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A Witness Among the Lopit
It started with wailing. That’s the Lopit people’s way of announcing a death, or that someone is dying. It’s a sound naturally unfriendly to the ears and—once one is acquainted with its painful meaning—equally trying to the heart.
My roommates and I quickly found the object of grief was Tito, the toddler son of our neighbor here on this mountainside in South Sudan, where we’ve been serving for a year and a half as part of a Training in Ministry Outreach (TIMO) team.
I’d never watched a child die before, and I was late to recognize this as my first experience.
Despite our best efforts, the listless little boy we tried so frantically to save was soon lifeless, fading slowly and quietly away in the arms of his mother’s friend. Upon his faint and final last breath, the women, led in chaos by Tito’s mother, heightened their wailing to a frenzy.
 I pressed my forehead to the ground in my own grief, and in my grief for the mother, and I listened to the bedlam around me.
They said Joik—the “bad” god—had taken him, because Joik was hungry. Animism and fatalism are twined closely around one another, and their words dug at me hard. Don’t they know how much hope there is in Jesus?
They said, “Oudo and Ifeja (my roommate and I) brought the medicine of Hollum (the Christian God), but He didn’t do anything.” But don’t they know He can? That this God we’ve been trying to tell them about is so powerful, He can?
In hearing what they said, I grieved not just for these women, but for all the “unreached” Lopit people. I grieved for the Gospel, so obviously rejected, falling on deaf ears.
And I was frustrated. Frustrated with my friends. Frustrated that they took the boy off an IV in the clinic to take him to the witch doctor. Frustrated that nothing we’d said or done had gotten through. Frustrated that they just wouldn’t hear the Gospel and see the hope in it.
In my frustration, I wondered ‘what’s the point?’
Every day here in Lopit, my teammates and I strive to be a living witness—though imperfect—of our living God. Every day, I want to give enough, to do enough. Each morning I wake up here in this village with the same Message—the Good News of eternal life in Jesus Christ. But, it seems, day after day in these mountains, that message goes unheard, unheeded.
And so I ask myself, “How can a person go on in ministry like this?”
The answer for me? In love.
Before I came to Sudan, as I was preparing for TIMO, I was surprised by how much love I felt for the people here. I recognized it as a love given to me by God, surely. How else can you love a people you’ve never met?
But, after I came to Sudan, when all that preparation was over and the reality of where I was set in, I was often surprised by how much, at times, I didn’t love the people.
Part of the thrust of the TIMO program is living in the villages among the people you’re trying to reach—living simply, in as similar a lifestyle to theirs as you can. But this is challenging.
It is difficult to love the people for whom my house is a 24-hour community stage, on which my white skin makes me a constant, yet not altogether willing, actor. There’s no backstage, and there’s no makeup to cover up when I’m tempted into frustration or impatience or anger or discouragement, or when I’m just plain tired.
It is hard to be patient and kind when there is no script to follow, no common ground, and so few words with which to communicate. How can I not be easily angered—and instead, love—when these strangers are yelling at me, demanding things from me?
A love completely in and of myself couldn’t withstand the throes of culture shock and the pressure of neighbors, observers pressed closely on every side, watching my every move. And, moreover, it’s no ordinary love that can survive a people turning away from the salvation your precious Savior died to give them, slighting the God you love and serve.
No, it wasn’t my love for the people that got me through the hard months. It was a love for God. Call it vertical love. I love God, so I want to love what God loves. And that includes these Lopit people, even when they seem so unlovely.
So for a while—and still at times—I had to rely heavily on that vertical love. But now God has blessed me with a horizontal love for my friends. That is, I love them simply because I love them, not only because God loves them.
And that’s not only why I press on here, but it’s also how my team and I can press on, regardless of the struggles and the lack of fruit.
I sat silently as night fell darker on the little compound. I took in the wails as they hit the still air. I looked at the faces of my hurting friends, and those of my roommates. I thought more about life and ministry here, and about my frustration. And I tried to cling to that vertical love and stir up the horizontal love.
As day flows into week, week into month, month into year and year into the termination of my TIMO term, I often ask myself—as I asked myself that night—“Can anyone love enough to endure ministry in these mountains?”
Sometimes I think the answer must surely be no. But, while perhaps my own love isn’t enough, I know Christ’s love certainly is. And though I may never be able to love enough to perfectly represent the love of my Savior, I can certainly love more.
As I left the compound and my friends that night, that’s what I committed to doing—loving more.
Slideshow: Images of Life in Lopit
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