Orphans.

One of my greatest passions is to see the church rise up and fulfill its calling to care for the widows and orphans. We are reminded many times in the Bible that this is of the utmost importance to the heart of God; in Deuteronomy, God commands His people not to “deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice….”(Deut 24:17) Likewise in the Psalms, God is described as “A father to the fatherless, a defender of the widows…” (Psalm 68:5). In Isaiah God tells us that we are called to plead the case of the fatherless and defend the widows, likewise James tells us the true religion is to care for widows and orphans in their affliction. You really don’t have to go very deep into the Bible to discover that God strongly desires to protect those who are helpless, and it only stands to reason the He would expect that same passion from the church that He purchased with His blood. Recently, I was talking with John about the vision for his ministry, I asked if anything was being done for the orphans here in Baliet. John said that before the war, there was no such thing as an orphan in Dinka culture because the extended families would always take them in, now however, because entire families were wiped out by the fighting, the orphans have been left to fend for themselves in record numbers. The lucky ones are able to find a home with an extended relative; however, because life is so difficult here in Upper Nile they often go hungry because the food is needed for the family’s own children. Some children who cannot find a stable home have literally been purchased from their extended families by and sold into slavery in the north, while others just roam from house to house, begging until they starve to death. As John told me more, my heart simply broke for the plight of these kids. We both decided that this is something which we can no longer ignore. The leadership of Baliet Baptist Church has really stepped up to the plate in regards to these kids, and they have really taken the initiative to start a home for these kids. The really cool thing about this children’s home is that it will be a completely Sudanese project, with limited involvement by Kawajas. In fact, it was the general consensus of everyone to wait until after I left to begin building the homes on the church’s plot of land, in order to send a message to the church and community that this project belongs to the Sudanese Christians. John and I are praying about how to best support this orphanage, one possibility is to purchase a small boat to begin a fishing business on the Sobat river which would help to provide food for the children…as the old saying goes…give a man a fish and he’ll eat it in a day, but teach him to fish and he’ll never go hungry. In the meantime, please be in prayer about the possibility of finding sponsors for these children. School is free here in Sudan but there are basic things the children would need. The church plans to begin cultivating land to provide some of the maze for the kids to eat. As it stands right now the cost of sponsorship should be around $45-$50 per month (per child), this would cover the basic needs of the children, and also help to support a widow from the church who will be responsible for taking care of them.
Please join me in prayer about this, if you feel the Lord leading you to join us in sponsorship or have any further questions, feel free to send me an email at museandco2005-joshua@yahoo.com
Sincerely,
Miriyaal Musa (aka Joshua Muse)

Update from Baliet!

Salaam y’all,
Well, it’s hard to believe that my time in Sudan is almost over, because in just a few weeks I will be returning home, my how the time flies! I just wanted to keep you guys informed on how things have been progressing here in Baliet. It is the rainy season and the mud has limited my ability to travel, so unfortunately I will not be able to complete the full survey of Upper Nile. I am praying about the possibility of returning over the Christmas holiday to survey the northern counties up to the border of North Sudan. This would enable me to establish connections with church leaders in these counties who have a heart to reach their people, it would also provide John and me with an opportunity to conduct a training session for those leaders. There is a great deal of disunity among evangelical churches here in Sudan, but when these men are able to come together in the spirit of truth and unity, the door is open for productive discussions about strategy for reaching the lost. Please pray for Biblical unity among the leaders of Upper Nile.

John was expressing to me the other day that one of the major problems for the church here Sudan, is that pastors, who are educated, do not want to stay in the villages where living conditions are bad (John lost his first child because of unsanitary water) so they leave to get good paying jobs with NGO’s in Malakal, or Juba and leave their church in the hands of an elder or deacon. These elders and deacons are mostly farmers, or fishermen, and have not had any kind of training whatsoever about how to study God’s Word, in fact what I understand most of them are not even able to read. But the more I talked to John about these men the more encouraged I became, because truthfully they sound a lot like Jesus’ disciples. Just ordinary guys, who love the Lord and love their people. In fact, as I was singing and fellowshipping with these men in the training, it occurred to me that if Jesus were walking around in Sudan today He probably would not go to the big cities to find “educated” pastors, instead I think he would be roaming the “backwoods” villages in Upper Nile looking for men like these guys. After all He already proved once that He could turn the world upside down with just a handful of fishermen, tax collectors, and a terrorist (Saul/Paul) so I’m pretty sure he could do the same thing through these guys here in Sudan. After all, God doesn’t call the “qualified” He qualifies the called. He is raising up some mighty warriors here in Sudan!
Sincerely,
Miriayaal Musa (aka Joshua Muse)

