By Fall 2023, 17 teams had been sent out to explore 11 different potential new mission fields since EFM’s Five-Year Goal launched in 2021. In November 2023, EFM made a commitment to launch 6 of the 9 fields that were still under exploration. Those six fields are now moving on to the pre-launch planning phases. See more information aquí.

A Luke 10 Pre-Launch Planning Trip occurs after EFM has made a decision of commitment to launching the mission field. EFM commissions Field Study Groups to complete a Pre-Launch Planning Report, which often requires further trips to obtain the details necessary for EFM to be able to deploy missionaries to a location to launch a new field.

In June and July 2024, a pre-launch planning trip took place in South Sudan. The following is a report written by team memner Matt Macy.

Who Was on this Trip & Where Did We Travel?

There were eight total on this team: six future missionaries and two missions-sending leaders, which included three from Rwanda, one from Mexico, and four from the U.S. The team was made up of Pastor Jean Paul Nsekanabo (EFC-Rwanda Missions Board Chair), Nicodeme and Anoinciata Basebya (EFC-Rwanda-selected future missionaries to South Sudan), Ximena Maldonado (future missionary from Mexico Yearly Meeting North), Ellie Ware (future missionary from EFC-ER), Luke Macy and Nathan Macy (future missionaries from EFC-MAYM), and Matt Macy (EFM Director of Mobilization).

We started with visit to the missionary training boot camp in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, followed by visits to several boot camp student graduates who are serving among the unreached in Tanzania (June 23-29). Then we went to South Sudan, where we spent time in Juba, Sherkat, Juba Two, Kapoeta, Gemueza, and Tarit (June 29- July 8). Nicodeme and Anoinciate Basebya stayed a few more days in the vicinity of Juba to gather more information.

A Few Trip Highlights

We made our third visit to the town of Juba Two, which is a very quickly growing suburb of the capital city of Juba. Many refugees who were internally or externally displaced are moving home, and this is one of the places where many of them are building simple homes and businesses. For the third time, we had future missionaries who were with us who felt a sense of peace and even a sense of “I feel like I am home” when visiting there. It seems like a great place to start the mission. We enjoyed fellowship with local people there, visiting a couple of homes, and spending some time at the water well helping run the hand pump to fill jugs.

We made a two-night trip in Kapoeta, our first time there, which required a flight on a 14-passenger Cessna Grand Caravan. We met the Tiposa Tribe, and we were deeply touched. This is an unreached tribe where child marriage, child labor, and each man having many wives, is the norm. Access to education and other basic services is a challenge in the area. Identity in the traditional tribal way of life and African traditional religions and worldviews are very important to them. This is a town that represents countless towns in “the bush” of South Sudan, where road access is limited/seasonal or non-existent. During the low-altitude flight to/from Kapoeta, we saw countless clans and villages throughout the countryside and felt our hearts drawn to taking the Good News of Jesus to them, in a spirit of humility, learning, and service.

Our team had several visits with groups of people in Kapoeta. We were not allowed to take pictures, but it felt like we were walking amongst the pages of National Geographic, African bush tribes. Upon arriving at the town market, our girls talked to several girls, heavily adorned in jewelry around their necks, wrists, waists, and multi-ear and face piercings, who were happy for conversation as they rested in the shade. They appeared to be around age 16-17 but wouldn’t admit it or didn’t know their age and had their second or third child in their arms. We also had rich conversations of learning with a family outside of town, and also with people leading schools and a local hospital.

What Did We Discover on Our Trip?

As this was our third trip to South Sudan, after Luke 10 Exploration Trips in 2022 and 2023, the poverty and lack of infrastructure stood out, as we were thinking about how and where missionaries would live and what future strategies might look like, especially long-term. The Rwandan missionary family, Nicodeme and Anoinciata, are discerning how they would provide adequate education to their 11-year-old daughter. Also, in earlier trips, our minds were on immersion and homestays for launching the mission, but on this trip, we were also thinking about what minimum needs our missionary families will need for housing for long-term sustainability in areas where existing housing may lack in ventilation, water, electricity, sewer and even roads or security in some places.

