We’ve been “in the baby cave” for a few weeks now.  At the end of March things got really busy all of a sudden!

On March 30^th around 3:00 in the morning, Amy woke me up and told me that it was time to go to the hospital.  We spent most of the day there, and at 9:36pm Caleb Charles Culp was born.  He was 10lbs 3oz and 22 inches long.  I (Justin) keep saying “That’s my boy” because, although most babies take a week or more to get back to their birth weight, Caleb had gained a pound before his 2 week checkup!  Everyone is doing fine, for now we’re all just trying to sneak in naps until Caleb decides to make sleep a priority!

On April 3, Amy was discharged from the hospital, but on April 3^rd I also had my first speaking engagement at a church.  I drove to Hillsboro, MO that morning and visited our friends there while Amy was discharged from the hospital, and I picked her and Caleb up on the way home!  Since then I’ve been speaking in churches 3 times or more per week, and Amy has been working on her new routine with Ezekiel and now Caleb!

A few weeks ago Ezekiel and I spent a week in Corinth, Mississippi visiting some of our friends and ministry partners there.  Ezekiel got to do fun things like ride horses and go exploring in the woods, and we got to make a lot of new connections with people who are interested in South Sudan.

Our schedule is pretty full with places to visit and speak.  If you get our prayer calendars, you’ll see that I’ve listed on each Sunday and Wednesday the churches where I will be speaking.  If you’re not sure whether you’ll see us, or would like to get together while we’re home, give me a call or write an email and I’m sure we can work something out!

Currently we are trying to add to our monthly support, and get some one-time gifts to finish out our house.  If you’ve already seen the presentation, you know what our goals are.  Please pray that God will provide new monthly partners to help us meet our budget and get back!

Thanks!

Justin, Amy, Ezekiel and Caleb

January 29, 2016

January 29, 2016

Last time I sent out a newsletter it waspictures of our smashed up pickup. Since then I spent 3 weeks in Uganda waiting for the truck to get fixed, drove back to Lohutok, we spent two weeks packing up the house, drove back to Uganda, spent a week in Uganda with friends for Christmas, flew to Brussels and then to St. Louis. Now we’re here!

As soon as we got to the home where we are staying in St. Louis, Ezekiel clearly told us that he did not want to travel and stay in different places for a while, so it’s a good thing we’re here for six months. Right now we are calling churches to schedule speaking engagements, visiting with friends and family, and getting ready to have a baby in March! Amy just found out that she has gestational diabetes again, so pray for her encouragement and health for the rest of the pregnancy.

Our plan is to be in St. Louis from now until the last part of June. After that we’ll spend a couple of weeks in Georgia visiting churches in the Columbus area (and Amy’s parents!), and by the end of July we will be in the Kansas City Area. We’re trying to reconnect with our supporters and prayer partners. We also want to get into some new places to speak and try to expand our support base. Anyone who wants to visit with us while we’re home please send me an email.

Also keep praying for Paul and the church in Lalonga. When I left South Sudan, Paul had started to help with a Lopit Bible translation, but he’s also pastoring his church and learning/teaching new Bible stories on his own every week. He told me that he needed some other men in the church to help him when he is away, so I challenged him to be the one to seek out some guys who want to follow Jesus and to start discipling them. When I left he had met twice with another man from his village for Bible Study, so pray that through Paul there will be more men in Lalonga who want to follow Jesus and who have a heart to see other people repent and believe!

Justin, Amy, Ezekiel and New Baby
jculp123180@gmail.com
636-233-4835

November 27, 2015

November 27, 2015

A couple of weeks ago I (Justin) decided to make a trip to Uganda. For various reasons, the work of discipleship in the villages had come to a stop, and Paul had to spend some time in Juba getting paperwork for his job so I didn’t have much work to do. One of our friends in Lohutok needed some things brought back from Kampala and offered to pay for the trip, so I agreed to help him.
I left early in the morning, made it across the border into Uganda, and found that they were doing some nice work on the road. I took the detour around a few places where they were burying drainage tunnels in the road, and then passed by a few that were finished. I was driving around 40mph and came over a hill to find what looked like another trench. There was no warning before the hill, and when I tried to stop quickly the antilock brakes engaged, so I quickly tried to dodge the trench and make the detour ‘ramp’ but by then it was too late, and I drove into the hole, about 2 meters deep, at 40mph.

