October Update

Dear friends and family!

National Day for Washing Hands, October 18th!

Can you believe there is a day set to celebrate washing hands??? It’s a wonderful thing, especially for this nation. South Sudan actually had a national holiday to celebrate it!

Me showing the Community Health Workers how to make a TippyTap! We had a lot of fun :) 

I wanted to share with you some pictures of how I spent it. One of the tools in the program I am working with provides a way to wash your hands when there is no running water available. It’s called a Tippy Tap! And it’s a great way to help people get their hands clean that is hands-free and easily reusable!  I was able to teach some of the health workers at our clinic how to make these Tippy Taps and they are now going to be teaching the people in their communities how to make them! It was neat to see how excited they were to learn this new way of maintaining hygiene by washing their hands!

This month has provided great moments of encouragement for me!

Lately we have been so limited in visiting our CHE communities because all around us has been swamped and flooded with much rain! We have been very limited as to where we can go!

One of the biggest encouragements has come from a visit my colleague and I were able to make in one of our CHE communities. We were able to visit our friends in Warrock, which is about an hour’s motorcycle ride from where we live in Tonj.  This area is still very swampy from the flood, so we fishtailed a lot.  We were not able to get there with a vehicle and a regular bike would not have gotten us there! So we were thankful that we had the help of these motorcycles to get us there!

This is my friend Pastor Ruben!

During our visit in this community we were able to see the wonderful example this church of believers have set for this area! This church had gardened using a format that we teach in CHE, it is called Farming God's Way. They wanted us to be there for the harvesting and so that was such a wonderful time with them. The whole church got together and wanted to do something to show the nonbelievers in their community that they cared for them and also that they were willing to work together to make that happen! So they put a LOT of hard work into this garden. They planted groundnuts and we were there to be a part of the harvesting! They said that they now want to use the proceeds to help those in need around them who aren't Christians.  They would also use the groundnuts as a way to be able to minister to them. The one heading this is their pastor, whose name is Reuben, and he is also one of our CHEs who is in training now!

This is us underneath the tree helping harvest the groundnuts! This is not easy work! Let me tell you!

Just a picture of what a groundnut looks like!

I asked the people in Warrock for some prayer requests and so I just wanted to send those onto you!

--Through church members reaching out to others in the community some young ladies came to know Jesus as their personal Savior. The ladies joined in the work of the church-planted peanut garden. Now their parents are telling them they may not return to the church and they must work only for the family. Please pray for these new believers to be encouraged in their faith in Jesus. Pray they will continue to follow Him.

--Many people in the community are ill. The nearest health clinic is more than two hours of walking away from Warrock. Please pray for God's healing touch on the people of Warrock.

--Insects are eating many of the plants in the garden. The people are looking for an insecticide that will be effective in protecting their crop. Please pray for relief from the insects and for a bountiful harvest.

--Please pray for the outreach of this church into the community. Pray their love and kindness toward others will point the way to Jesus and bring many more to Him.

My friend Synock and I! Also another committed believer in this community!

Thank you for joining me in prayer for these people and our brothers and sisters in Christ! Life here is not easy and these people are really working hard to share the love of Christ with their neighbors.

My Colleague and I in the community, visiting the locals and holding their kids :)

Another ministry that I’m involved with is CHE trainings, which I will write more about in my next update! But please be in prayer for the ones that my team and I will be training in November and those we just got done trianing at the end of October! We found there were many things that we just assumed they knew about, like the cause of malaria, that they had no idea about! Also the literacy rate was lacking greatly. So translating what we are trying to teach is a huge struggle! In this area of South Sudan education is just not considered important. We believe the generation coming up is realizing its importance but this is a huge problem, especially in the training because many of the tools we provide for them are in English.  So there are many things that we have going on here. I will update you on more of them as soon as I can!

This is the group of believers that I was able to go and visit and be apart of their  harvesting time! Praise God for true committed believers who are willing to think of others before themselves and their own needs.