Light Shining into Darkness

It's a gift to have the ability to impact the world in such dark places in our young stage of development. Right now two Missio Luxer's are in some of the world's most dark and dangerous places.

The first person is Arok Garang, our Sudanese brother who is one of our leaders of the Seeds of Hope Missio Community whose missio is to help get Sudanese orphans into boarding school, so that when they graduate, they can go back into their decimated village to help become part of the solution for making it a viable place to live.

Arok lives in Denver but he left in late May to go to Africa to do two things: first, to visit the children to check on their progress, encourage Gak who is their guardian in Kenya, and to check in with the boarding school to see how things are going.

Arok's second purpose is to return to his village for the first time since he had to flee as a young boy, forcing him to accept the title of Lost Boy, along with many thousands of other lost boys. Arok tried to return lto Pallyu last year, but the roads were too bad and he couldn't get there.

This will be a challenging trip for a couple of reasons: it is very dangerous in Sudan and it will be the first time that Arok has physically faced the reality of that day over 20 years ago when his whole village was burned, his parents were killed and he was separated from his siblings. We have been praying that he will not experience post traumatic stress syndrome when he first arrives.

The other Missio Luxer' who is penetrating the darkness of the world can't be named or the location disclosed because it is just too dangerous. But, one missio community has been praying for the whole year for God to open a door to this country and God heard their prayers and answered. She was invited to come by important leaders in the country and will be there long enough to establish relationship.

I am reminded to pray several times a day for Arok and the woman. I get a picture often of a very dark circle and them at the tip of an arrow as they live out the reality of John 1:5: "The light penetrates the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it."