for now and make sure we’re doing it well.
I had asked Paul a few weeks before that if Lopit people every cry when they’re happy and he told me no. We had asked a few other people the same question and they were surprised at it…crying is for sadness and shouting is for joy. But, at the end of that story Paul had tears…then we laughed about it.
Will you keep praying for us? As we enter into our language learning season I will continue doing classes with Paul, but there’s always the danger that the “tyranny of the urgent” will take over and our time will be consumed by things like visitors, car trouble, sickness and the endless list of needs with which we are constantly approached. Pray that God would give us clear vision to stay the course, press on with the handful of disciples He’s given us, and learn to communicate well in the local language so that new people can start hearing the gospel through Bible stories.
Thanks as always!
Justin, Amy, Ezekiel and Caleb
Ezekiel and Caleb on a boat at the Source of the Nile in Jinja.