It’s been quite the adventure since then. What was supposed to be a 6 day trip with 2 in Kampala has turned into more than 2 weeks while waiting to get the vehicle fixed. We were able to remove the bumper and drive the vehicle the remaining 300 miles to Kampala where I have someone I trust to do the work. Fortunately Amy and Ezekiel weren’t with me.

Now, we’re planning to come to Uganda at the end of December to start our journey back to the US for Home Assignment, and it seems that when I get back to Lohutok we’ll only have about two weeks before we have to come back again! Amy is flying to Kampala but Ezekiel and I will drive down. We need the vehicle in Uganda for some other repairs, but with Amy being 6 months’ pregnant, we don’t want her bouncing around for 2 days on the African roads.

Will you pray that God provides what we need to pay for the truck to be repaired, that we finish the rest of our traveling safely, that Amy is encouraged and sustained while she’s home alone with Ezekiel waiting for me to get back?

Thanks!

Justin Culp
jculp123180@gmail.com

October 29, 2015

October 29, 2015

“Will you teach me about God?” she asked me. I didn’t really know her name; although I was fairly sure I had heard of her and had seen her before. I prayed that God would give me the grace to sufficiently teach her Scripture – in spite of the language barrier and the countless other bridges we would have to cross together.

I had been praying for a woman to invest in for several months. I was getting frustrated and exhausted looking for someone. Everyone that I found was either more interested in what I had to give them, wasn’t interested in Jesus, or they weren’t interested in being discipled (probably because they were much older than me). Finally, I prayed that God would send to me whoever He wanted me to disciple.

That’s when she came, 10 months ago. Her name is Teresa (her Lopit name is Ihuro, meaning ‘Bamboo’). She says she is 14 years old, although she looks more like 11 or 12. Her grandfather is the village ‘landlord,’ which has nothing to do with owning land but means that people in the village go to him before they plant their crops, and he performs magic to ‘bless’ their crops.

Adamantly opposed to the gospel, He told Teresa that if she continued going to church he would burn all of her clothes. He has told all of his family – including Teresa – never to return to his house. She was living with him up to that point. Her father lives in a village several hours away, and the same grandfather had previously attempted to kill her mother and told her not to return to the house. She is now living with her grandmother, who he has also told not to come back to his house.

After a couple of months Teresa started working for us, which gives me an opportunity to disciple her on a daily basis. I tell her a Bible story on Saturdays and have her memorize it throughout the week. It turns out that her English is better than I thought, and I’m able to tell most of it in Lopit but fill in with English when I need to. It also gives me an opportunity to pray for her and teach her about godly parenting, for the day she has children. She is great with Ezekiel. She has really become his best friend.

Over the past few months, through language issues and other barriers, we have discussed the stories from Creation to the 10 Commandments. I’m hoping to go through a few more and then get to the New Testament before we leave for furlough. Teresa has a great attitude about work (hard to find around here), has a hunger for God’s Word that impresses me, and is the most frugal South Sudanese person I’ve ever met. She saves her money from her salary at our house to buy food and pay for school fees for herself and her family.

Sometimes we think she is one of the only true believers in Lohutok, our village. Please pray that God would give Teresa sweet fellowship with the ladies in Lolonga while we are gone, that she would not feel alone and that God would provide for her to keep learning stories and for her other needs.

September 28, 2015

September 28, 2015

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; - Philippians 3:20

The problem with writing a monthly newsletter is that, when things are slow and boring or even difficult and discouraging, one still feels the need to think of something exciting to put in the newsletter! After sitting at my computer for a few days trying to think of something, I just decided to give it up! The work in Lacharok seems to have stopped. Paul is still optimistic that the guys will come back, but we have not had a good storying session with them since May. In fact, the “leader” of that group, James Latoy, has only been around for one visit since May. On that visit he told us that many of the people were “discouraged” and didn’t want to come anymore. When I asked why he said “They think you deceived them because they were waiting for you to buy them uniforms and book bags.” To memorize stories!

Earlier this week I was in Torit buying some supplies and a new battery for the Landcruiser. As I was pulling up to my last stop, the hardware store, I switched on my left turn-indicator. When an oncoming motorbike driver saw my indicator, he freaked out, lost control of the motorbike, and wiped out on the road. He only had some scrapes on his arms and leg, but the front wheel of his motorbike slid under my vehicle, and my back tire went over it, breaking part of the motorcycle. I spent 6 hours on Monday at the traffic police station where they basically told me, “These guys drive too fast on their motorbikes and cause accidents, but you can’t leave him with all of the expenses, so we’re going to charge you. Don’t worry your insurance will pay half.” Now I’m waiting for his follow-up visit to the hospital for his scrapes before I can find out how much that is going to cost.