We can see that the EFM South Sudan Field Study Group may be recommending that the mission look at sustainable options for starting schools, even before churches are planted. We also discovered that in order to pursue going to the vast areas of unreached peoples in South Sudan, we will need to be prepared to go to towns that can’t be reached by roads most or all of the year, but instead will require travel by small airplane. Discernment will require missionaries to immerse into communities in order to gain access to the information EFM will need in order to make long-term decisions and plans, but there is a growing sense of peace about Juba Two being a newer town that we could move into to get started in establishing an immersion presence and learning language, if not also getting a home base started for the mission there near the capital city of Juba.

What Are the Needs? Who Should Go?

We believe that people with business experience, school administration, teaching, gardening or farming, hospitality, and organizing skills would fit well on this team. These roles, along with a variety of other physical and spiritual support roles for establishing a presence for this disciple-making work, will be needed by both short-term (two-year) or long-term (four years plus) workers. People from the U.S. or other countries who are ready to serve in humility as learners alongside and under EFC-Rwanda’s leadership will be needed.

Pastor Nicodeme and Anoinciata Basebya from Rwanda have been chosen by EFC-Rwanda to move to South Sudan as early as the summer of 2025. We also have young adults from the U.S. who are considering the possibility after further preparation and training. We are praying that the Lord of the harvest would send other mature persons with personal and professional life experiences who could be a part of this work to go to people who may not hear the Good News if we don’t go!

Are you Feeling Called to Join EFM? Are you interested in exploring missionary service? Do you know of anyone of any age who might be interested in exploring the idea of serving as a missionary overseas for two or more years?  EFM is currently looking to contact and connect with people about opportunities to explore serving as missionaries with the Friends Church! To learn more, visit aquí or fill out this interest form.

We look forward to sharing more news as it becomes available about what we are finding and discerning in EFM’s Luke 10 Initiative.

The post Report from the Pre- Launch Planning Trip to South Sudan first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

This next Luke 10 trip is a Pre-Launch planning trip to South Sudan with a visit to “missionary training boot camp” in Dar es Salaam (East Africa School of Missions) in Tanzania. The team will be in Tanzania from June 23-29 and in South Sudan from June 29-July 8.

We have eight total on this team: six future missionaries and two mission-sending leaders. Three from Rwanda, one from Mexico, and four from the U.S. The team members are: Pastor Jean Paul Nsekanabo (EFC-Rwanda Missions Board Chair), Nicodeme and Anoinciata Basebya (EFC-Rwanda-selected future missionaries to South Sudan), Ximena Maldonado (future missionary from Mexico Yearly Meeting North), Ellie Ware (future missionary from EFC-ER ), Luke Macy and Nathan Macy (future missionaries from EFC- MAYM), and Matt Macy (EFM Director of Mobilization).

A Luke 10 Pre-Launch Planning Trip occurs after EFM has made a decision of commitment to launching the mission field. EFM commissions Field Study Groups to complete a Pre-Launch Planning Report, which often requires further trips to obtain the details necessary for EFM to be able to deploy missionaries to a location to launch a new field.

EFM is working with EFC-Rwanda in plans for launching a new mission field in South Sudan together. This includes continuing logistical details in South Sudan for deploying missionaries from Rwanda and the U.S. as early as 2025. The main focus for at least the first two years in South Sudan will be language learning immersion and culture bonding. EFC-Rwanda has selected missionaries to go, and EFM is seeing that Nicodeme and Anoinciata will be key missionary team leaders in South Sudan.

We are also considering best practices in special training for pioneering new fields among unreached people in Africa, and EFM, alongside leaders from EFC-Rwanda and EFC-Burundi, over the past two years have selected the boot camp in Tanzania for a key part of this training. This year’s trip is to expose future missionaries to the school as we all consider what the timing should be for enrollment.

