By Melissa in Mae Ai, Thailand

April has been a month of building. We had a supporter of the project from the US come for a visit in March and Ps. Moses was able to re-build the single squat toilet that the children use over by their bedrooms. It was made with a wood frame and iron roof and walls but the termites had hollowed out the wood frame so much it was ready to fall apart!

We’re also happy to welcome Simon & Eleanor Stevens from Timaru to the project. They will be working with us for the next 5 months building and fixing up buildings on the project. Andy had a chance to work with Simon wiring up the youth and kids rooms in the church at Faith Village for a few days while they had a big team in from America refurbishing the rooms.

April was the month of the Songkran festival and Thai New Year. This is a huge event and involves (officially) 3 days of mass water fighting. This gets extended to 7 days up our way and people from the surrounding areas all come to Tha-ton to swim and tube down the Mae Kok River which flows through Town. Traffic was madness with stop start cars in and out of town. The kids had lots of fun throwing water from the back of our truck and on the way to the project we saw so many trucks and motorbikes being pelted with hoses or buckets of water.

Top pics; The new block toilet that was paid for by our US supporter. Pastor Moses has also been busy building a new pig sty, putting the old iron from the toilet up as the roof for the new pig sty.

The Peterson family are serving in Northern Thailand with a local church involved in community development projects.

By Katherine Young, South Sudan

Most mornings I go for a walk in my neighbourhood. This land, with its mud tukuls sur-rounded by neatly swept compounds and its people who call out a greeting whenever you walk by, can appear idyllic. Yet many of these people have lived through years of war, and even if they escaped the ravages of war, life is only separated from death by back-aching labour and the constant threat of illness. And occasionally, the stories of my colleagues leak out. 

The guard, who sits cooing at his baby son, spent years totting a gun as a boy soldier in the war. Another worker was separated from his family and escaped to Ethiopia when he was only 9. He did not return to South Sudan or see his family again until after the peace agree-ment in 2005. He returned to his village with many others his age. His mother saw the towering man that he had become and knew he was her son.

A few years ago the LRA was sweeping through this area. One of our workers knew that no place was really safe so she gathered together her children, and the children of her dead relatives that she had taken in, and decided to stay, praying and trusting that God would protect them. He did. Another’s husband is stilling fighting in the army. The husband probably has other wives in other towns where he has been stationed. She does not know when he will return again and in the meantime she works long hard hours to provide for her young family.

Our most gregarious staff member received a call last year that his young son, who had gone to the village to visit family members, had become unwell. A day later his son was dead. One of our most conscientious and capable staff members has to shift to another town because his brother has developed a severe mental illness. Although the worker has tried everything he can, with no available treatment or facilities and it has become too dangerous for his family to stay.

I am sure that most people in this land have a story to tell. I would love to spend hours listening to their stories, and maybe one day I will have earned the right and opportunity to do so. For now, I am called simply to love them, and to walk in this journey beside them. Some days that is a lot easier to do than other days, when I am tired of being the laughed at foreigner or I want to ring their necks for failing to act like a western health professionals. Good thing God’s not finished working in me yet.

Katherine is serving as a nurse at Bet Eman:His House Of Hope.

‘Explaining’ Africa is one of the greatest challenges we have when we talk about our time here.

It is a land of paradoxes; where the poverty of the people is matched against the richness of the life, where the seemingly chaotic society is matched against the timeless predictability of the culture, where the pathway towards ‘development’ is matched by the grieving for a life that is being lost. We can’t, and never will, be able to ‘understand’ Africa. However, we wholeheartedly know that we have been transformed in and by Africa. Africa is under our skin, and in our blood.

Good day everyone! In 2012 my friend Bronwyn and I spent three months in a rural PNG bush hospital working with Sharon Brandon, a very real “Jungle Doctor”!

What a time it was too. Highlights included eating local food (sago is amazing, you should try it), learning to speak Pidgin, trying ‘secret’ tribal handshakes and swimming in the river.
The variety of medicine we saw there was fantastic and so stimulating. It was a great step towards the independence we will have working as junior doctors.