The night after the motorbike incident I couldn’t sleep. Every time I fell asleep I would dream that people were on my front porch begging for something, or a ride somewhere, or forcing me to pay something, and I had to keep waking up and deciding if it was real or a dream!

Please pray for us as we spend the last few months before our home-assignment. Pray that God would clearly show us closed-doors, when to say no, and give us patience as we live as aliens and strangers in this world.

Justin, Amy, Ezekiel and ??

August 31, 2015

August 31, 2015

Yesterday I was riding in the car with Paul. We had a 2 hour drive to Lacharok and no passengers (quite a rare occurance!) so it was a good chance to talk to the guy who is sometimes our only faithful disciple. I was talking to him about the time that we’re going to be gone next year, from February to November, for furlough. Lately it seems like every time we have to take a trip or take a few weeks off from doing Bible study in the villages (Lalonga and Lacharok), it can take weeks to re-connect and catch up with people.

That makes the 8-9 months we’re going to be away next year a little stressful. I asked Paul what it would take to make sure that the groups keep meeting and keep learning Bible stories while we’re gone and he answered, “I can read the Bible and learn the stories I need to tell, but I don’t know how to get from the ‘What does it say?’ to the ‘What does it mean?’ and ‘What should we do?’” I told him we could work on some ways to do that over the next few months, but then decided to just talk about it. We reviewed the golden calf story and then I asked him, “What does this story teach us about God?” He couldn’t give me an answer, so I repeated the first two sentences of the story and then asked the question again, and immediately he said “That’s easy, God keeps his promises.”

After coming up with five statements about God from the story, I asked him, “What does this story teach us about mankind?” We went through the story bit by bit again but mostly came up with “People are quick to disobey and utterly rebel against God.” After that I asked him, “Now what can we apply to our own lives from this story?” Again he was quiet. I repeated the sentence, “People are quick to disobey and rebel against God” and said “Is that true about you?” He agreed that it was, so I said “How?” He gave me a few general answers about things he used to do, so I said “What about yesterday? How were you quick to disobey and rebel against God yesterday?”

Again he was quiet. I shared with him some of my own shortcomings. Impatience with people, especially my wife, anger and general arrogance about getting my own way, those were just a few things I told him. Finally he interrupted me as I was about to start again and said, “Sometimes my wife talks to me a certain way and I just get angry!” After that he went on to tell me about other things that he does, and knows are sinful, but they are things that he’s never really considered a need to repent from. They’re not “big” like drunkenness or murder or going to the rainmaker. We then discussed the importance to repent from those things, and have a right attitude about ourselves by realizing our own sin. It was a good drive overall…

Justin (and Amy, Ezekiel and “New Baby”)

July 29, 2015

July 29, 2015

For the past few weeks I’ve been lamenting to Amy about how it seems like there’s not much happening with our disciples. One of them in Loming just doesn’t come when we’re supposed to meet, and in Lacharok they asked us to stop coming for three weeks or so because everyone is busy working in the gardens. I decided to use the down time to get some work done on the house, but getting the materials we need just hasn’t worked out either, so it feels like I’m just sitting idle.

Last week Paul and I decided that, in addition to studying stories with the ladies in his church on Sunday mornings, we would also start meeting with them on Wednesday mornings to review the stories and make sure they know them well. On Wednesday I went at 6:30 in the morning and listened while Paul spent two hours teaching the creation story to a group of seven women and one man. At the end they even turned the creation story into a song! I was hoping to somehow include the song with the online version of this update, but I haven’t been able to get a recording of it yet. When I do I’ll send a separate email, or I’ll add a video to next month’s newsletter.

Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us and giving toward the well project. Pioneers’ finance system has been down for a while since they are installing new software, so I haven’t been able to see individual giving since mid-June, but it seems like the rest of the money to pay for the drilling project has come in! Our next goal will be to get a pump for the well and build a water tower to hold the water and feed the house. Those things will come later!

Thanks!

Justin, Amy, Ezekiel and…someone else!