Reaching Their Own

by Kristin Andre, photos by Jordan Andre

Luka and Umjuma Otuba, of South Sudan’s Lopit tribe, serve as part of a multinational Outreach Team working to reach their own people with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

To some, it may have looked like an unfair advantage. To others, simply a leg-up. To me, it just looked like the literal grace of a God who loves His children more than any of us can even fathom. When someone comes along who knows the language, the culture, the customs at a heart-level, it really does just make it that much easier to integrate into village life and to more quickly and easily share the love of Christ among unbelievers. And isn’t that what Paul was talking about in 1 Thessalonians 2 when he said, “Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well”?

Luka grew up in Khartoum, the bustling capital city of Sudan with a population of over five million people. But he isn’t Sudanese. His family hails from South Sudan originally, and he descends from the Lopit people group whose simple, circular thatched huts are scattered across the rolling hills of southeastern South Sudan. In the Lopit hills, women and children grind sorghum into flour and gather firewood for their cookstoves and men tend to their gardens and small herds of cattle. It’s about as opposite from the busy metropolis where Luka grew up as you can get; and yet, he fits in perfectly here.

Outreach Team members meet with Lopit neighbors for a time of sharing and Bible Study.

When God calls missionaries to cultures and places that aren’t all that different (geographically or culturally) from the places they’ve called home for most of their lives, it often looks like this.

It’s often simpler.

That doesn’t mean it’s better.

It’s just different.

It’s relatively easy, it costs relatively little, and it just seems to work well. But that doesn’t mean this way of doing things is without challenge. Luka and Umjuma and their children are risking their lives to live on mission among the Lopit people.

They have no safety net, no backup plan, and no source of reliable income apart from the local church in Torit (the small town in South Sudan to the southwest of the Lopit hills), their sending church. They are partners on mission and serving (because they choose to) as team members with a few AIM missionaries in the Lopit hills, but other than that, they are on their own. 

His family moved to Khartoum before he was born, but the language, the culture, the customs of the Lopit - they are Luka’s heritage. He knows the people here not in a personal sense but in a familiar sense, like extended family you meet for the first time later in life. In the few short months Luka and his wife, Umjuma, and their three children (plus four others whom they are caring for) have been in these Lopit hills, they have adapted and been accepted as members of the community far quicker than most other outsiders. The culture-shock that is such a hurdle for nearly all missionaries who come to serve in these hills is pretty much non-existent for Luka and Umjuma and their kids.

A Lopit boy carries palm fronds used for roofing on Lopit homes and other structures as pictured in the photo at left.

A Lopit woman prepares sorghum the traditional way, with a grinding stone.

The village of Iboni, where AIM's team serves, nestled in the hills of South Sudan.

And yet, there’s a joy that radiates from Luka and Umjuma that’s beyond words.

Yes, they have taken big risks to make this move to live among the Lopit people, but truly, they love the Lopit people so much that they are delighted everyday to share not only with them the gospel of God, but their very lives as well.

What a beautiful thing.

And what a testament to what God is doing among his African children.

He’s calling them to reach their own, and they are amazingly gifted for it.

Truly, we are blessed to have Luka and Umjuma as partners, and we are praying more and more African brothers and sisters in Christ would join us in this incredible work of reaching the unreached in Africa!

Luca prays with a Lopit neighbor during a Bible Study.