BY JENNIFER JILL SCHWIRZER

ABEL BUSL (BYOO-SIL) spent a good chunk of his youth as a missionary's kid in Tanzania, Africa, where he first felt God lay a burden on his heart. The burden was southern Sudan-sick, starving, politically ruptured southern Sudan, where no one in their right mind goes-that's where Jabel just had to go. For four years he nursed the desire.

"That's a dangerous place, Jabel," his mom would say. Just because it's a dangerous place doesn't mean that they don't need the gospel," Jabel would reply.

Jabel's Sudanese friends Tut ("toot"), Dit ("deet"), Awadia, Doreen, and Stella continued to nurture the boy's dream by relating to him the desperate need of his people. Jabel would often hear Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) workers Jerry Lewis and Peter Delhove speak about the Sudanese and their plight. Prayers ascended and hopes held out for four long years, but Jabel was not to have his youthful dreams immediately realized. He had to wait until he was the ripe old age of 19 before the doors would open.

Finally a way was made through the generosity of some donors who believed that young, inexperienced people can sometimes do what older, less experienced people can't. A lay ministry called Outpost Centers, Inc. (OCI),¹ working in conjunction with the General Conference, would send a group of five young men to southern Sudan to build the first permanent Adventist churches. Jabel Busl would lead out, working with his younger brother Jared, 18, their cousin Caleb Knowles, 20, an evangelist named Greg Wallin, 23, and the most ancient member of the group, a Tanzanian named Moses Tossi, 24.

Looking at their youth and number, one wonders if there isn't some divinely orchestrated metaphor being drawn; the unconquerable Goliath, southern Sudan, is intimidating the old and wise when into the forefront jumps David-the symbol of, among other things, godly youth. All David has in his bare hands is the sling of faith and five little stones: Jabel, Jared, Caleb, Greg, and Moses. Down goes the looming giant with a fatal skull fracture, and southern Sudan has been cracked open for the gospel.

Behind the Smiles
Now take an imaginary journey. Close your eyes and cross the Atlantic, weaving south of the Mediterranean toward western Africa. Cross the sands of the Sahara and stop short of the mountains of Ethiopia, landing along the Nile River about 10 degrees north of the equator. Look around at a vast arid land with plains of head-high grass, sprinkled with clusters of people who, in spite of the natural beauty of their land, have known little but strife and squalor for the past 30 years.

Now look past the thatch-hut villages and the shabby towns, past the scanty markets and wind-blasted fields. Look at the people. At first you are taken off guard by their friendly smiles, but you look closer and you see signs of deep restless hunger. You ask someone how often they eat, and they reply (as most would) one meal a day. As I write this piece (June 2002) the country is in the midst of one of the driest seasons in memory, so the sorghum crops are dead. You realize at this point that poverty here is not war-induced only, but also weather-induced. Fifty-two percent of the population is malnourished.²

This is only the beginning of sorrows. You look deeper into sunken eyes, and you see something beyond physical suffering. A man named Meding comes forward and tells you that he watched a friend's children get nailed to a tree by troops seeking informants. When the father did not speak, the children's throats were slit and the soldiers sliced off the father's ears and drove nails into his temples.³ After Meding speaks, others are emboldened to come forward one by one, revealing the physical and emotional scars of life in a war zone where more than 20 percent of the original population has been killed off since 1983.⁴ Each soul shows an incalculable loss: a missing limb; a dead parent; a memory of a family in a safe village. Those who have not lost a relative have probably had one taken as a slave or at least seen a village ascend in smoke. Welcome to southern Sudan.

The politics are as complex as they are heated. Civil war between the Muslim north and the largely Christian and animist south has plagued the country for 30 years. When Islamic law was imposed in 1983, the south under the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), revolted. It's been nonstop chaos ever since-a campaign of abductions, crop burning, and genocide under a guise of religious indoctrination.

Years ago a miserable marriage was arranged between northern and southern Sudan by the United Nations, and neither the north nor the south has been comfortable as a couple. Complicating matters is southern Sudan's great resource of oil. The north attempts to control the oil fields, but the south claims them as their right. Neither ends up profiting from the oil because of the money poured into their military efforts to keep it. As happens in so many domestic disputes, nobody is the winner.

A Different Explosion
In your imaginary journey, visit the city of Yei. You will get held up there by officials because of land mines that were found earlier in the day. The SPLA officials will tell you that once the south was in control of the city; then the north came and claimed it. The south took it back, then the north again. With each takeover the city was ringed with land mines. The mines don't become harmless with time, either. They will detonate for years to come, taking arms, legs, and even lives.

But listen for another kind of explosion. It's that of pounding nails through tin and the slapping of clay on brick. It's life rather than death, building rather than tearing down. It's five young men building a church because God's people need a respectable place to worship.

The churches in southern Sudan consist of mud, sticks, and thatch. Because of the deep poverty, there is no way to get proper building materials in the immediate area. Everything has to be shipped in from Uganda or Kenya over some of the worst roads in the world. As a result, the people bearing God's end-time message have had no proper building in which to lift up the name of their Lord and Creator.