Elijah, and the Sudanese Pastor

Over the years I have heard many incredible stories about times when God steps in and intervenes on behalf of His people in miraculous ways that show His wonderful power, one such example occurred during the war in South Sudan in the region called Bor. The area was one of the last remaining Northern strongholds in South Sudan. A detachment of SPLA soldiers under the command General Kual Monyang were ordered to assault and take the fortified city by any means necessary. General Kual, being aware of the strength of fortress as well as the fact that his SPLA troops were outnumbered decided to test perform a test to see who was more powerful….the God of the Christians, or the witch doctors. So before he attacked the city he called the all the witch doctors in the area together and told them that they had three days to call upon the demons to drive the northern soldiers out if the city, and if they failed he would have them killed. So the witchdoctors spent three days making sacrifices and pleading with the spirits to intervene on their behalf, but after three days the northern troops had still not left. So the General called on a local pastor and gave him the same ultimatum. Three days, call on your God and see if he answers. The pastor called all the elders from his church together and they decided that they would step out in faith and go with the soldiers to attack the city. So the next day the Christians arrived at the SPLA camp beating drums and singing praise songs. The pastor told the general to trust the battle to the Lord and He would grant them victory. So immediately the General commanded his troops to accompany the Christians into the battle. So off they went singing praises and banging on drums and tambourines. They marched for 3 hours but when they arrived they discovered that the city had already been had been hastily deserted by the northern soldiers who had apparently become immensely frightened by a mighty army that was marching towards the city (even though it was a well known fact that the northern troops immensely outnumbered and out gunned the SPLA). God had won the victory! It is said now that the practice of witchcraft has almost completely stopped among the people of Bor, in fact according to John, most of the soldiers and surviving witch doctors decided to follow Christ after that tremendous display of God’s power. When I heard this story, I kept thinking of the Biblical account of Elijah and his test to help the people of Israel decided between GOD and Baal.
Elijah set forth a challenge for the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, he told them to pray to their god and see if he would accept their sacrifices, the only condition, neither he nor they could use any fire to burn the sacrifices. The false prophets of Baal prayed for hours and cut themselves with swords and screamed and cried to their precious “god” to hear their prayers…Elijah on the other hand just sat there and laughed at them, saying “shout louder! Maybe Baal is sleepy and cannot hear you!” Soon when it becomes obvious to the people that these so called “prophets” were nothing but phonies, Elijah shouts out the bold and ridiculous command to pour water over the Lord’s alter along with the wood and sacrifice…enough water in fact that it fills the trench around the alter…I am sure that the people were thinking “what is he doing? He’s asking the impossible!” But Elijah knew the power of the Lord and simply prayed for God’s will to be done, and BOOM! Fire from heaven came and consumed the sacrifice, water, and alter! Elijah’s God had done the impossible!
Sometimes I wonder if the reason we don’t see the LORD work miracles like the ones performed by Elijah and this pastor in Sudan is simply because we fail to live lives where faith is required…we play it safe and ask God to protect us, but are we willing to boldly say and believe (like Elijah and the Sudanese pastor) that our God is more powerful than the “gods” of other religions, and he can prove it too! Or are we to afraid of what others might think, or our personal safety …I imagine most people thought Elijah was crazy, and the Sudanese pastor knew that he and his congregation would be killed if God didn’t show up. These men didn’t shrink from the challenge; instead they showed radical faith by giving God a chance to show his power! Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Christians in America rose to this challenge and started living lives of total dependence on God. I personally believe, based on His Word that the God of Elijah, Paul, Brother Yun, Abraham and this pastor from Sudan CAN, COULD, and WOULD show up in a mighty way is we asked Him!!!
In the words of Charles Spurgen “the world has not yet seen what God could do through one man, wholly devoted to Him.” My prayer is that Christians will begin to stand up and boldly declare who our God really is, but not just with words, the world is sick of empty words, instead, our words should be backed up by our actions and lifestyle of faith and as a result we be able to say confidently in the face of overwhelming opposition, “this is our God, just watch and He will show you His power!”

Perspectives on Luke 10:19.

