As we fly over South Sudan, we are treated to a stunningly marbled landscape of greens and browns, speckled with trees and an occasional village or homestead marked with the unmistakable round thatched roofs. The rainy season has not long been over, so the rivers that snake their way through the land are full of water. Even though I have flown this route many times before, it is still strange to me how familiar it feels. I once called this land home, and it still holds a piece of my heart.

I am leaving South Sudan in a Cessna 182 after having spent a short time with the Cush4Christ team and the South Sudan Community Churches in the Aweil region. This was one of the RP Global Mission Board’s biannual visits to South Sudan. Pastors Vince Ward and David Hanson made up the two other members of the visitation team.

The Workers Are Few

This visit seemed particularly critical, as the team is in the midst of a great transition with lingering questions about the future of the work in South Sudan. For years, the team has been without a teaching elder on the field full time. The Faris family, who have been in South Sudan for 11 years, are coming back to live in America in May, making the need for new workers all the more urgent. And, while we were there for this visit, Joseph told us that he and his family will, at least for now, not be living in South Sudan, though he will continue to travel up from Kenya for periodic visits to continue to help with Weer Bei radio station. This leaves Scott and Jan, both working at Cush Christian School, wondering about the future of the team and this church-planting work in South Sudan.

As I leave this land I love with so many unanswered questions, I’m surprised to find that, though I do carry a heaviness because I know the burden the team is feeling, I am coming away eager and expectant about what the Lord is going to do in the coming months.

A Call for More Workers

At the RP Global Mission Board’s fall meeting, it was voted that we extend a call to Zach Smith and his family. He and his wife, Beth, have spent some time in South Sudan and had expressed interest in working there long term. We rejoice that they have expressed their intention to accept this call once Zach completes his MDiv program at RPTS as well as passing a few more presbytery exams. However, it is their strong desire to go with others. They are praying with us that God would raise up another family to go and serve with them.

Pray with us that God would reveal to us these co-laborers who would go and serve in the harvest fields.

Pray Earnestly

“When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’” (Matt. 9:36–38, ESV).

Looking down from this bird’s-eye view I see a vast land full of harvest potential. But the workers are indeed few. RP Global Missions for many years has been calling out to the RPCNA, asking for those who would go, and the Lord has not yet provided His laborers. But the eleventh hour is nearly here. Our Savior promised us that the Lord of the harvest provides laborers for His harvest fields when His people pray earnestly for the sending of laborers.

So, we beseech you to join us in our earnest prayers for these laborers.

• Thank the Lord with us that the Smith family has answered yes to this preliminary call to go and serve in South Sudan. Pray with them and us that God would supply co-laborers to go with them.

• Pray for others who may even now be considering whether they ought to go for a time to this land of harvest to train and equip this growing but still young church.

• Pray for the team that remains in South Sudan; pray that they would not lose heart in these times of uncertainty but would continue the good work they are doing with great faith in the One who molds their work into kingdom fruit.

• Pray for RP Global Missions as we look to the Lord to help us identify those whom God has equipped to go.

When you have prayed these things, pray again and again in earnest until our good Father has answered our prayers, trusting that His love for this work and the church in South Sudan is greater than our own.

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The Path

Walking the path from the compound where the training center, the radio station, and the school are to the compound in the neighboring village where much of the Cush4Christ team lives is always an adventure. Not only do you weave your way along a path with thorned fences on either side, marking off each of the many homes along the way, you also have to watch for passing goats and cows.

You never know whether you will be followed by a group of children gleeful about the ideas of what might happen while walking with a kawaja (white foreigner) or whether you will enjoy a rare moment of solitude, during which you can breathe in the peculiar beauty of the land around you.

My favorite times on this path, however, are when I end up walking with just one person with whom I can simply converse about the day. My Dinka and their English are typically too limited to go too deep, so we talk about school and church and cameras and where we are going at that particular moment.

Yesterday I was walking with a boy who remembered me from when I lived in his village of Parot. We reminisced about the people and events that were captured in our memories. I let him take a few pictures with my camera. He told me about his upcoming exams at school and asked me about where I went to church the previous Sunday.

On this particular walk I was reminded that mission work, in some ways, is not that much different than what we do at home. It is taking time with people, listening to them, talking about Jesus and His bride. In short, it is discipleship.

Pastor Lucas Hanna has been helping to fill the gap while we have not had a full-time teaching elder on the Cush4Christ team in South Sudan. He spends a lot of time in formal training with the men at the training center. But he often comments that some of his most fruitful time is the time he spends sitting with a pastor in his home or working with the family as they cultivate their fields. They talk about the struggles they have in shepherding their congregations; they share about how they are learning to lead their homes better in love or how they conduct family worship; they laugh and cry together about the joys and trials that make up this life.

Sure, at home you probably do not have to worry about finding a cobra in your yard, and the language and cultural barriers are not so great. But the basics are the same—go, baptize, and teach all that we have been commanded by Jesus: “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age’” (Matt. 28:16–20).

Notice the passage says, “but some doubted.” I have often pondered that phrase, and it has given me great comfort. Who of us does not doubt sometimes? Yet, even in our doubting state, God calls us to go. He did not wait until the disciples had it figured out. Jesus took them in their broken state and assured them that He would be with them and that the authority they had was from heaven!

Sometimes I wonder whether, if we took some of the mystique out of missionary service, more would be willing to go. Missionaries are not super Christians; they are willing servants, empowered by the Holy Spirit, walking (imperfectly) in the knowledge that Jesus is with them.

Jesus turned fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots into missionaries—not exactly the obvious choices. If a reasonably uneducated fisherman can be used by God to reach the nations, why not you?

Whether you can go for a few months or for 10-plus years, there may be a place for you to serve.

To find out more about potential opportunities, visit rpglobalmissions.org or email servechrist@rpglobalmissions.org.

Heather H. is executive director of RP Global Missions and a member of the Los Angeles, Calif., RPC.