Rumginae is a Christian hospital and it was so refreshing to be able to pray with and for patients without worrying about being politically correct. When faced with the huge challenges of limited resources, limited time and limited energy it was reassuring to remember that this was God’s hospital and we could entrust the patients into His hands.

Time spent outside the hospital interacting with other missionaries, nationals and student health workers was special. It taught me more about how to love as God teaches us to. I hope to take these lessons with me into this new year and my new job in Timaru, remembering that all God requires from us today is our love and obedience. He gives those who do His work His unfathomable, richest resources and the assurance of being in the centre of His will.

As I reflect on the four weeks I spent in Chiangmai Thailand with my friend Emily, I ask myself and God, what did I learn? Why did things happen the way they did? What was God’s purpose in all that we saw, heard, and did?

When people ask me ‘How was Thailand?’ I’m normally a little lost as to what exactly to say! The generic, ‘It was great!” or “It was amazing!” doesn’t really do justice to the personal significance of the trip. Also, I think that, the truly deep significance of my time there hasn’t yet hit home. It’s probably something that in a couple of month’s time or a year I will begin to more fully realize just how much God used my time there to grow, teach and direct me!

Something right now that has stuck with me since Thailand is the realization that I need God to lead and direct me every day to be where He wants me to be. When Emily and I first started to meet the students involved in the Wisdom Tree ministry, we realized we needed to turn to God to lead and direct us each day, by His Spirit, so that we would be meeting and spending time with the students He wanted us to be with. God truly did guide our ministry as we saw Him orchestrate meet ups with students where we could learn more about them, and they us. Over time He grew some really special bonds of love and friendship.

As I wrote in my journal a week after arriving back in New Zealand, the general emphasis of my time in Thailand seemed not on “preaching the gospel”, but more about being with the students. Talking to them. Answering their questions. Laughing with them. Sharing meals with them. Taking photos with them. Sharing our love and our lives with them.

As we got to know these dear friends we got to see how truly precious they each are in God’s eyes. We grew to see their deep need for the revelation of God’s truth in their lives, and their need for divine rescue from the spiritual darkness they are trapped in. We grew to desire that their lives would be transformed by God, to God.

I am deeply thankful to God for taking me to Thailand. I am also thankful that He has called me to serve Him here in Dunedin for at least the next two years. And after that? Well, I wait on Him and am excited to see how and where and to whom He will lead me next! To Him be glory.

By Joel Robinson, Yei, South Sudan 2012

In my final year at high school I decided to look for an opportunity to go overseas with a missions organisation to africa. I didn’t know which country I wanted to go to, or which organisation I wanted to go with, just that I loved (and still do) football and had a passion for Africa. To cut a long story short I was at the Parachute Music Festival, found Pioneers and met their director, Jamie.

It was organised through contact with him that I would go to South Sudan to work with a programme called Fly Sports in a Christian organisation called ACROSS, which assists South Sudan with its development needs.

When I eventually arrived I was one of very few Westerners on the compound that was to be my home for almost a year. The cultural isolation added to the difficulty as cross-cultural work can be extremely draining; as I’m sure many reading this will know. There were times where I missed my wider family and friends deeply, and was frustrated when the people I was working with didn’t seem to comprehend such challenges.

However, in spite of having to wrestle with cross-cultural issues and cope with difficult living conditions (South Sudan is the most underdeveloped country in the world, and has the highest illiteracy rate) there were definitely some positives. I got to work with some great kids who, despite the desolate nature of their upbringing (including being surrounded by war), had the ability to laugh and find joy in small things, such as my early attempts at the language and certain things I would do that weren’t familiar to them. To be able to provide kids (and adults) with encouragement and hope for the future, when they had very little, was powerful. I want to share a story, but before I do you need to know a bit about the area I was living and working in.

