Shalom friends! How are you?
You have not heard from me in a while since most of the time I am serving in the South Sudanese refugee camp where there is bad reception and no electricity. I sometimes use solar panels to charge my phone, but this is limited…Praise the Lord for your prayers, I received a two-year work visa!!! After a long process that began in June. Praise the Lord for His faithfulness!
Additionally, I came down again with Malaria a few weeks ago. Thank you to all those who strengthened me in prayer! I am feeling well now.
I am thankful to God for the team. We are a team of 4 young people (Mambo and Gift – two South Sudanese refugees, Moses from Congo and me). We met in the discipleship program. Since the end of the program in September, we are serving together at the refugee camp.
Conferences at the refugee camp –
Recently we organized two youth conferences and a women’s conference. About 100 people attended each conference.
So what does organizing a conference entail, you may ask?
*Since Mambo and Gift are from the refugee camp they have connections with the pastors and local leaders. We reach out to a number of the pastors and youth leaders and set dates for the conference. (The timing is important, since we wanted to hold a conference at the end of September, but discovered that during this time they are all harvesting sesame seeds, so many people will not attend, because otherwise the sesame will go bad).
*Setting a location for the conference, a church building large enough for all the participants.
*Sleeping accommodations, since most of the people arrive from afar and need to stay with members of the congregation and bring tents.
*Building a plan and schedule for the conference. What is the theme? The goals? Lesson topics, finding teachers, preparing some of the lessons ourselves.
*Food – planning a menu and a budget for all the conference meals, finding cooks, buying the food or giving money to those who will buy the food supplies. There is rice and beans at the refugee camp, so the youth collect donations of rice and beans and we supply the rest. How do they do this? They go from house to house with a sack, visiting all the members of the church, and ask for 2 cups of rice, a cup of beans and a cup of oil. This is their donation to the youth conference.
*Looking for donations to cover the food and our transportation to the camp and back. The budget for the whole conference is about a thousand NIS.
We encourage the youth and the people at the refugee camp to organize local conferences, something simple and beneficial, instead of waiting for a large organization to come and do some large production with fancy equipment. Additionally, two groups from South Africa came to serve at the refugee camp; we accompanied them and served the Lord together with them.
During the day we visited people, heard their stories (people have very difficult stories from the war, but since everyone are in the same situation, they all have a burden and no one with whom to share their stories). We were there to listen and people opened up their hearts and shared their pain and their past. We prayed and encouraged them. In the evenings, we showed the Jesus film in the local language. Please pray that the hearts of more young people will be set ablaze by the Gospel and they will go out to tell of His works to the nations!!!