Project: South Sudan
Help us reach the lost tribes of South Sudan
The Story
​In 2018, shortly after I arrived in Kenya, I met with a Mark Keter and Peter Franz, my father-in-law, at our base in Kenya. Peter was sharing with us that he had flown his plane over a certain region, and as he looked out the window he saw countless villages and believed that they were totally unreached Because in all his years in Africa he has never heard of anyone that was working among them. Immediately I had it in my heart to go there to reach them with the Gospel, Mark to share in this desire and we began to discuss how we could reach them.
Mark had worked in similar areas for many years but had seen little fruit and was very discouraged unlit recently when he had just received some training to try a new model of a mission called disciple-making movement (DMM). He was eager to go and give this a go as he felt sure this was the key to reaching these people in a far more effective manner.
What is DMM?
DMM focuses on making disciples that are obedient to the word of God and are people that will make their own disciples. So instead of evangelising, or inviting people to join or plant a church where a pastor does all or most of the work, you are simply discovering the bible with 2 or 3 people, and trying to obey what the word says through the power of the Holy Spirt while at the same time empowering those very same 2 or 3 to do the same in 2 or 3 others lives, that very say day or week. Very soon you have a multiplication effect taking place where you have not 10 or 20 new disciples but hundreds or even thousands of new disciples. This model is proving itsself to be very effective all over the world especially in closed nations in the Middle East or Asia. Soon these discipleship groups start to gather and become church’s. But perhaps not church’s like you or I are used to but rather a community of believers that gathers regularly to read and share the word, care for each others needs and worship God our creator, without the need for much structure such at church buildings etc.
Story continued
No time at all passed and I found myself in a remote part of South Sudan, sleeping in a beautiful hut made from woven reeds with the most incredible night sky outside. We sat with an elder who had invited us into his village and given Mark a place to stay. As we sat under the tree with the elders they offered us some land where we could stay and build our own homes in our own style to allow us to be comfortable. We walked the land and prayed over it. It struck us just how effective Mark could be as a Kenya missionoary in South Sudan the advantages he had over us as westerns. They were tremendous. We felt strongly that Mark would need a team around him to reach these people and that we were going to part of it. He had 4 families in mind that he wanted to join him. We believed in faith that we would build up a mission station on the very ground we were standing on, to reach these lost and forgotten people.
Over time we felt Mark needed his own organisation to manage this work so we launched Seeking the Lost Mission to target this area with a vision to plant 100 church’s in 5 years! We sent out a number of missionaries and asked if their wives and families would join them, we build a number of houses and an accommodation block from them to live in and a drilled a well for them to have access to safe and clean drinking water, and over the last few years this work has just grown and grown.
What are UUPGs?
An unengaged unreached people group is a people group that has almost no know christian presence and has no known active church planting underway. They are a group that would have no way of knowing the Gospel unless someone comes from the outside to tell them about Jesus, and that is the state we believe these tribes to be in before we begun to work with them.
Projects
School
Marks wife begun to gather the children and teach them under a tree, overtime this grew into a shaded area and has now grown into a school building with 8 classrooms and over 100 students, these students. Many of them instead of walking home at night opt to sleep on the floors of the school and have become unofficial borders.
We have a huge need for teachers, teachers accommodation, teaching materials, and food for these 'boarders'.
Farm
The village comunity has been so impressed with the work, that they have given us a further 17 acres to build a farm. We are in the process of building a demonstration farm to teach the community how to farm, steward the land and start buiesness so they can better live off the land and benefit form the amazing resourases they already have.
Wells
Water is life, and without it there is tremoundous suffering, sickness and death. So far we have been able to install over 10 bore hole wells in the areas where we are working and been able to fix and refurbish a number of damaged wells, and there is a need for so much more. Due to the location on average each well costs $10,000 to drill. Help us get water to those who need it so desperatly.
Health Clinic
Next to our mission station we have been given what used to be a government health outpost. Help us bring this delpadating outpost back to life, with qualified medical staff who can provide quality healthcare to the community. Th next nearest hospital is several hundred kilometres away in Kenya. A trip that is impossible for many.