Lastly, EFM is in conversation with EFC-Rwanda about partnership in missions-sending for launching in South Sudan, which includes a multi-national missionary team with team members from both Rwanda and the U.S. We wish to consider options for how the team might develop both on the field and off the field, including potentially at boot camp together.

The following are ways that you can pray for this team while they are in Tanzania and South Sudan. Please pray…

• For a “peace of mind” (2 Cor 2:13).
• That we hear and discern God’s direction for the next steps moving forward.
• For unity between EFC-Rwanda and EFM.
• For the “casting out” of workers to the unreached of South Sudan (Luke 10:2).

The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to cast out more workers into his fields.

The post Pray for the Luke 10 Pre-Launch Planning Trip to South Sudan! first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

The second trip within the second wave of Luke 10 Exploration Trips went out from September 8-17 to South Sudan.

Ten exploration teams made trips to ten different destinations and peoples between April 2022 and March 2023. These trips were the first wave of exploration in discerning potential new fields for EFM to launch as part of EFM’s Five-Year Goal. It was determined that eight of those destinations require a second trip for further, deeper, exploration, plus as of July 2023 plans are being made by FSW to start a new work among unreached people groups in Cambodia and surrounding areas. Further exploration will help EFM to begin making decisions about where to make commitments in November 2023 to send North American households to launch new fields. See more information aquí.

The following is a report written by a member of the team, Brendan Steinacher.

Who Was on this Trip & Where Did We Travel?

The team included Aaron Mupenda (EFC-Rwanda), Jean-Paul Nsekanabo (EFC-Rwanda), Nicodeme Basebya (EFC-Rwanda) Matt Macy (EFM Director of Mobilization), Brad Carpenter (EFM Missionary), Todd Brown (EFC-MAYM), and Brendan Steinacher (EFC-MAYM). The seven-member team met in Juba, South Sudan from October 10-17. They used the Dandy Hotel in Juba as a base camp, traveling to towns and villages in the surrounding areas. Over four days the teams visited Juba City, Juba Two, Mangala Payam, and Torit City to investigate evangelism and the lack of evangelism among the various people groups.

What was our experience traveling here? How did the Lord meet us?

The intent was to discover regions and areas where the people are underserved or unreached. In the places we visited, we found many tribes that have exposure to some faiths but very few who have a true relationship with Christ. Many told us that they were a Christian country where Catholic, Protestant Christian, Muslim, and others (in that order) have churches/teach. What we found were people who associate with a brand of faith because of family or community identity more than personal faith. We also found connections to many unreached peoples and villages in vast remote sections of the country.

By visiting these locations and hearing reports about surrounding villages we were able to identify places that need evangelical presence and are interested in hearing the gospel. Some places once had mission influence but the people from these places were not discipled sufficiently to have sustainable congregations. Other areas would be considered refugee towns due to displacement from war, flooding, and migration across the country. Many of these villages are asking for biblical training. Some areas were once well evangelized but now have no spiritual support contact outside of their own villages or areas. Christ’s guiding hand and the introduction to people at the right time and the right place seemed to direct our paths and speak to his opening of doors as we traveled through South Sudan.

Two Trip Highlights

New Beginnings:

There is a deep encouragement in the resolve our Rwandan friends have towards opening this work in South Sudan. In 1999 EFC Rwanda had the vision that the light of Christ would be taken across Africa making disciples by Africans. Our friends are committed to sending missionaries – “We do it!”- by 2025. That conviction is clearer today than it was on the first Luke 10 Exploration Trip to Juba. Part of that deep conviction is that Rwandans see the tribal tensions in South Sudan and have lived and transformed tribal reconciliation in Rwanda. Bringing the love of Christ into South Sudan using Discipleship for Development whole-life discipleship methodologies is a fire that has started. EFC-Rwanda demonstrates organizational maturity as they have a missions board overseeing missions-mobilizing activities at national, regional, and local church organizational structures, and are strategically identifying next steps including missionary selection, training, and support. A highlight for our team was to continue blowing on the embers of the inevitable fire!

