Seasonal Floods Receding; DEO Team Proceeding

As Nancy and I prepare to fly back to Doro tomorrow, let me apologize for a woefully-kept blog site.  The blessings are many at Doro; the challenges likewise are many.  Our health team and SIM family are a great blessing.  The friends and fellow-workers among our Sudanese family are as well a constant encouragement to us.  The seasonal floods this month were extensive and damaging, but have begun to recede in the past week.

 

The attached newsletters will tell a piece of the story of our lives in 2012, as we prepare now for the arrival of a building team from Oregon, and a team of evangelists from Ethiopia during November-December.  These are exciting days in Doro!  In Christ,  Rob and Nancy

....looking back to July, and a 'NEW CAR' for Doro...

Dear Friends,

As we celebrate the first birthday of South Sudan, the news reports coming out of this country are replete with stories of tragic circumstances and frustrated expectations.

However, there are bright lights shining in the darkness.  The source of that light is God Himself, whose hand controls the destiny of the nations.  Scripture instructs us in the powerful words of Isaiah read by Eric Liddell’s character in the movie Chariots of Fire: “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales… All the nations are as nothing before Him.  He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.”  He reigns.

I met a few of Christ’s bright lights today…  There was a well-dressed, gentle mother with her poorly-nourished, ill child, telling me she fled from Khartoum last month and made her way here, only to be confronted by even greater desperation.  There was a Sudanese Community Health Worker, Masir, standing in front of the crowd of patients in the early morning light, explaining that Jesus Christ is the One who knows and can meet our deepest needs and leading them all in prayer.  There was a Kenyan health worker, sharing in our clinic ‘morning report’ how God responded so graciously to a man like Abraham; and how the same God answered prayer a few nights ago giving breath and life to a breathless, gasping baby with severe bronchiolitis.   Finally, there was Neil, a missionary nurse from Scotland, sitting in the clinic with his blistered, infected feet up on a chair being ministered to by another nurse.  Neil’s feet are a bright light to me – a reminder what it means to be ‘shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.”  A week ago he walked with our son Stephen and some Sudanese fellows to a distant and neglected community more than six hours south of Doro, bringing spiritual encouragement and the promise of help during these days of malarial rain.  He suffered.  His feet are a mess!  But his feet remind me that even as Christ suffered in His flesh to redeem us, so our suffering is a light, revealing the glory and triumph of the Cross (Galatians 6:14).

True, the news coming out of South Sudan is replete with stories of tragic circumstances and frustrated expectations.  Might it be possible that the Lord has in mind a plan for this mass of 100,000 unreached and previously-remote groups of people who’ve gathered on our doorstep?  Must they simply suffer here for a year or two, then gather up what remains and return to a barren life in a remote corner of a country which does not want them?  Or have they come to this place, at this time, to hear the Good News that came to other shepherds 2000 years ago:  “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings, of great joy, which shall be to all people!  For unto you is born this day… a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

One effective way to reach these crowds would be to empower a band of 7 or 8 Ethiopian believers to come over from Addis Ababa, the capital of our neighboring country.  In fact, they are ready to come.  The Kale Heywet Church numbers in the millions of Ethiopian evangelical Christians, and some of our most effective team members here in Sudan are from that fellowship of thousands of churches.  They’ve sent evangelistic teams to difficult places like India and Pakistan, and we wonder – Why not here?  Why not now?

Pray with us that a team might be mobilized to come for six weeks, from early November this year when the rains have ended.  Such a team would find help from their own churches for travel to Juba, but would need us to raise more than $10,000 for travel within South Sudan.  We’ll need to build concrete pads on which we can erect canvas tents we’ll purchase and bring from Kenya for $2,000 apiece.  Then we’ll need beds; plastic chairs and tables; a mud & thatched kitchen; cook-stoves; pots, pans, food to cook, and so forth; a pit latrine, bucket shower, and thatched shelter from the sun.  It will cost us $30,000 to see it happen.

Is it possible?  For the price-tag of a new car, a team of experienced African evangelists proclaiming the love of Christ, day after day, from one end of the camp to the other, seems too small a price.  But realize that one of those evangelists may be a woman named Tibarek, and some of you will recall that a few years ago we traveled with her out of Sudan with the lifeless body of her husband, who died of cerebral malaria in just their fourth year of marriage.  They paid a great price for the proclamation of the Gospel in Sudan. 

Is such an effort possible?  We think this is the Lord’s kind of project, and believe He will provide what we need to prepare the way.  If you want to give, you can do that online at www.sim.org and donate to Project #98103 South Sudan Church Discipleship Project and add a note “Doro 2012 Evangelism Team” so we can identify the gift.  If you’re more familiar with sending to our Ministry Account #11269 you can do that with the note:  “Congdon Ministry Account – Doro 2012 Evangelism Team”. 

Please pray that the Lord’s hand of blessing would be on this effort, preparing the right people even now for such a team, for such a time as this.

With love and prayer, from Doro.  Rob and Nancy