Smiles across South Sudan

Most of the time, ministry work here in East Africa focuses on what is often unseen: the spiritual transformation occurring in the hearts and souls of people encountering Christ and his transformative redemption. Freedom from the bondage of witchcraft or the fear of impending judgment are the very real deliverances people experience through Christ. Our work focuses on spiritual matters such as helping Bible translators with their logistic needs, transporting rural pastors to a safe place to receive Biblical training, or perhaps moving supplies and church planters to the remote parts of South Sudan. All of this Kingdom building work is vitally important, as Christ calls us to be faithful in sowing and reaping the Harvest He is bringing into His Kingdom. But as we know, this Kingdom work is often without immediate visible results.

This last week I had the joy of seeing immediate change in people’s lives through physical healing. AIM AIR partnered with Samaritan’s Purse in their Cleft Lip Program based out of Juba, South Sudan. Thirty Samaritan’s Purse medical personnel were on hand to perform surgeries over a 5-day period.  As one of the pilots, my job was to fly into the remote areas of the country and pick up patients and their chaperones bringing them back to the capital city. Forty-eight hours later, the patients would be flown back to their villages with radically transformed faces and lives.

While cleft lips are quickly taken care of in Western countries, impoverished areas do not have the resources to perform such cosmetic surgeries. People with cleft lips are often shunned resulting in isolation and separation from their community. One patient who went for surgery was an older grandmother. In her community she was known as the ‘monster woman’. She went for the surgery as she only wanted to be able to hold her grandchildren without them being afraid of her.

Flying to the remote villages proved challenging in some locations as the Nile River flooding prevented people from being able to even get to the remote airfields. In one location, a dyke had broken causing flooding right up to the runway, but thankfully I was still able to safely land.

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Many of the people that I was picking up have never been in a vehicle, let alone an airplane before. Each person had to be buckled into their seats. All the things we take for granted when buckling into a seat since we’ve been riding in vehicles all our lives are not intuitive if you have never done it before. With hands placed firmly in their laps, you needed individually to lift each hand to bring the buckle around the waist, and often you had to even help them get seated straight in the seat so the seatbelt could be buckled. Thankfully, there were often coordinators on the ground who could speak the many local languages (64 tribes in South Sudan), who also helped with buckling and showing them the basics like how to use a sick sack.

As you can imagine, the flights were filled with electrifying excitement flying the patients to Juba as they flew over towns that they had heard about but were way too far to travel to. One older lady was not too excited about the window though. She refused to sit by it fearing that it might open while in the air.

I flew 28 sorties with 36 hours of flying over the 8 days. The landscape varied from wetlands flooded by the Nile River to arid dusty areas that hadn’t seen rain in weeks.

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One of my favorite flights was transporting this woman and her daughter back to their village.  She kept cheering throughout the flight so excited to return home. You see, her life was radically changed by her daughter’s surgery as well. She will no longer be the mother of the “shunned one” or the “disabled one.”

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It was overwhelming to see the reception that the community gave to the returning patients and families. During one reception my heart burst with joy to see a mother quietly kneeling down to present her one-year-old daughter to the women of the community. I wish my camera could have captured the moment adequately, but it will just have to remain in my memory as a gift from God to see such a joyous reunion.

Samaritan’s Purse has been performing these surgeries in South Sudan for 10 years. They have another surgery team scheduled to come in April. One thing that I did not get to see, but they told me about is the renaming ceremonies that will take place in some communities. For years these people have been called the “ugly one” or the “disabled one” by the community. With the radical change of their facial appearance a new name is given to the person. What a powerful expression of the physical transformation in their lives.

One evening the local missionary where I had flown to that day sent me a message saying that while the group I had brought in was being driven back to their village, one of them was overheard saying they would “never go back to the witch doctor now, after the amazing thing God has done for their children”.  Praise God that He is the one receiving the glory for their healing.

…one of them was overheard saying they would “never go back to the witch doctor now, after the amazing thing God has done for their children.”

The water surrounded this remote airstrip that is built up in the swamp land, giving it protection from the flooding. This runway, built with 5000 feet of murrum soil, is located in a swampy area with no buildings or infrastructure around it except a water-filled road leading to a town 3 kilometers away. After I landed, I could see the passengers struggling to get out to the runway, trudging through the swampy water to make it to the plane. My heart was filled with compassion to see them struggle, wondering how far they had come to make it to the airplane for this opportunity to have the needed surgery. Thoughts also flooded my soul about the abundance of material things I enjoy and the endless opportunities that abound in my life. I have so much, while some have so little. Upon their arrival to the airplane, I welcomed them through the help of an interpreter, giving them instructions about the flight and then we all prayed together, thanking God for this opportunity and asking for Him to watch over us on the journey to Juba.

Thank you, teammates, for being a special part of this work that Samaritan’s Purse is doing to minister to the physical and spiritual needs of those in need of cleft lip surgery. Throughout the week, 120 surgeries were completed bringing immediate physical transformation to the lives of these patients and families. AIM AIR was only a small part of this huge effort to minister to those in need, yet God used each one of you to make this huge team-effort possible. Thank you for your continued partnership as we work together to bring eternal transformation in the name of Jesus to those in need of Christ, like the woman who said they “would never go back to the witch doctor now, after the amazing thing God has done for their children.”

~Dan