An Update From the Field

John Sender will be one of my teammates/ leaders while working on the many different water/construction projects in South Sudan. He just recently arrived in Mundri , South Sudan and has been appointed to serve there for the next 3 years. Below is a quick synopsis of the conditions in Mundri that John recently posted in his blog.

"It did not take long to realize the incredible needs for basic things people face from day to day here. As the bishop of Mundri put it in a fellowship dinner my team and some church leaders had last week, nicknamed a swallowship meeting by Repent, a pastor and vice-principle of the theological college we work with here, "Though we have independence here now, 'we are not out of the woods yet". Today I visited an area set aside for returnees coming from Ethiopia, northern Sudan, Uganda, and other countries. It was hard to sit down and listen to them sharing their needs. They said they had little in the way of food, seeds for beginning to develop agriculture, and the land they have been given to settle in has no access to water. Women and children travel anywhere from 1-3 miles to collect water, multiple times a day. What is really heartbreaking is that the place they get water from was to be a larger water project with lots of capacity for supplying water to many people (2 large water storage tanks atop a steel tower) but there was a semi-collapse of one of the towers just as the project opened for service, and one of the tanks broke beyond repair. The other sits on the ground now and the water flows freely from the pump. With no long term plan for fixing the system, and the NGO installing it leaving the area some time ago, the people there have come to accept that this is just their situation. Please pray as I work with my boss Michael Masso to develop a plan for solving this problem over the next days."

I am still at 40% of my goal for leaving to go to South Sudan on October 21st of this year! If you or anyone you know would like to donate to my cause, please email me at grantcurtiss@gmail.com so that I can contact with more information or just donate at http://www.whm.org/give/missionary?ID=21711.

Much love,

Grant Curtiss

Lecrae Testimony

Great testimony from a great artist!

Cookies in Heaven

The past few weeks has been one coincidence after another. In fact the possibility of me serving in South Sudan has been a hodgepodge of deeper inner callings and coincidences wrapped up and serving as a warm cookie. I like comparing things to cookies. I hope someday to buried in cookies so that when Christ comes back I can grab a few on my way up, although I don't think God's presence could be compared to any amount of "cookies worth" because if it is as great as the Bible makes it out to be, I think cookies would be the last thing on my mind. (See 1 Corinthians 2:9 for reference)

1st coincidence: I fell in love with a girl who has a heart for missions and knew a guy who got me connected with World Harvest, Josh Dickenson.

 2nd coincidence: World Harvest had been praying for months for some guys to come serve in South Sudan and that was straight up my ally, although I thought I was going to end up somewhere in Latin America where all the good surfing waves existed.

 3rd coincidence: It seems that the more people I talk to, the more people I meet who have some sort of connection to South Sudan or that area of Africa. Just talked to a friend of mine from way back whose wife had recently been to South Sudan in the same area in which I will be going. Already getting contacts there and I am still 3 months away from leaving!

 4th coincidence: The support money is coming in! Although this may not be a legitimate "coincidence," I have almost reached 40% and I still have 3 months left to raise. Knowing that a teammate of mine raised 100% in just one month gives me lots of hope. It's too big of a world for me to pass all of these coincidences off as mere luck and chance or just a by-product of who I hang out with and put myself in contact with. I believe wholeheartedly that something or someone is orchestrating a master plan that will help other's find truth.

He is God, He is love, and He must be found and worshiped.

Kabara ("News")

Recent reports have stated that South Sudan and Sudan are moving towards a signed peace agreement that address the outstanding issues with the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement signed in 1972. (1) Both sides have vowed to respect a buffer zone along the border and will no longer support rebel troops. However, according to an international aid agency called Oxfam, South Sudan is "facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the war in 2005." (2) This is not good news for South Sudan who just recently celebrated its one year anniversary as the world's newest country. With talks of peace in the minds of the negotiating committees, the future of South Sudan is promising. Oxfam's report highlighted these hopes of success to the Sudan Tribune in its statement that "South Sudan is increasingly reliant on food aid. Yet with peace, a stable economy, and investment in its future, South Sudan would be more than capable of feeding itself." The report went on to say that with implementation of these important factors into South Sudan's policies, South Sudan could become the primary bread basket of its region. Sources cited: (1) (2)