Power of Relationships:

Is it possible that a primary reason for EFM missions to South Sudan is because it is “on mission with Rwandan missions sending”? Also, the relationships built during this trip with prominent South Sudanese contacts were plentiful. From the church, government, United Nations security, business owners…leaders from all walks seemed to fall into place at just the right moment. God provided a way at every turn, even when doors closed, we just had to be patient for the doors to open when he was ready. South Sudan is a country in transition expressing a desire for change. After a long history of war and recent independence, it is a country and a people that want and are ready for a spiritual harvest.

“When you come back in a year, we will proclaim this day, a day of prayer in the National Immigration Offices of South Sudan” – Deputy Inspector General.

How Can You Pray for Next Steps in this Country?

Next Steps:

• EFC-Rwanda works with government contacts to establish church registration.
• EFC-Rwanda selects missionary/s that have a call by November 2023.
• EFC-Rwanda determines a plan for missionary training as well as training for key leaders in sending church.
• EFM makes a decision on EFM’s commitment to send U.S. missionaries.
• Possibly send a missionary or team for one to three months to get more information.
• Continue to develop EFC-Rwanda’s framework for missions sending.
• Continue to mobilize for prayer and financial support.

Please pray for…

• The raising up of EFM missionaries to accompany our Rwandan friends. A partnership agreement for a multi-national team.
• The upcoming elections in 2024 for South Sudan. For a peaceful transfer of office and a stable geopolitical climate.
• Coaching and training for EFM and EFC-Rwanda missionaries.

What’s Next? The second round of Luke 10 Exploration Trips continues through October 2023. The EFM National Luke 10 Think Tank will meet on November 8, 2023 to look at which fields meet EFM’s CAN GO Criteria for launching new fields and begin making the first decisions as to where EFM will commit to deploying missionaries by the end of 2025.  Are you Feeling Called to Join EFM? Are you interested in exploring missionary service? Do you know of anyone of any age who might be interested in exploring the idea of serving as a missionary overseas for two or more years? EFM is currently looking to contact and connect with people about opportunities to explore serving as missionaries with the Friends Church! To learn more, visit aquí or fill out this interest form!

We look forward to sharing more news as it becomes available about what we are finding and discerning in EFM’s Luke 10 Initiative.

Matt Macy

Director of Mobilization

The post Report from the Second Luke 10 Exploration Trip to South Sudan first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

This next trip to South Sudan is taking place between September 8-17! This team is made up of representatives from EFC- Rwanda and the U.S., including: Pastor Aaron Mupenda (General Superintendent and Legal Representative of EFC-Rwanda), Pastor Jean Paul Nsekanabo (Assistant General Superintendent of EFC-Rwanda), Pastor Nicodeme Basebya (Leader of Pastoral Training in EFC-Rwanda), Brad Carpenter (EFM Missionary), Brendan Steinacher (EFC- MAYM), Matt Macy (EFM Director of Mobilization), and Todd Brown (EFC-MAYM).

Matt Macy and Brad Carpenter provided these insights into this trip to Ecuador.

The team will visit some different areas and people groups in and around Juba, South Sudan. Pastors Jean Paul and Nicodeme arrived to Juba on September 4. The rest of the team will join them on September 10. The purpose of this trip is to seek the Lord’s direction for where EFC-Rwanda will start a mission in South Sudan. We also expect some important, Holy Spirit-led discussions about missions, vision-casting, fundraising, and more. We continue to ask the Lord to give us insights to help EFM discern whether or not he is leading EFM to send missionaries from the U.S. to South Sudan or if EFM will simply partner with EFC-Rwanda as they send their own missionaries to South Sudan.

