Grace and peace be with all of you. We thank God for your prayers and the support you faithfully offer to us all the time. God has been faithful for the gift of open doors to our message and ministry, especially to newer communities. 

Ministry Update: 

Our grand plan of ministry is to establish mission hubs in strategic centers of influence within our focus area. A mission hub is led by a local leader, whose main purpose is to raise up other missional leaders focusing on a particular area with regard to church planting and other holistic ministries. 

What motivates us is the sense of urgency that the Gospel message is needed to get out to the unreached. With the uncertainty in our country, we never know how long the windows of opportunities will exist before any twist to the political instability here. We, therefore, surrender our will and timing to God’s timing. Sometimes it may appear to us to be too early, but we praise God for showing us how to go about and are convinced that it is His will for us to extend our ministry. 

To heed God’s call, we are extending our ministry to the Diding’a tribe, the second largest tribe in the Kapoeta area. Our long-term plan has always been to reach the immediate tribes bordering our focus tribe – the Toposa. I thought that it was going to take many years before we started to reach any of the other tribes. God has challenged us to think of our church planting movement as a multiplication process rather than addition. Our focus now is to start self-reproducing ministries among the other tribes, thus helping us to reach out to the lost on multiple fronts. 

Nachilagur Ministry: 

Nachilagur is the village that merited our extra attention this year. The vision we had for this village was to plant a church and help revive a closed down school. We are glad that these two goals have been achieved! The impact has been tremendous despite the challenges that we have had to contend with. Being a nomadic community, there are a number of factors that influence the population and school attendance. Migration during dry and wet seasons affects the proximity of homes to the school. During the dry season, which results in times of hunger, more kids may come to school in order to get lunch. Other economic activities such as farming and gold mining have also influenced this as children go out to help. All in all, our goal is to continue raising the awareness of the importance of education. 

Due to the crisis in the country, most government schools are affected and struggling, and some are closing down. So when kids hear of a functioning school, they grab the opportunity. Most of our school support has been directed for school feeding. Lunch for pupils has been the single most important motivating factor for kids to go to school. Our next plan is to make uniforms for the pupils while engaging the community to pay at least half of the cost. The main goal is to help the community own the school and strive to play their part. We are hoping that the community will, after a few years, support their own kids by paying for their education. This will give us a chance to also focus on another school. 

One exciting result of this school program is that every Sunday, the community gathers to pray together and listen from the word of God. Some of the young men who know how to read and write, help run the services. Our evangelists, led by Nichodemus, also help run the Sunday services at times. I was privileged recently to attend a Sunday service, which was so meaningful to my life. 

Church Planting Training: 

Late last year, we sent one of our lead evangelists and a youth leader to encourage the church at Chukudum and to assess the area for church planting. In June, a team of six led a 6-day mission that included open air preaching, hospital visits, home-to-home and water well evangelism. Over 100 people received Jesus and about 600 heard the Gospel. The team shared testimonies with their colleagues on their current training with the Timothy Initiative and how God was moving in Kapoeta. The result was the formation of an evangelism team for the Chukudum church. This team is boiling to the brim for the lost! It will be led by Joseph Lopeyo (pictured here). He is a young man whose spirit of determination, courage, and faithful pursuit of God’s purposes resonates with mine. 

Prayer Needs: 

• Pray for continued peace and stability in the country 
• Pray for funds to complete the building of the main church 
• Pray for our vision to the Diding’a tribe, especially the upcoming evangelist training 
• Pray for the provision of two new motorbikes for Chukudum and Mogos mission

Thank you again for your continued prayers and support.

Pastor Reuben