Tragedy Rises and The Gospel Spreads in South Sudan

South Sudan has seen a year of economic tragedy, the country now faces a fiscal and a food crises, Christian Telegraph reports according to Mission Network News.

Dan Janzen with Pioneers USA explains that over the year, currency has been greatly devalued, leaving money about 1/5th of what it used to be. Prices and salaries have not adjusted accordingly.
Because of this, the country now faces both a fiscal crisis and a food crisis.
Much of the food consumed in South Sudan is imported.
Because value has dropped, not many can afford enough food for the entire family, and because of violence, organizations are having trouble getting food in.
“The UN is having a very difficult time getting food into that region because of the unrest or even shipments being absconded and taken to different areas and not reaching their destination,” Janzen explains.
Families are rationing meals by going from three a day, to two a day, or less. Adults and children are slowly starving.
With this cause-and-effect chain, education is also being negatively impacted. A number of children have had to drop out of school to afford food, have been separated from families to attend a boarding school in another country, or are too distracted by the hunger they’re facing to pay attention.
According to a report, “every single school that they were surveying said that the #1 problem for the children for their education was that they were hungry,” Janzen laments.
Illiteracy is also a problem in South Sudan. Only about 25% of the entire country is literate. For women who have been forced into marriage as young as 14, the percentage is even smaller: about 16%.
With this combination of factors playing into the crisis, along with the violence of the ongoing civil war and new sprouts of terrorism groups emerging, scores of people have fled the country, and families have been separated.
“There are well over a million displaced and refugees in these other countries and within the country, and more people are fleeing the country every day because there still continues to be unrest,” Janzen says.
How Pioneers wants to Help
Pioneers is on the ground in Bor, a populous town close to the capital of South Sudan (Jubha). Their location could not be better set, and Pioneers wants to use it to the advantage of the people and for God.
“We’re starting a new team there, and we’re recruiting people now to form that team,” Janzen says.

“We’d like to form an international, interdisciplinary team to do community health evangelism and also reopen two schools that have been given to us…. I think the education, having it locally, is going to be a big difference for the people because it will bring families back together.”
Pioneers want to provide education for even the poorest of the poor.
Both the schools and the community health will rest on the foundation of the Gospel. “Without our Christian worldview, you really are not going to have an effective change.”
Janzen gives an example of the corruption in the government. With unequal and unfair favoritism that runs the system, the people of the country are not receiving the truth or the help they need.
But, “justice and peace will drive the system when the foundation is laid on the Bible,” he says.
“Pioneers’ core values are about church planting, about an ethos of grace, and servant leadership, and so we’re applying those core values wherever we’re going and working with the local church.”
Pray for the South Sudan team and for new members to join. Pray for the end of the South Sudanese conflict, for provisions, and for the economy to stabilize.
Also, you can contribute financially and know you will be providing much-needed help to a desperate country.