Kudwal!! (Hello)

Well by God’s grace I have begun to have an identity here in the village. This morning as I went out and more people called me either Joshua or Mareyaal (my dinka name) instead of just Kawaja (traveler) as you can imagine this felt like a tremendous milestone in my quest to become part of this wonderful culture. People here in the village are very friendly and often want to come and visit so all throughout the day there are people coming and going from the hut where I am staying. As you can imagine this is truly wonderful in regards to learning the culture and language, but sometimes it is nice to just spend some time alone with the Lord, and usually the best way to do that here in Baliet is to go find a nice shade tree to sit under outside the village by the river. This particular morning I was having a wonderful time of prayer by the Sobat river, I had just begun re-reading a book called the Heavenly Man (written by a Chinese pastor named Bro. Yun) when a couple of boys came up and stood about 10 feet behind me. I turned my head to say Kudwal (Hello) and they kind of nodded and just kept standing where they were. I didn’t think to much of it and went back to reading my book. About 5 minutes later I heard a thump next to me and turned in time to see one of the boys ram a stick down a hole about a foot from where I was sitting. At first I wasn’t sure what he was doing until he started pointing to the hole and telling me, “snake, really bad snake!!!” Apparently I had been sitting next to a Black Mamba’s hole and had interrupted the snake’s usual pathway, and from what the kids were saying it had been stretched out behind me for the past 5 minutes or so. The kids (very wisely) didn’t want to say anything while it was behind me because they knew I would probably turn around and would get bitten. I thanked these very wise young men and decided to get back to the village. Afterwords I told one of the pastors what happened and his eyes got really big, he said “Joshua, God is really great! Last year we had lots of people die from snake bites here.”

I am extremely grateful that God has protected me, I couldn’t help but think of the verse, Luke 10:19 when Jesus sent out the 72 and told them that in His name they have the authority to “..trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” I am so grateful that the God who made that promise all those years ago is still more than able to protect his children today. Now I know what you are thinking, and no, I do not plan on going to that tree again for Bible study again…nor will I be out searching for snakes and scorpions to trample as that would take me beyond the realm of faith and into the clutches of stupidity. I do however, firmly believe that the same Lord who said that “I will never leave you nor forsake you” still commands us to move out boldly, without fear of the enemy, because the battle is in His hands!!

Now I don’t have a ton of time to write this but I just wanted to let you guys know how the leaders conference went this weekend. We ended up with around 35 leaders from different churches in Baliet and by God’s grace it was absolutely incredible…God just took over!!! I had my doubts about teaching this conference but my prayer was that every word that was spoken would be anointed by the Holy Spirit…and let me tell you, He showed up big time!! There were points when I was teaching on things like spiritual warfare, biblical leadership, forgiveness and evangelism that I was thinking to myself…oh my gosh, where is this coming from ha ha!! The Holy Spirit moved so strongly among these leaders that Sunday we just cut the lesson short and went out to share the Gospel around the village..I would say that about 80% of these people had never shared the gospel before, and these were the leaders of the local churches! Most of them have had no training and are just trying to do the best that they can, when they left to do door to door evangelism they were looked very nervious but they came back on fire with the Holy Spirit. They spent about an hour giving testimony and then we just started to worship and dance!! It was so beautiful!!!

Praise and Prayer: About 8 people have come to the Lord over the past few days. I am also planning to teach on evangelism tomorrow and friday both days we are planning on breaking up into teams to go and share the gospel house to house.

Cool story about how big God is.