The way Fly Sports aim to bring a sense of unity and community is through sports, particularly football. The area I was in (Yei, a town not far from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo) had a large mix of tribes from different parts of South Sudan. The people are in no way, shape or form racist, but are tribal, meaning they discriminate between tribes and are fiercely loyal to their own. If the country is going to grow in its freedom from war then its people need to learn to work together. This was basically the goal of Fly Sports; to show the youth that they can work together and live harmoniously rather than being stuck in a cycle of repetitive war and hate toward one another. However, just as I had difficulties living cross-culturally, they sometimes had difficulties living or co-operating cross-tribally. Which leads me to a story about one of the kids in the team I was coaching. When I say kid, I mean about 18 or 19. Many of the “kids” I was coaching were about my age, but due to malnutrition they didn’t exactly look it!

I hadn’t been in Yei very long before I noticed one kid, let’s call him Mariko, being excluded and/or laughed at. At first I didn’t think it was much of an issue and that it was just a bit of banter, until something happened that changed my mind about that. Not long after I got to Yei we (Fly Sports) organised a tournament for the kids’ football teams around town. We had 16 teams involved with as many as 25 to 30 players registered for each team.

Our team, despite having only been together for a few weeks was doing OK after a shaky start to the tournament. During one of the games I decided to substitute Mariko into the game. This kid was quite gangly in a sense and not the most co-ordinated of the bunch. As soon as I put him on the field I got complaints from the other players in the team, and I was unhappy. It didn’t take long for that feeling to escalate. The entire crowd laughed at Mariko at each small mistake he made and his confidence was completely shot to pieces, if he even had any before the game began.

I told the players in the team that they were betraying their team and it was not the way to act; that they should be encouraging and not putting their teammates down. They listened to what I had to say and tried to act accordingly but there was no stopping the crowd. I went home from that game angrier at that injustice than anything I have ever experienced in my 19 years of life so far, and as I’m writing this now I still feel that same sense of anger towards it.

That evening and next day I even wrote a song (I’m a musician) because it riled me so much. I continued to work with the team and did my best to encourage Mariko as much as I could. It paid off. About five or six months later, after not having worked with the kids team for a month or two (due to Fly Sports’ financial issues) I came back to see Mariko being included and respected as one of the older players.

He would still sometimes do funny or awkward things and there would be laughs, but the feeling of malice was no longer there and you could see he had a lot more confidence than he had previously. The impact that I was able to have on one person’s life was, and still is, deeply meaningful to me. There are times when I feel like I could have done better or more, but I realise any impact we might have is often not seen until many years or even decades later.

Don’t underestimate the impact you can have on someone’s life. Be it in the space of a month, a year or even a decade, you will be surprised at what you can not only provide others with (in terms of empowerment, skills, abilities, etc.), but what you yourself will gain out of it in terms of knowledge, skills, wisdom or your faith, etc. What I went through was undoubtedly a life changing experience, and will likely shape the course of my career and what I want to do in my life.

What’s holding you back from being an influence in South Sudan, in Africa, in the world?

As a result of his experience Joel is now studying a commerce degree with an additional major in International Relations. His desire is to apply this learning in contexts like South Sudan.

Photos: From top to bottom: Joel with one of the Fly Sports teams / It’s not all work – a guy’s gotta eat! / Joel with founder of Fly Sports “Manny” (Emmanuel), with his wife Grace and their daughter Naomi / Joel coaching / Joel and Nicky at the 1st anniversary celebration of South Sudan’s Independence in Yei.

By Katherine Young, South Sudan

At the entrance to the shop a local seamstress was using a foot powered sewing machine. I had been thinking in the previous few days that I would love to get a variety of African fabric so that I could make small gifts and cards for people. I noticed that next to the tailor there was a bag full of her sewing scraps. I asked her if I would be able to take some of it and gave her some money. She agreed, probably wondering why this crazy kawaja was wanting to pay for rubbish.

Handing over 5 pounds ($1.50) I happily stuffed a bag with beautiful African fabric scraps. From these I was able to make puppets for all the missionary kids, Christmas cards (and one of my teammates made Christmas wreaths), and now I’m started on curtains. Something beautiful out of scraps and rubbish.”

Katherine is serving as a nurse at Bet Eman:His House Of Hope.

By Nicky Robinson, South Sudan 2012

In 1994 my husband and i were thrilled to welcome our first child into this world. With a lifelong love for children it was a great joy to me to be a mother. By the end of the following year my marriage was in pieces, as was my heart.

