Enthusiasm and Dynamics on the Ground
Shalom brother and sister in Yeshua, it is always a blessing to report back to you about the enthusiasm going on at ONMI mission work on the ground in South Sudan. Thank to you for your generosity for persevering with us in this rewarding and challenging opportunity to serve God's purpose on earth. February 2022 marked one year anniversary of ONMI core staff moving back to South Sudan after almost five years in Ugandan exile. Even though the men kept up the mission activities going on through those five years, bringing back the women and the children made all the difference.
Dynamics on the ground
Today, all three premises of ONMI’s three mission compounds are teaming with lives and impeccable activities, a clear predication of a thriving and vibrant community of believers in Yeshua coming along. Their arrival and taking hold of Bethlehem ONMI’s main mission headquarters by the country director and his family, triggered a massive influx of people returning to their home country in drove.
What was their motivation? They are motivated by us the church leaders taking our rightful places in society and not relegating the duty of reaching out to the weak and downtrodden to the government or the UN global social engineering. They are thankful that the church is leading the charge and making a presence in the country. It could have been unconceivable for any parent to drop their children off in a rule community once considered to be a dangerous war zone. But ONMI leading the charge in opening up these compounds to serve as launching pad and place of short term preparation for a long term, proved to be the missing key found.
Feeding time: Bean & Corn meal
Teachers working and eating.
children getting their food.
Children eating together
Computers Lab
Teacher Marking exams
Teacher doing online research
Students working together
8000 Kg of Sorghum
Farm staff
Teacher and students
Nechemiah field clinic
water points
water point
Medical Unit
Bricklayers
Bricklayers
Bricklayers
In the class room
Stunned by this transformation, ONMI’s upends its activities through your benevolent support. We put in place various infrastructures to address the needs of these families yearning for freedom to return home and take part in this impressive adventure of blazing the trail and chartering the course of wholistic approach to sustainable living from scratch.
This report will give you glimpses of the actual daily activities of how ONMI manage staff, and the Bethlehem Primary school children who have been studying at the school since April 7, 2021. Most of you may wonder what you are about to see is whether orphanage or what? Well, this is not an orphanage. This is our short-term strategy to work with parents of these children to keep them in the country from going back into the exile.
ONMI mission headquarters in Bethlehem has some basic infrastructure to accommodate the need of these children: water point, church, medical clinic, radio broadcasting station, electricity, some housing, and a place to go to school.
Physical education
Physical education
Physical education
Physical education
This is the Bethlehem Primary and Nursery School. Every child here is dropped off here by his/her parents, relatives, or legal guardian with few exceptions so that he or she can have Christian education with Biblical world view. We are practically overwhelmed by the number of drop off children at the mission. They are not only coming from the camps but also parents in Juba and Nimule already living inside South Sudan, are seeing the benefit of a Christian education base in the rural areas away from the busy city or town lives. Parents are seeing the negative impact that city life has on their children. Things are too expensive to educate your child in a city and country with inflation rate of 36.4 % which is about 5 times the inflation rate of USA to date.
Since most of the parents are still making their ways back home from exile, there are not homes to accommodate these children in their respective homes. Therefore, the Bethlehem Primary and Nursery school has effectively become a boarding school. Things are tough in term of accommodations and classrooms. We lack school desks and school Library and computer labs.
With bare minimum of resources from your Benevolent support ONMI leadership has been addressing the need of these children. The key factors here is creating a conducive spiritual and physical environment for these children to thrive. Sanitation is very important we keep the children fully healthy and hydrated with water facilities station throughout the mission compound where they can wash their hands, take bath, and use clean water for washing their clothing.
Beth Israel Farmland serve as source of food for security. It could be impossible to import all the food to feed these children from Uganda. The children have been being fed very well. February and January are both hot and dry season months but the children able to persevere through their studies because of availability of water in the mission center and food as well.
Nehemiah Field clinic has been very instrumental in supplying the students and the community with tropical medicine to deal with tropical diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, diarrhea, common cough, and headache etc. Thank to your support. It ensures that we have enough medical supplies to take care of the most basic healthcare of these children.
This week, we finally wrapped up the dry season harvesting at the Beth Israel farmland. We are so blessed by this harvest from last year’s cultivation. According to Pastor Timothy Levi, we only used one sack of Sorghum seed from last year and from that we harvested 10 tons of grain this is excluding corn, sweet potatoes, beans, and millet.