The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to cast out more workers into his fields.

Matt Macy

Director of Mobilization

To learn more about how you can join these trips or if you are interested in exploring missionary service, visit aquí.

The post Pray for the Second Luke 10 Exploration Trip to South Sudan! first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

The following is a report which Brad Carpenter, EFM Missionary to Rwanda, helped prepare.

The team included four pastors from Rwanda:

• Team leader Jean Paul Nsekanabo (Assistant General Superintendent of EFC-Rwanda),
• Gerard Munyanganizi
• Nicodeme Basebya
• Theodore Uwiragiye

And two representing EFM:

• Brad Carpenter
• Matt Macy

We arrived in Juba, South Sudan on October 11. We were blessed through a friend of Jean Paul’s to connect with a South Sudanese pastor (William) and missionaries from Uganda (Jane, Luke, Veronica, and Faisal) who are living and serving in South Sudan. These leaders helped us find a place to stay, find transportation options and gave us insights we used in choosing which people groups and locations to visit.

According to the Joshua Project, there are 80 people groups in South Sudan. There are some unreached people groups and many who are under-reached (according to various Christian leaders we talked with). The groups we visited on our trip are: Dinka-Bor, Nuer, Murle, Olubogo, Mundari, and Cholo. We also met many from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, and others.

Some areas of the country were inaccessible at this time because of marshlands that are flooded from heavy rains at this time. South Sudan has suffered through very difficult times since 1983, with much war and many consequences of violence. In each place we visited we found friendly people who were ready to share with us about their culture, beliefs, and their lives in general. Our observation is that there are many people who are open to spiritual things and who desire transformation, peace, and new life that comes from Christ.

• We visited two large refugee camps on the outskirts of Juba. These started during wartime of 2013/2014 and lack of security in their home places have kept them in the camps up to this point.
  • One camp had 30,000 people in it, a community built from simple stick frames with tarp coverings, with UN presence. This camp had 95% from the Nuer People Group. We had a nice visit with a group of students and teachers who were on break from school. We shared from John 3 and heard many questions about various denomination’s claims about the Christian message that have come into their camp. We learned about some cults who are working in the area.
  • Another camp had 7,500 people in it made up of Murle People as well as Dinka and Nuer Tribes. The community leaders we spent time with were Murle who discussed the dynamics and culture of their remote home villages where there is no cell phone service or electricity, security is scarce, and they are particularly isolated during wet season when roads are not passable. We learned about their tribal god, Nyadit, and the common reasons that people go to witch doctors.
• South Sudan has strict protocol about visiting any community, which requires letters of permission before visiting. Most of this work was done in advance of our visits to communities, but the work had not been completed before we visited one town towards the end of our travels. So in this town, we spent time sitting with police officials at their office, who then took us to the county commissioners office to spend time with him, who upon learning about the purpose of our visit, sent us to an Episcopal church to meet with the leader of the local council of churches, where we received the warm welcome and blessing we needed in order to move about and visit with people in the community.
• Everywhere we were able to go to on this trip we heard of churches in the area.
  • We heard about many tribes who have Christians who also go to witch doctors or worship their local tribal god, sometimes making animal sacrifices to their local god. Due to wet season, we were not able to travel to distant villages where there are no churches among communities of unreached peoples.
  • We also met some people in towns and villages whose knowledge of scripture, church leadership and discipleship demonstrated that there must be some good churches in their community.
  • We received many welcomes for a new mission and church work, due to under-reached peoples locally and much need for whole-life discipleship and community development.
• Most strangers that we walked up to and asked questions were quick to offer a chair and open to a conversation to tell us many things about their tribe, cultures, community and religious practices.
  • Most places we visited on this trip, including remote village locations, people spoke English for great conversation without a translator. Otherwise their common trade language is Arabic and each tribe has their own tribal languages.
  • We saw hundreds of villages full of small mud huts with grass roofs. Some of us were drawn with a desire to know these places and people for potential of taking the Good News.
  • Each tribe we met had different scar markings/cuts on their foreheads and different patterns of teeth removed to identify with their tribe. The cutting occurs as they approach adulthood in the villages as a right of passage and they are very open to talk about their tribal identity and customs. There are some who no longer practice these customs, especially in the cities among the youngest generations.
  • A group of Mandari men selling cattle and goats under a shade tree told us about custom of making sacrifice of a cow to their god, hanging the skin on a tree, then pouring milk into the river, in order to get the protection of their god for their cows when they take their herd across the river. They also shared about a more complex approach to marriage proposals and dowery in their tribe.
  • One item that came up regularly among tribes was their dowery customs and they were unusually open about how many cows or goats were paid to the families of their wives, commonly 100 cows or more there. One group was baffled that we didn’t give dowery in the U.S. as if we don’t place high value to make a big sacrifice for our wives and their families.
  • We heard many stories from various people groups and communities throughout the trip who were afraid of one particular tribe attacking them or stealing from them or killing them. This particular tribe is an unreached people group that we would like to learn more about.
  • When we visited people in one town near the Ugandan border, we heard many R-rated stories of tribal conflicts and difficulties with lack of security. The Olubogo People talked about having babies taken from their women from one particular tribe and their crops destroyed by another tribe bearing guns that come through during the first couple of months each year. They were in a pretty large town, but with no local school they send their kids to Uganda for school, where they also flee to during certain months of the year for safety.
• It was a joy to hear the Rwandans on several occasions offer much encouragement and hope for reconciliation and tell their own story of tribal conflict in their past which has changed to peace and reconciliation through the Lord Jesus Christ in their home communities and churches. It was an honor to stand with the Rwandans and pray with villagers asking the Lord Jesus to draw them to himself and bring hope and peace to their families.
• South Sudan is a fascinating place of many tribes, customs and lifestyles that left an impression on our team. We pray for peace and hope for them in Christ.