Asalamu-alekum! (Peace be to you)
I just wanted to share a story with you guys about something cool that God did while I was in the capital of south Sudan (Juba) last week.
When I arrived in Juba last week, I discovered that there had been some confusion between the airline and myself they kept telling me that I needed to talk to one airline, and then that airline would say I needed to talk to another airline and then finally that airline said that no-one was even flying to Malakal this week, and proceeded to tell me to go down town to find the headquarters…all of this in a dialect of Arabic that I cannot even understand…so as I stood out in front of the airport wondering what the heck I was going to do, a tall Sudanese guy walks up and asks in perfect English if everything is ok? I told him that, I was having a little trouble with the airline and asked if he knew where the headquarters were, he said of course, “I’ll take you if you want.” So long story short he ended up being one of the Sudanese lost boys who had studied in Washington…so his English was flawless and he also knew someone at the airport who was able to arrange another flight for me…but wait, it gets better. You see after I said goodbye to him, and sat there waiting in the Airport a Chinese guy walks up and sits down by me and so being the shy, inward person that I am (lol!) I struck up a conversation with him in Chinese, which eventually ended with me sharing the gospel with him. He told me that his mother was a Christian and had told him the story of Christ many times but that he had not yet accepted…I said
“Chang, do you realize how hard God is working to bring you to Him. He loves you so much that he would bring me thousands of miles around the world, and then re-rout my flights just so you could hear about Him again” He, didn’t decide to follow Christ right then but he said that as soon as he returned home he would ask his mother to lead him to the Lord…I didn’t push him to pray now because I wanted it to be his decision, and also I think it would be better if his Mom could really explain the story again to him in Chinese. I left the airport and though that I might not even need a plane to get to Malakal God is SO GOOD!!!!
But that’s not the end of the story, oh no, it gets even cooler, you see the next day I receive an email from a friend who told me that God had woken her up at 1:00AM and told her to pray for me. I did the math and lo and behold she started praying right when I met that Sudanese guy who spoke such good English and kept praying right up until I had shared the gospel with my Chinese friend. Ha ha! Is God awesome or what!!!!
Some prayer requests for this week:
The language is coming slowly, I am beginning to be able to understand more and more of the conversations with the people. I hope to be semi-fluent before I leave; I know it’s a big request but we serve a pretty big God : )
I will be teaching a pastor’s and church leader’s conference this weekend. I will be teaching on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Prayer and spiritual warfare, and then I hope to have a time of brainstorming and prayer with these leaders about how to best reach the rest of this state with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please be in prayer that the Holy Spirit will move mightily among these men and that His anointing will be upon me as I share with these leaders.

A quick update.

I was able to access the Internet today here in Bailet at one of the NGO compounds in the village so I thought I would fill you guys in on some of the awesome things God is doing here. Baliet city is the capital of Baliet county in the state of Upper Nile. There are 12 counties in this state, and very few of them have been reached by the gospel.

One of my goals for coming to Sudan was to find out as much as I could about this region, and yesterday God gave me the opportunity to visit all the villages on the western side of the Sobat river up to the border of the next county. The terrain is very rugged with no good roads, and there are some places between villages that are unstable (politically) so the best way to travel is with the trucks owned by the SPLA soldiers which drive at crazy speeds (i think we were doing 90mph at one point!) There is nothing more fun than barreling down the road (which is really nothing more than a enlarged cattle trail) in the back of a truck filled with soldiers, all the while hanging on for dear life as the driver attempts to break the sound barrier, as you can imagine I am in my element : ) and to top it all off, I spent last night sleeping outside under the most beautiful canopy of stars I have ever seen, it was absolutely wonderful, and I am truly happy here.

I am hoping to leave Sudan with a fairly accurate survey of the needs (physical, spiritual, medical etc) of Baliet county and eventually the entire Upper Nile State. Pray that God allows me to get all the information I need for this.

I am progressing in my studies of Dinka and Arabic, it is frustrating sometimes because the language is so different from anything I have ever encountered before…but the villagers are very excited that I am trying and are even happier that I am living exactly like they do, sleeping in a hut, eating their food and drinking river water, (I am really putting my portable water purifiers to the test lol!) and praise the Lord I have not yet gotten sick.

Some prayer requests:

Pastor John and I are hoping to arrange a meeting with all of the church leaders here in Baliet. Very few of the churches are really preaching the gospel, but it is my hope that this will be a time of encouragement for these men and that the Lord will move mightily in this town.

I hoping to start a team of Sudanese prayer warriors who will commit to prayer walking and interceding for their village on a weekly basis.

I am truly grateful for you guys, your prayer and support have meant more than you know.

In the service of the King,
Joshua

Intro and Explanation of the Name

Hi Everyone,

  Well I finally decided to start a blog so that you guys (my awesome prayer team!) will be able to stay up to date on the great things God is doing in South Sudan.  I am planning to keep the blog updated during these next few months with prayer requests, and praise reports, so stay tuned!

  Just a little background on the blog’s name, Kawaja is the word for traveler/white man in Sudanese Arabic.  I became quite familiar with this word during my 1st visit to Sudan as children-who had never before seen such a pale white foreigner-joyfully ran out shouting “Sabah al-kheer Kawaja!!”  “Kawaja Inta kwayis” (White man how are you!!).  I am truly looking forward to returning to Sudan this week, and I cannot wait to hear those happy little voices shouting out ” ‘ello Kawaja!!”

Thank you for your prayers, I am truly excited about this new adventure with the Lord, and I am so grateful for your prayerful partnership with me on this endeavor.