Mission team departs

On Saturday, the mission team is on the way to South Sudan. We covet your prayers and support. Thank you to everyone for your support, your labor, rides to the airport, donations of aid to the community in Malual and your prayers. Thanks for spreading the word about our project on Facebook pages, with letters to friends, or inviting friends to join KLC. Approximately half of the funds raised came from outside the KLC “family.”

Going with the team is 600 pounds of humanitarian supplies. The tools and equipment to build the latrines and water filters, plus 175 little dresses and 75 shorts for children, hundreds of pencils and erasers, several pounds of undergarments (requested by the women of South Sudan). Three grain mills, twenty-two soccer balls, soccer jerseys, fifty pairs of reading glasses, dozens of children’s books, maps globes, and school materials along with dozens of pairs of shoes.

Because there are no roads in the area, we cannot send equipment by freight—everything had to be packed into checked suitcases for the airlines, and we’ll truck them ourselves.

If you’d like to pray along with the team members, the office has a list of team members, and a calendar of flights and activities—stop in for a copy!

How to follow along

We appreciate all those desiring updates from the field. Telecommunication is very difficult in South Sudan as it can only be done by mobile phone. We will call in to Jenny Morton and she’ll be posting updates for us in the following places. Team members will post while we’re in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, at the beginning and end of our trip.

To follow along, you can use any of the methods below.

1. Our Facebook page. This gets updated very regularly—sometimes several times a day with snippets of information, news, trivia, motivational quotes and news from the team. This is also the first place photos go! Find us at www.facebook.com/klcsouthsudan. You must join Facebook to see updates (free).
2. The Blog: www.klcsouthsudan.blogspot.com. Photos and news get posted here on a regular basis. You can also see a news ticker with news from South Sudan from twitter on the right hand side. You can also find the local time there.

3. The Mailchimp account. If you forget to check Facebook or the blog, you can get the latest news delivered to your email box! http://eepurl.com/fxi_c
4. Check the bulletin board at the church. Just outside the restrooms at the church is a bulletin board with all the information about the team’s latest activities.

Important Dates

The team leaves Seattle on Saturday the 25^th, and arrives in Addis on the 27^th. After a few days to acclimate to the time change, the team flies to Gambella, Ethiopia on March 2, and will travel to Malual on March3, and should arrive late that day. On March 17, the team will travel back to Gambella, and most of the team leaves Addis on March 20^th arriving in Seattle on the 21^st. Some get back the 24^th and 30, and five more are staying through April.

Hello! Thanks for Joining Us!

This page exists to share information about the South Sudan Community Restoration Project, a ministry of Kent Lutheran Church in Kent, Washington in the United States. More information will be posted soon, but in the meantime, here's the story of how we got started.

Kent Lutheran Church was blessed by the membership of a large group of Sudanese families in 2010. Their stories of war, relocation and living as refugees touched the entire congregation. Now, in the wake of Sudan's independence, many in our congregation hope to help with repatriation efforts, to assist those living as refugees around Africa, and the world to return to their homeland if they wish to.

Near-constant war since 1985 has left South Sudan's infrastructure in ruins. While refugees could technically return, they have no jobs, homes, clean water sources or schools for their children to attain any quality of life.

Our mission trip hopes to make repatriation possible for those who wish to return.

We have several goals for this trip, which may become the first of several.

WATER AND SANITATION
While surface water is abundant in much of South Sudan, and certainly in Upper Nile, water is full of bacteria, pollutants and parasites. The team will be installing biosand water filters which can eliminate every pollutant except for pesticides and salt from surface water. The biosand filters are very inexpensive and fast to build. They are also efficient--each filter serves approximately 70 people for between 25-30 years with very minimal maintenance.

EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH
The climate in South Sudan leaves many days "too hot" or "too wet" for school. Presently school and church meetings are held under trees for shade or shelter. Teachers are not available to students at this time, and students lack classroom materials and uniforms. Our goal is to build a multipurpose building which can serve as a church and school, and to provide the necessary implements for a successful school year.

JOB CREATION/MICRO-BUSINESS
Most of South Sudan's population is subsistence farmers, but we hope to establish a few microbusinesses as well.
Water Filters
We will be teaching people how to build the biosand water filters and leaving equipment to replicate the process in other communities to earn a living wage.
Sewing
With the abundance of surface water in the region, there is also an abundance of mosquitos. Malaria is a very serious risk and mosquito nets are a critical tool to survival. We plan to provide treadle sewing machines, mosquito netting and instruction to locally manufacture mosquito nets, keeping jobs local, and costs low to enable more people to buy nets.

*Early estimate last updated 6/2011.