January 2024 Newsletter
Happy New Year!
As we celebrate the New Year, we thank God for YOU our partners and supporters. It’s because of you we are now going into our 25th year of serving in Tonj, South Sudan!! We are so grateful for the way you supported us in prayer and partnered financially with the vision of In Deed and Truth Ministries. 2023 was a great year and also a very fruitful one! We started the year praying for a bible school and closed the year in such a positive way, officially opening the Tonj Bible Institute building!
Here’s a recap of how the Lord used us in 2023 and impacted an entire community for the Kingdom of God.
In 2023, our Maternal and Pediatric Mission Hospital treated over 46,000 patients, a 15% increase from 2022.
We saw over 10,800 pregnant mothers, an increase of 1,300 since 2022. We delivered 803 babies in a safe environment, which is a growth of 23% from the year before.
We vaccinated thousands of children and cared for 2,662 inpatients who were admitted to our ward, which is almost 1,000 more than last year. Many of these were premature babies in need of oxygen and an incubator. This huge increase is why we need to build a second ward. The cost is $70,000, please pray we can do this in 2024. IDAT is the only hospital in Tonj with incubators and oxygen, rabies vaccines, snake anti-venom and x-ray.
Our 24-hour care literally saved hundreds of lives physically, but we also poured into each patient spiritually, making sure every patient was prayed for and heard the gospel. Many prayed to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior before going home or being discharged from the ward.
CHE!
Our Community Health Evangelism (CHE) program has reached 70 villages in and around Tonj. CHE continues to impact and transform these villages through health lessons and evangelism.
In those 70 villages, we trained 3,150 CHE volunteers who made 64,283 home visits teaching people about Jesus. As a result, more than 11,000 people made decisions to follow Jesus; 5,352 people joined our bible listening groups, 25 village schools were started, 51 CHE community gardens were planted, 9 boreholes were drilled to provide safe drinking water and our village medical outreach teams treated and vaccinated over 13,000 patients! These numbers are more than double from the previous year and we are excited to continue to expand our CHE program to reach 100 villages in 2024!!
“You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ.”
Hebrews 3:13-14
Church Plants!
Thank you for praying for our church planting ministry, for sponsoring pastors, and for helping us build our bible school so we can equip more people to share the gospel. We currently have 35 church plants, and 45 pastors, some still in need of sponsorship. Through those church plants, we welcomed 5,000 new believers into the family of God, baptizing 1,500 of those new believers in 2023. To sponsor an IDAT pastor go to: https://pastors.indeedandtruth.org/.
We ended 2023 with 1,300 youth from across our church plants attending a conference and Samaritan’s Purse completing 562 cataract surgeries and opening our bible school! Not a bad year!!