Worship service has begun & testimonies from Pastor Jeremiah & Pastor John
Shalom to you my fellow co-labors in the Great Commission.
I hope and pray that this News mission report update finds you well in the Lord. I have been constantly updated in you on what is taking place in the South Sudan in respect to what God is doing through your generosity to propel us to press ahead with work of Operation Nehemiah Missions. The mission updated has been expanding for at least for a month. We have been peeling layer by layer reporting on different phases of repatriation, depicting South Sudanese believers and people from all walk of lives returning from exile to come home and rebuild their lives after four years in the Ugandan refugees
My trip to South Sudan is in less than 7 days from today. I need your continuous prayer and support for my family and ministry. We could not do this without your support. At the the bottom of this report, you will see where we are at financially. It is not yet too late to contribute toward the effort. of the $45,000 needed, we have raised $20,000. we still short by $25,000. Nevertheless, I say thank you for your support.
A moving testimony from Pastor Jeremiah
Here is a moving testimony from Pastor Jeremiah. It is important to hear firsthand account from those who are foot soldiers on the ground doing the work and thanking God for you in your support for this important work. You will love his passion and his heartbeat for the Lord. He was addressing Church leaders of South Sudan to take their rightful places in society and be counted. The church cannot run away.
Rebuilding South Sudan is an incredibly challenging progression. We are restoring a community from scratch both physically and spiritually. God is raising up the nationals to do the job.
He has caught the vision and the goal of Operation Nehemiah to rebuild a people and a nation from bottom up. We are not leaving the work to the UN (United Nations) and its proxies to do the job in pretext. Spiritual leaders of the church under our directives are rising to the occasion. They are rising and doing the work themselves.
Last Friday evening and Sunday Moring we had our first Messianic Fellowship at the Nile Beth Israel Messianic Congregation in 4 years. We were like dreamers and our mouths were filled with laughter instead of mourning. God has restored his people and the place of worship. Three of the pastors who came back, left in 2016 without pastoral responsibilities, but now they came back with pastoral authority to purge the land off diabolical grip of satanic corruption.
This is a biblical work literally taken out of out of Isaiah 61:4.” They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.”
During the last week of February, we focused on the arrival of the first 200 family heads and giving out tools and tents to help them get started in this current step they have taken to come home to rebuild their lives. Prior to that we reported on the renovation of the mission buildings, the mission clinic and reporting water points.
In the following weeks, we showed you the arrivals of ONMI staff and their families to take hold of the mission compound and serve their community., as we are exhorted in Romans 12: 1- 11
A Living Sacrifice
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Love in Action
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Pastor John Thon and Elizabeth: A love story between the bridegroom and his bride.
Sharing this with Pastor John Thon’s permission only so that you can pray for his community.
What do you do, when you are caught up in polluted and distorted worldly understanding of Biblical marriage and family and required to go along with it? What do you do, if the dowry involves cows and you have to go out and dare a raid on your neighbors’ cattle to achieve that goal because they took yours a year ago and you are a Christian? He has choices to go out with his clan men and settle scores in the field with opposing clan who killed 5 of his family members and took several family cows in a daring raid putting his marriage effectively on hold. This is not withstanding the threat from other men with a lot of cows wanting to get the same woman. But he said no to that and instructed his younger brothers not to do anything in his name to achieve this by shedding innocent blood.
Believers in Yeshua face different kind of persecution around the hostile world we live in everywhere you go. There are sets of trials facing us right here in America. But the choices are ours, how do we response to it biblically? We have the word of God and they do not. “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.…1 Peter3: 9-10
Pastor John Thon is somehow worried about this too. I told him, not to worry but pray for God’s will. Only God who assigns a woman to a man and vice versus. If she is meant for him, even 100 cows will not secure her to another man.
As Pastor Jeremiah and several of our national pastors are battling another spiritual and physical challenges in Eastern Equatoria State due to influx of hundreds of families returning from exiles, we have another spiritual challenge going in Rumbek, Lake state. There, we are facing a different set of challenges. Pastor John Thon is raised among a Dinka Ethnic group in that part of South Sudan. The Dinkas, a Nilotic group of South Sudan is the largest Ethnic community in the country. Like any other places on the planet, it is only the love of God, love for our neighbors and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is all we need to live on this planet in peace with our fellow men.” This is a high bar set for us.
Group of women who lost husband, brothers and fathers disavowed these raids. They want it to stop now.!
This is the summary of the entire 10 Commandments. This is the set of Messianic Gospel Message that went out of Jerusalem. Judeo and Samaria and to the outermost part of the world, Acts 1 and 2. 2000 years ago. Pastor John thon is part of this promise. God is using him as salt and light in his community in that part of the world. He has the option to mobilize his clan men to go out and raid their neighbors’ cattle and settle score in the field after losing 15 cows in 2015 to the opposing clans. This effectively put a hold to his marriage to Elizabeth, his fiancée He has been bringing the Gospel Message to his community plagued with cattle raiding. With several clans within the tribe who live 90 % of their livelihood on livestock. cattle rushing is one of the biggest threats facing Pastor John Thon’s community. Several factors could contribute to this: Dispute over grazing areas and water points to feed their cattle and finally settling scores on each other by young strong clan men going on raiding each other’s cattle. John and a group of Christian leaders on both sides of the opposing clans want to stop this conflict of cattle raiding because it brings so many destructions on both sides. Instead, they are sharing Yeshua’s message “Love your neighbor as yourself. Do not covet your neighbor’s property, His wife, His children and Oxen. Whoever practice this will find Peace and live-in peace with his neighbors because you are blessed to see them prosper. Cattle rushing is dangerous. It destroys community and divide good neighbors and friends. Bad for the country, especially among Christians. Women and children suffer the most once their husbands and fathers are killed in the middle of these chaos. Now a group of women, who have lost husbands, fathers and brothers in these raiding cannot take it anymore, so they took to the streets and into the neighborhood of opposing clans joining these Pastors to bring about true Biblical reconciliation among the clans.
