Creekbank Stories Curt Iles, Storyteller
Drop by our updated website and learn more about how God is working among the Unreached of South Sudan.
You can also sign up for our monthly prayer letter on our home page .
We serve on the Chadan Engagement Team
Engagement is the process of reaching Unreached People Groups through Engaging and Connecting them with both American and African churches.
How you can pray
Current major prayer needs:
- Peace for South Sudan
- Training of leaders in newly planted churches.
- Dry Creek Baptist trip to the Kakwa this week (Gordy, Colleen, and Brady Glaser).
I Stand Amazed
“My Father is always working, and so am I.”
-Jesus in John 5:17
We stand amazed daily.
Really.
Amazed at the creative ways God is working all around us.
I’ve been trying to notice and record all of these “coincidences”* and events.. I tell DeDe that we’re two old people stumbling and bumbling around Africa and in the midst of our shortcomings, God keeps linking up us with the right people in the right places.
*I’ve always believed that “coincidence” is a cuss word in the Christian vocabulary. It has no place. No such thing!
The numbered bubbles above illustrate how God is always at work.
Bubble 1: “MaMa Pearl” is the name of our 1996 Toyota Land Cruiser. It gets us to the difficult places where the unreached are.
MaMa Pearl (named after my precious grandmother Pearl and Churchill’s statement that “Uganda is the pearl of Africa”) was bought with gifts of love through folks like you through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Thank you! Learn more at www.imb.org
Your giving through Baptist Global Response allowed a Kentucky Baptist Disaster Team to visit and assess the needs of the South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda. You can give directly to BGR’s projects in South Sudan at https://gobgr.org/projects/project_detail/south-sudan-crisis
You can be involved in BGR Projects like this.
Bubble 2: Adeit. The gifts allowed us to meet a young girl named Adeit. We met her at Alere Refugee Camp near the Nile River.
This photos reveals all you need to know about Adeit. Her sweet smile outweighs the fact that her left foot is crooked..
Bubbles 3, 4, and 5; Local church leaders Joseph, Savior and Margaret began ministering to Adeit and her family. They led them to personal faith in Jesus through the bridge of friendship and concern for Adeit’s handicap.
Pastor Joseph Anvoyi praying at borehole site.
Bubble 6. UBS: Our Uganda Baptist Seminary is where Joseph, Savior, and hundreds of other national church leaders are being trained. Once again, your support of our organizaiton makes this possible.
Bubble 7. Alere Refugee Bapist Church, where Adeit and her family now attend, is a melting pot of Dinka (Adeit’s family), Nuer, Madi, Kuku (Margaret) and more people groups.
Bubble 8, 9, and 10: Joel V is an American doctor with Samaritan’s Purse. He’s an alumnus of our organization’s refugee camp work a decade ago. During a recent visit, he told about CoRSU hospitial near our home.
I asked, “What do they do there?”
“Rehab work on children.”
“What kind?”
“Things like club foot and deformities.”
“What does it cost?”
He explained that the cost was for transportation and lodging only and any surgery was free.
I couldn’t get Adeit off my mind. Everytime I opened my computer, her smile seemed to pop up.
Because of the work of Pastors Jose and Savior, a miracle began: Adeit, her mother Rebecca, and Guardian Angel Margaret (who served as translator) traveled by bus to the hospital.
Two weeks and two surgeries later, Adeit’s foot is facing forward.
Adeit will return in June for more surgery and some tough rehab.
I believe her Dinka resilience (and stubborness) will serve her well. We fully expect to see her running footraces.
We visited her Camp last week and were thrilled to see how her journey is touching the entire community for the Gospel.
All this is possible through our Chadan Team, whose focus is on the Unreached Peoples of South Sudan and southern Chad.
Due to the war in South Sudan, we’re going to where thousands of South Sudanese have fled: the refugee camps along the country’s borderlands.
Adeit’s Dinka tribe is one of our priority groups.
We really do stand amazed at how God weaves things together to bring glory to his name as well as good in the life of a girl with a straight smile and crooked foot
Her name is Adeit.
God is changing her life, the lives of her family (kin from South Sudan came down to see her “miracle foot”) and even the spiritual temperature of Alere Refugee Camp.
He’s the one doing it.
We have the privilege of simply telling what we see.
And we stand amazed.
Lord, help us see how You are always at work around us. In Jesus’ name. Amen
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”
-Genesis 28:16
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Pews at Ulua 2 Church Plant
We need your Passionate Prayer like never before:
- Pray for the twelve potential church plants in Adjumani and Koboko Camps.
- Pray for the needs in the northern Ugandan refugee camps: Adjumani, Rhino, and Koboko. We are soliciting folks like you to adopt a camp, camp leader, local pastor, or people group. Contact us at deaniseiles@gmail.com if you’d like to pray for a specific need.
- Pray for upcoming projects in the Camps including boreholes (water wells) jerry cans, birth kits for pregnant women, and the needs of the most vulnerable. Pray for Baptist Global Response and give athttps://gobgr.org/projects/project_detail/south-sudan-crisis.
- Pray that we’ll know how to approach these camps with the balance of meeting human needs while remaining focused on the life-changing Gospel of Jesus.
- Pray for our Engagement Leaders, Bob and Nancy Calvert, as they train and disciple within the camps as well as parts of South Sudan safe enough to enter. We need wisdom!
- Pray for wisdom on when and how to return into South Sudan for Engagement work.
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Kurt, the story “I Stand Amazed” reminds me of several instances in our life when Malcolm would exclaim, “Don’t you love it when God ‘dovetails’ things!” When asked for an explanation, he’d tell how in woodworking (which he loved), the dovetail was the strongest way to join things together because it created a much larger surface area for the glue to hold. (Look at a drawer in well-made furniture. It gets jerked on and shoved over and over for years, yet remains firm and stable.) When we are in an impossible situation and see no possible solution, hold on – God is forming the dovetails! When they are joined together, they involve a much larger area than just my little problem. And they always fit perfectly and are firm and stable!
Now when folks talk of “coincidences”, I translate that to “God’s dovetails”.
Carolynn Sharp
Merryville, Louisiana
Thank you Carolyn.
That story will “preach.”
Love,
Curt