When We Feel Helpless

A young man who has attended the same church as me is wrapping up a half-year mission trip with YWAM (Youth with a Mission) in East Africa.  On May 10^th, he posted some information on his blog about an isolated village in South Sudan where he and members of his team spent a few days.  They traveled 18 kilometres along a narrow path through a jungle, carrying all their supplies, including food and construction materials.  When they arrived in Isore (pronounced I-sorry) they found a terrible situation.  This village has no proper sanitation, no clean drinking water, no medical clinic, no market and no church.  The children have “school” only when the teacher shows up.  The teams’ purpose there was to add on to a partially constructed building that was to serve as a school/church and to construct a system for collecting rain water.  The majority of the village’s men are continually drunk and an air of depression hangs over the community.

   When I read about Isore, I felt a burden to pray for a permanent outreach to these people so obviously needy—an outreach that would address their material needs as well as their spiritual needs.

   Then yesterday, I discovered how this prayer, multiplied by others, had been answered.  Here are the words from this front line worker:

“I prayed and so did our team that someone would come to this area long-term.  The idea seemed unrealistic and even impossible as the place itself is almost completely segregated from the known world and to the few who do know about Isore, it isn’t very desirable.  And still who would be able and willing to fill the need of such a place?  I few weeks later when we were in Arua, Uganda one of the men we had worked with in South Sudan told us that miraculously a man had come to Isore and had begun to pastor the church there.  This man had apparently grown up in Isore but left for education, and years later God called him to go back and pastor the church.  A week or so later we found out that the church had already grown to 70 members with pictures to prove it-people giving their lives to Christ and worshipping in a church with no walls, no benches, no pulpit, nor anything of the like.  Absolutely incredible.  Within weeks our prayer had been answered and God’s kingdom expanding even to such an unreached community.”

   We can feel so helpless, but that’s when we go to the Father.  His compassion is infinitely greater than ours, and his providence can do the “impossible.”

If you'd like to read the whole story for yourself, go to YWAM blog