Church planting on one meal per day
As narrated by Bishop Elijah Arok

I have just come from the ICM School in Kitale where I undertake part time training in Bible studies. I am going on to Southern Sudan via Kakuma where we will be graduating 12 students of Church Based Bible School (CBBS) on the 9th of April. We plan to travel on to Lokichogio on that same evening where we will board a plane, God willing, to Panyagor on the following morning.

CBBS is a bit similar to ISOM but this one concentrates on leadership training among pastors unlike ISOM that deals with mission training. CBBS is a branch of ISOM. This is the first class which picked up in February 2005.

The purpose of going to Panyagor is two fold. The first is to establish a church there and then move on to Wangkulei and Wernyol in Upper Nile Region where we will also plant churches. I will be taking James Aguer Garang and John Khong De Duot with me. The two are from the Church Planting School. We had a house church there some time ago but that sort of went underground because of opposition. This time we are going to come out from the house churches to more established churches even under a different structure.

Fortunately or unfortunately, we can only establish temporal structures that are grass thatched since this are the only materials available. Getting a piece of land on which to put up a structure is not a problem but getting the materials is an extremely stretching experience, especially for someone who has been living in Kenya for quite a long time. The materials are available some three hours away from the location we have established. So that amounts to six hours walk to and fro to get materials. The situation is made worse because there is no sufficient food. The residents of the place survive on fish and animals because there has not been much of farming activities since the war. It is common for someone to survive on one meal per day. If you take a meal at two o’clock for example, you don’t get another one until the following day at about the same time. Eating more than one meal is considered a luxury. This situation is a challenge in the putting up of church structures because then you are expected to pay them in one way or another. Usually it is by slaughtering a bull or three to four goats. Otherwise we could pay them some amount of money in respect to the amount of materials they have gathered. One bundle of grass is equivalent to one hundred Kenya shillings. Kshs1000 is equivalent to 30,000 Sudanese money.

Other challenges that we expect are those of re-adjusting to a situation of little or no food. That becomes a big temptation when one is considering whether to such a place or not. We also have to adjust to trekking the long distances and doing what the rest of the people are doing. The only nearby market is expensive. They bring the food from Lokichogio and sell it at unaffordable rates.

We plan to train some pastors there and have them carry on the work that we establish there.

Muslims converted

After the ACMI celebrations on 28th –29th Jan 2006, Elijah Arok immediately left for a mission to Juba, Sudan, where Bruce Ministries International, Canada, invited him and a group of other brethrens to hold conferences and crusades for three weeks.

Two and a half weeks later, Elijah is back with a testimony of lives that came to Christ, and Muslims who were converted to Christian faith, “the people in the region said they were tired of being under the Islamic rule”, he reports.

During his mission, he also met with Justin and Robert, brethrens who had studied discipleship in Kakuma and they were willing to visit Kenya for orientations, then go to Sudan and plant churches.

Elijah plans to head to International Christian Ministries, school of Missions in Eldoret, after visiting his family in the same town.

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