As a team we sensed affirmation that EFC-Rwanda is being called to be on mission in South Sudan. We ask that you continue to pray for us as we keep discerning God’s plans. We think the next step will be for another, much longer trip to happen in the dry season. The purpose of this trip would be visit places we were not able to visit and to work toward narrowing down our focus toward a specific place or two that we would then seek to deeply understand.

Thank you for praying with us for this and the other Luke 10 trips. May God continue to lead us into his plans. May his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We look forward to sharing more news as it becomes available about what we are finding and discerning in EFM’s Luke 10 Initiative as we continue to explore where EFM may launch new mission fields.

Matt Macy
Director of Mobilization

The post A Report from the Luke 10 Exploration Trip to South Sudan first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

The Luke 10 Exploration Trip to South Sudan travels October 10-21, sent by EFC-Rwanda and EFC-MAYM. Team Leaders Jean Paul Nsekanabo (EFC-Rwanda Assistant General Superintendent) and Brad Carpenter (EFM Missionary to Central Africa) will travel along with three other representatives from EFC-Rwanda; Nicodeme Basebya, Gerard Munyanganizi, and Theodore Uwiragiye, plus Matt Macy (EFM). Some of these Rwandan Friends Church leaders are exploring God’s calling to go as missionaries to South Sudan.  It is encouraging that EFC-Rwanda has recently coordinated a week-long missions emphasis which included daily evening services for missions prayer and teachings, ending with a yearly meeting wide offering towards Luke 10 Exploration Trip costs. In August 2022, at an EFC-Rwanda missions vision training event for pastors, tw;elve pastors stood to publicly state that they are willing to seriously explore going as missionaries from Rwanda to South Sudan or elsewhere as the Lord leads.

The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to cast out more workers into his fields.

The post Luke 10 Exploration Trip to South Sudan- How You Can be Praying first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.