The medical team visiting a bush village to help educate the people.

On the eve of leaving the Northern part of South Sudan, I’ll try to summarize some of the most extraordinary five days in Tonj, since it is after midnight and the solar power batteries will soon shut off the electricity… and with that goes the Internet. We are fortunate here at the mission to have water toilets, faucets… and even a hot shower! That is due to two deep bore-hole wells which pump clear, clean water from the ground. They also have installed enough solar power panels to provide the whole compound with electricity, although the batteries only last till the middle of the night.Tonj is a town of approx 20,000 people, all from the Dinka tribe. The center is small with a few dirt roads where flea market style shacks and a handful of run down old buildings with bullet holes as a reminder of the recent war, line the main road. The majority of the population lives in small mud huts with thatched roofs scattered broadly, deep into the bush. The Dinka are cattle herders, polygamists, and animists, for whom the witch doctor plays an important role.

The road in Tonj just outside the mission.

Many wives and children are signs of wealth and honor. One man in the community has 47 wives and over 150 children… he is considered very rich… in light of the fact that he must pay a dowry for each of them… from 50 to 250 cows, depending on the virtue and beauty of the girl, who are given in arranged marriages as young as 13 – 15 years old! No wonder the community is plagued by cattle raiding where there is at times outright war between families! They have many children, but there is no medical care in the bush; women dying in childbirth, is common, and infant mortality is one of the highest in the world. The positive side is that children are treasured… there is no word in Dinka for “orphan”, neither is there a word for “individualism”, as everything is done in context of community life. Malaria kills many. Most of the people are illiterate. Life is extremely hard, just caring for the basic needs in the extended family. Moreover, the more than twenty years of brutal war by the Arab Muslim troops brought extraordinary suffering to the people.

The Goat market in Tonj

The Dinkas are beautifully tall people.

Sabet and Suzy married in 1999 and moved to Tonj in 2000, while the war was still raging between North Sudan and the SPLA… the South Sudanese freedom fighters. Initially, they had to create a bomb shelter before renting couple of run down buildings where they moved in which later became their basic mission compound. They knew they were called to this outpost to share the love of Jesus through the Gospel with this beautiful, dignified Dinka tribe, who are Sabet’s people! We began partnering with Sabet and Suzy in 2002 by supporting their training for the bush pastors in the region.

In the bush village they honored me with a gift of two live chickens.

I was not quite prepared for finding a fully self-sustained community in the midst of a virtual desert! They run on solar power and have two bore-holes of deep drilling, fresh, clean water. Their ministry, In Deed and Truth Ministry has approx. 50 staff members of ministry volunteers, health and medical workers, and workers on the grounds who run their community’s medical clinic, the training school for pastors, and various community services – like education on organic farming, teaching of reading and writing for the illiterate which is widespread, prenatal care by trained health care professionals who go deep into the bush to visit the women, basic teaching on hygiene, etc. Underpinning all of this, is evangelism! The Gospel is presented to everyone whom they care for and visit in the bush. At the clinic, all who are sick are prayed for, and they sometimes witness miraculous healings. There is an open area where regular church services are held for the believers, and discipling of those who have just come to faith. They also regularly present the Jesus film in distant bush villages. In the midst of this, Suzy does homeschooling for their three children! I have had a blast participating and partaking in some of these activities and outreaches…. more about in the next post… exhilarating and deeply meaningful!

Administrative, compassionate, and caring are Suzy’s hallmarks.

Tomorrow a charter plane will pick up a team who has been here for a week, teaching thirty bush pastors from the region to become trainers of an excellent training program called CHE (Community Health Evangelism). The training team came from Uganda, so they will fly back to their headquarters. I am hitching a ride with them, so on their way, they will make a side-trip and drop me off in Nimule, a city located two hours south of Juba on the Southern border to Uganda, where I will stay in the community built by William Levi, with whom we have partnered among the South Sudanese since 1994.