Until Jabel's team got there. Working through impossible conditions, they have erected three permanent structures of burned brick and clay, with galvanized iron roofing. They can each hold 200 people. With the total number of Adventists in southern Sudan at 2,900 and counting, that's about one fifth of the space needed to accommodate everyone.⁵ But with the church growing as rapidly as it is (more than 300 have joined in the past year, largely because of the efforts of Global Missions pioneers), the five young men had better just keep on building.

The ultimate goal of this project is to erect a school where the training of lay pastors can take place. Illiteracy rates in southern Sudan are high, so the school would also train teachers who could in turn go out and teach children to read. In this way the Adventist Church could actually help remedy some of the devastating results of political unrest and poverty while simultaneously preaching the gospel. Meeting the felt needs of the people opens a door whereby they can address their deeper need for salvation from sin.

Jabel's parents, Kim and Joyce Busl, had the privilege of arriving in southern Sudan to see the first tin roof nailed into place. They witnessed firsthand the conditions that made such building difficult. "We could not find a shovel or a hammer or a bag of cement or even a nail to purchase," Kim said. "When the boys arrived, there was a tremendous amount of doubt in all minds that the task of building a church could actually be accomplished. However, it was a mere 18 working days from the time the boys started digging the foundation to the time the galvanized roofing sheets were nailed down. On Sabbath afternoon the church members confessed that they didn't believe it would ever happen. Yet these young men had accomplished it by God's grace."

All supplies are bought in Uganda and transported to Sudan in a seven-ton four-wheel-drive Fiat Iveco and a Toyota Land Cruiser. The trip is three days each way, much of it over tiny pothole-filled dirt roads that weave slowly and painfully through dense rain forests. The rainy season has hit, and the dirt roads have turned into mudholes, in which the vehicles sink up to the hood. The crew frequently gets stuck eight to 10 times even on a short trip of a few kilometers, winching as they go. But the five little stones don't let a little mud stop them.

The young men hire people from the community to help with the building. Because they're the only employers in the area, they must change workers every week. They pay them the equivalent of $3 for a week's worth of work, and the workers then have to walk three days to get change or to find something to buy with it.

Each day the young men work on the construction site, and each evening they hold evangelistic meetings in the local towns using a Honda generator and a video projector with graphics provided by the Adventist-Laymen's Services and Industries DVD project.⁶ As Greg Wallin, from Black Hills Mission College of Evangelism, preaches each night about the love of God, and the team works side by side with the Sudanese, hearts are being opened and changed by the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Some Have Lost Everything
If some of you who're reading this could visit Jabel and his team right now, you'd see adverse conditions that would make your life look like paradise by contrast. You might hear the sound of land mines or bombs falling from the sky. But you would see and hear something beautiful as well-the joyful testimony of consecrated young people as they discover the sacred pleasure of taking big risks for the Savior. "I have been greatly inspired by the people of Sudan," Jabel says. "They are a people who, in many cases, have given up much to follow Christ. Some have lost their homes; some their families or their security. Some have been persecuted and beaten, and others have paid with their lives. Yet they share one thing in common-they would rather have Jesus than anything."

The sponsoring organization, OCI/Africa, headquartered in Kenya, is the support base for the team. Beat Odermatt, the president of the South Sudan Field, also gives the boys full support and praises God for what they're doing.

Today many of you reading this will bow to pray in comfortable, safe surroundings. This Sabbath you will worship in a church with electric lights and indoor plumbing, and you will walk to and from your car in total freedom and without fear. This week you will eat three meals a day of the highest quality, with the greatest variety of food. Your children will attend well-equipped schools and further develop their growing minds. Finally, you will sleep between clean sheets and warm blankets in temperature-controlled air. Enjoy all these good things that God has provided, but do something for Him while you enjoy them: Remember the people of southern Sudan. And remember the youth who love Jesus enough to go there and spend themselves for the poorest of His children.

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¹ See the Outpost Centers, Inc., Web site at www.outpostcenters.org.
² "Powell Pledges Support to Sudan," CNN.com, May 27, 2001.
³ Glen Penner, "Sudan: What Can We Do to Stop This?" Voice of the Martyrs Newsletter, Apr. 19, 2000. (Voice of the Martyrs is an organization that chronicles Christian persecution the world over. Check them out at www.voiceofthemartyrs.com.)
⁴ "Powell Pledges" and "Sudanese Christians Killed," www.persecution.com, July 8, 1998.
⁵ Rick Kajiura, "Volunteers Construct Southern Sudan's First Adventist Church Building," May 8, 2001; www.global-mission.org/htdocs/countries/sudnchch.html.
⁶ The DVD project has compiled all of the best graphics used by top Adventist evangelists, along with thousands of newer graphics, onto a DVD disc. All the pictures, graphics, and Bible texts for 26 sermons are ready to be projected onto a screen or computer monitor. In essence, this is a kit for any man, woman, or child who wishes to do public evangelism. All the pictures are culturally sensitive so that, for instance, a series given in India will feature people who look Indian. For more information or to place an order, contact It Is Written at 1-800-479-9056.

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Jennifer Jill Schwirzer is a wife, mother, and published author who writes from Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.