Sometimes we feel discouraged spending endless days, months and even years not seeing what we think should be fruit as we stay faithful to the call to foreign missions.  Well, just a few weeks ago I was listening to an amazing story unfold told by a second generation missionary who is the mother-in-law to my friend around the corner who happens to be a missionary kid.  In a nutshell she is married to one of the sons of the woman telling this story.  So, I'll be quiet and let her do the talking.

"My parents were missionaries in Nigeria with Sudan Interior Mission when the Mission asked them if they would be willing to do pioneer missionary work in Sudan.  The year was about 1948 when my parents, Joe and Wilma Nash, arrived in southern Sudan with my 4 month old sister, Mary and me at 2 years of age.  We went first to Chali, where Mary Beam and Betty Cridland were living and overseeing the work.  This gave my dad a chance to go to Maiak and begin meeting some of the Hill Barun people who lived in the vicinity, and to establish some kind of living quarters for us.  It wasn't long before we were living in the thatched roof hut that had been build for us, very similar to the huts the people lived in.  The Hill Barun people had never seen white women or children before and very few white men.  So we were a novelty to them and they would run their hands over our hair and arms and just laugh.  They were a very friendly people and accepting of us.

The Hill Barun tribe numbered, I believe, about 2,000 at that time.  They did not have a written language.  They were animistic in their beliefs and farmers by occupation.  The primary crop they raised was guinea corn, and they also kept cows, pigs, goats and chickens.  They were very poor and one of the reasons for this was because after they hauled water from the Khor Achmar (seasonal river), and wove mats and grass necklaces.  They wore no clothes except for the men who covered their loins with a skin from some animal they had killed.  Once a year at harvest, they held a week-long dance in which they drank booming out the rhythm with some kind of gourd with long pipes, and worshipped the spirits.  The dance and the "music" was continual and I can still remember hearing it at night unable to sleep.  Demon activity occurred during this festival and the people were in great bondage.

My dad knew not one word of Hill Barun when he arrived at Maiak, but he did know a little Arabic.  A few of the men knew tiny bits of Arabic, as this was the language of trade in the south.  So a long process of learning the language started.  He employed a few men to help him as he painstakingly pointed to one object after another, and wrote down what he thought he heard.  It wasn't all drudgery.  Lots of laughter broke forth as mistakes were made, but little by little a pattern began to develop.  The next step was to make an alphabet for the language, and he used the Arabic alphabet as much as possible.  Then came primers, to teach his informants and some interested boys how to read their own language.  He also started putting some simple Bible stories in little books for them to read.  Finally, he was able to translate Mark into their language.

Many other tasks took up my dad's time besides language learning.  But all of these jobs also forced him to use the language.  My dad used to say he was a 'jack of all trades and master of none.'  One of the things he did early on was to teach them to make bricks out of the clay soil, using a homemade brick kiln.  With the bricks a simple 2 bedroom home was built with an aluminum roof & no ceilings.  The kitchen had a wood-burning stove to cook on & we eventually pumped water up from a deep hole in the Khor to a holding tank, so we could have water by gravity into the house.  The floors were cement & we had screened porches front and back.  My dad also did elementary medical work until a nurse from Australia, Elsie Redman, came to join us.  I can remember a picture of my dad pulling someone's molar with a pair of pliers & a little disinfectant to rinse out the mouth.  One day our nurse got stung by a scorpion & it was so painful we could hear her crying in the middle of the night.  So dad took her finger where she was stung & touched it to the battery in the truck, giving her a shock but somehow scrambling the nerve endings which stopped the pain.

Of course, my dad's primary objective was to evangelize & disciple the Hill Baruns.  This involved walking to their villages, spending time visiting them and trying to learn their ways and build friendships.  He taught them how to grow tomatoes & pawpaw (papayas).  He had a large garden himself, to help with our diet, & was thus able to pass ideas on to them.  My mother sometimes went with him & sometimes went with us girls to visit the women and work on her own language skills.  Soon we started holding meetings on Sundays in a little hut without walls (better circulation), teaching them songs, reading Bible portions & teaching them about the one true God.  Actually, they believed in the Creator God, and believed He was the One who gave them rain and sunshine and all good things.  But, they feared satan and his demons thus spent their lives trying to appease him so he wouldn't kill their children, spoil crops making lives miserable.  The message my dad preached was very appealing to them.  But they were also afraid.  I remember one man named Nanak, an older man and a leper, who received Jesus as his Savior.  My dad told him he would now go to heaven and God would give him a new body.  He was so happy & he died soon after that, cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

We went home on furlough in June, 1962 knowing that the missionaries were soon to be kicked out of Sudan by the Muslims in the north who ruled the country.  Six months later this happened.  My dad had a heavy heart because he only knew of a handful of believers by that time, & they were left to the wolves.  So much persecution and heartbreak followed in the years after that.  It was difficult to get news of what was happening to the Baruns and especially to the few believers.  Here & there we would hear of one or two who managed to get to Khartoum to the Bible School there.

My dad was quite depressed at times in his later years, feeling perhaps that he had spent so much time and effort with minimal human results.  I wish he could have seen, that we could have talked together about the amazing thing God is doing now in South Sudan.  I mean, maybe he has a better vantage point than I do now, from heaven.  But I would love to see his face, his joy to know that it was all worth it.

So what has God been doing?  Incredibly, in the last 2 months, the people living near the Sudan/South Sudan border have fled to nearby Doro, in S. Sudan because of persecution from the North.  Doro was one of the SIM stations near Maiak and Chali.  As many as 110,000 refugees have congregated on the local tribes people.  Most of these refugees are Muslim & they have have been hearing the Gospel because of persecution.  God has prepared 8 evangelists from Ethiopia to come into South Sudan to evangelize these people.  Not only the refugees but the local Uduks, Baruns & Dinkas and other tribes who live there have heard the gospel.  Translators were found from each people group to assist the Ethiopian evangelists who went out among the people night & day, telling the good news of Jesus & the life He gave to save them from their bondage and sin.  The churches in Ethiopia supplied the money to fly these evangelists to Sudan.  Sudan Interior Mission supplied the food and living quarters for them.  AIM AIR flew the SIM missionaries who were coordinating this mission from Nairobi to Doro, & also the Ethopians who went back after 6 wks of ministry.  SO WHAT WERE THE RESULTS?  Hundreds, no, at least 2,000 to date have accepted Christ.  I heard that when the Baruns heard the gospel, 44 accepted Christ on the spot.  They said that LONG AGO SOMEONE HAD TOLD THEM THESE THINGS, BUT HE LEFT.  Now their hearts were ready to receive the message.  I am weeping tears of joy as I write this, realizing how the soil was prepared & the seed planted so long ago, & in God's timing the fruit is being harvested.  Paul wrote that one plants & another waters but it is God who gives the increase.  In His time.  In His was.  Through the combined efforts of His people.  Praise His glorious name!"

In His love,
Ruth Nash Wagnell