One of my greatest fears was that our son, Joel, would be irreparably harmed by our family collapse and it became my life mission to pray for him and see him come to know, love and serve the Lord as a whole young man. It was a long spiritual battle and hard for me. God has been so very faithful over the years. I had no idea what He had planned, which is why my Pioneers experience is so remarkable.

The Lord planted seeds in Joel’s heart and from the age of about 13 he increasingly discovered a desire to experience life in Africa. In 2010, at the age of 16 Joel was baptized. The following year he met the Pioneers team at the Parachute Music Festival. He took to the director, Jamie, instantly and was delighted to finally find a mission body that could accommodate his gifts and interests. Within months Joel was embarking on plans to spend a gap year in 2012 in South Sudan. I was thrilled and eager to support his vision. Little did I know that God would also call me to that part of the world!

I have always loved travel. From 20 years of age, having spent a life-changing 16 months in Asia, Europe and the Middle East with Operation Mobilisation, I had retained a deep seated desire to serve again one day in international cross-cultural mission. That had long been on the altar as I had committed myself to raising my son. What a shock and incredible joy to discover I would be encouraged by Pioneers to go too. Confidence that the finance would be provided grew and Joel and I found ourselves heading off to another world. I was incredulous at such a gift, both afraid and excited at the anticipated adventure.

In January 2012, after celebrating Joel’s 18th birthday in Nairobi, we arrived in Yei, South Sudan. It was the middle of their dry season, the hottest time of the year. At 40+ degrees, with dirt roads and living without plumbing or easy access to safe drinking water and with minimal electricity, we spent the first couple of months adjusting to a drastically different world. We were living separately and everything was foreign, from the food (we both lost weight rather rapidly), clothing, native language, climate, customs and culture.

I worked at the Yei Teacher Training College and lived on the campus with African staff and one other expat; a Swiss tutor. My role was administrative and varied depending on the need. It included a complete revamp of their website, developing some human resource systems and capacity building for a couple of their staff.
I assisted in small ways by contributing spiritually to staff and students at devotions and Bible studies. There were frustrations for me with frequent Internet problems and a keen awareness of my own inadequacies, but I took to the challenges with a relish, determined to grow and be a blessing.

Approximately 80% of South Sudan is illiterate and so the training of indigenous teachers by the Sudanese themselves was something I loved being a party to. The 200 students and a number of staff live on site and come from throughout the nation’s ten states. Most are under tremendous financial hardship.

The interactions between the staff became a great delight to me and I especially loved the times we would sit together under the abundant mango trees and share stories and laughs.
I grew to love many of them and although my stay was only for 8 months, I miss them very much now that I’m back in Kiwiland.

There were many rich experiences in Yei, both good and difficult, all of which contributed to an incredibly rewarding year. The Sudanese are a people who have suffered so much yet are remarkably quick to smile, laugh and share the little they have. They have taught me a great deal and retained a piece of my heart. May God bless South Sudan.

Photos: YTTC Class (top) / Nicky at work / With YTTC Journalism students / With Suzi, Dora & Rachael.

By Simon & Eleanor Stevens, Fiji

Our names are Simon and Eleanor stevens and we are based in Timaru, New Zealand. We are in our mid 50s and have a grown up family of 5 kids aged from 26-31 and 3 grandsons aged 6 months – 3 years. Simon is a builder, but like many kiwi guys he can do a bit of most things, and Eleanor is a registered nurse and presently works as a staff educator at a rest home complex.

In 2006 we did our first missions trip and spent 6 months in SE Asia living on the fringe of a red light district, working with former prostitutes as they learnt new skills and a new way of providing for themselves and their families. We returned to NZ with certainty that we should be working overseas for God and started making plans, and getting our life and finances in order, so that we could head away again.

Most people who feel called to work “abroad for the Lord” seem to have a sense of calling to a particular place or people group – whereas, we don’t. What we feel God has called us to do is to be a mission support team, working alongside long-termers to help them out for a period of time in whatever capacity they need. They may need a break and need someone to take over for a short time, or they may just need an extra pair of hands, or someone to give them some encouragement. So, for 5-6 months each year, we are available to go wherever we are needed.

Last year (2012) we spent 5 months on a 10-acre property in Momi Bay, Fiji. If you can imagine a Christian campsite with dormitory accommodation, outside toilet and shower block and a large kitchen, none of which is finished, you will have a bit of an idea of where we lived and worked.

The “farm” had a variety of animals – pigs, sheep, goats, hens, meat chickens and a large fish farm. It also had a variety of fruit trees, and other plants growing in an aquaponics system. Each weekday, the building resounded with young voices singing and quoting bible verses, as 25 four and five year olds from the surrounding villages arrived to attend kindergarten.

The purpose of the property was to provide a ministry to the surrounding community, demonstrate sustainable farming on a small property and provide assistance and training for others who wanted to try to earn a living from their few acres of land. The young American couple who had established the property were rapidly “browning out” and needed a break, so we were able to step in and lift the burden a bit.

Our tasks, while we were there, were numerous and varied, but the main ones were to complete the buildings (as finances permitted), help with the kindergarten, look after the animals and determine the viability of the various projects. We were also responsible for overseeing and encouraging various teams who came for short-term missions trips from a variety of countries but mainly USA and NZ.

As these teams had between 3-16 people and stayed 10 days – 3months, our “family” size ranged from 5-35 people living on the property. For most of the time we also had a lovely Fijian Indian girl living with us, who came from a very abusive family. She was a solo mum of a gorgeous little 2 year old boy, and we were able to demonstrate to her what it was like to live in a Christian family, where people loved and cared about each other.

It sounds wonderful; living in Fiji, on a farm, while other New Zealander’s suffered the winter at home. However, it wasn’t always wonderful! We had limited tools and equipment and most of them were broken; the electricity came and went without any warning; there was no hot water and no modern conveniences like washing machines. People didn’t always get along, and Christians didn’t always behave in a Christian way. But, we were where God wanted us to be, and by making ourselves available to him people’s lives were touched and changed.

We are just ordinary people like you – there is nothing special about us. So many people have said “I would love to do what you are doing”. Our response to them is always “If that’s what God is calling you to do, then just do it!” Most of our non-Christian friends just think we’re a little crazy. We could be spending our pre retirement years living comfortably, building up assets, earning money and spending time with our children and grandchildren. But, God has other plans and has called us to “make our lives a living sacrifice” by serving others.

This year we are heading to Thailand. At the end of March we will leave our jobs once again, pull out our battered suitcases and pack the bare essentials for another 6 months away with the Peterson family, also with Pioneers, this time they’re Kiwis. We don’t know what is ahead of us, but we know the one who does. So with servant hearts, flexibility, patience and a sense of humour, we will head off into the unknown.

Abdelkader* was a student from a neighbouring Arab country, living in Beirut. One night he had a dream. He saw a man that he knew was Jesus tell him to become his follower. Scared and confused, Abdelkader began searching, trying to understand what had happened to him and to find out more about Jesus. He found the Maarifa mobile site and read all of the New Testament on his phone. A longing grew to share with other Jesus-followers, and he finally contacted us. At first, he was fearful and asked that his correspondence be in strictest confidence; but soon he agreed to meet with some local believers in Lebanon.

When Abdelkader met a follow-up volunteer, they had a wonderful time together. (Abdelkader was rejoicing and said he really wanted to grow in his newfound faith.) They began meeting twice a week to study the Bible, and soon Abdelkader was attending church regularly. Now he is happy to finally be in fellowship with others like himself and has asked to be baptised.

Next comes a challenging message from a young Algerian woman. How would you respond?

More stories like this can be found on AWM’s website.

A good number of our response and follow-up team workers are Arab world believers themselves, so they have a good grasp of language and, even more importantly, they know just what it means to follow Christ in a Muslim-majority country. Give thanks for them!

Please remember to pray that Muslim background believers would be discipled well and integrated into fellowships, where possible. This is what we long to see!

*Indicates that a pseudonym has been used