Former Fremonter talks about work in South Sudan

Now 33, Borgelt recently returned to Nebraska after completing a three-year term with Africa Inland Missions in South Sudan.

AIM is an organization that sends missionaries to Africa. The group’s priorities include working with people who haven’t been reached with the Gospel and training African leaders in ministry.

Borgelt’s journey into missionary work began years ago. For 12 years, Borgelt lived in Fremont before he and his family relocated to Omaha. Borgelt was attending Omaha’s Burke High School, when he noticed a couple of Sudanese students who were struggling in their classes.

So he befriended and started tutoring them. He began getting involved with their families and learned the people were refugees because of civil war in Sudan. His heart went out to them.

Borgelt graduated from high school in 2003 and from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2009 with an international studies degree. He first spent nine months in South Sudan, where he taught English and computer skills.

He returned in 2011 for a three-year term, where he started working with Laarim. The Laarim are predominately cattle keepers who grow sorghum and sesame seeds.

Borgelt learned their language and began translating Bible stories. He’d tell the children Bible stories in their own language. On Sundays, he’d help lead a worship service with a Kenyan pastor.

He came home in July 2014 and returned that December for another three-year term, resuming his evangelism and discipleship work.

Borgelt also worked with leaders in different South Sudan villages to help arrange for the building supplies to be purchased and housing to be built for a team of missionaries.

After making those preparations, Borgelt had more free time to work with youth and visit families in their homes.

The first team member, Andrew, came in August 2015.

“We encourage them to take the first six months to focus solely on building relationships with people in the community and learning the language,” Borgelt said. “I arranged for him to stay with a Laarim family to help boost that.

“He did really well,” Borgelt added. “He picked up the language fairly quickly, quite a bit faster than I did, and after his first six months began teaching at the primary school nearby and leading the devotions there.”

Borgelt and a team of secondary school students also went from home to home, sharing the Gospel. At the start of 2016, they baptized two youth in one of the villages.

“That was a highlight,” he said.

Borgelt continued working with youth, playing soccer with them, sharing Bible stories and having prayer and singing times.

“What we really want to do is present God’s word to the people and let the Holy Spirit work in their lives to bear fruit – to understand what it means to follow Jesus and know him,” Borgelt said.

Borgelt worked to teach children how to read their own Laarim language. Only two successfully learned to read, but others enjoyed the opportunity.

One of the challenges, he said, is that children have responsibilities during the day such as taking goats, cattle and sheep out to get water.

“It made it difficult, because every child was progressing at different levels, depending on when they came or how many times they were able to come,” he said.

In the meantime, the team’s leaders had arrived in February 2016. The full team arrived that September. Borgelt went with different team members to translate with them when they were sharing the Gospel and Bible stories.

He had to learn to embrace other ways of doing ministry and working with a team rather than on his own. He found working with a team to be more effective.

“We as a team have seen more people come to Christ and their lives changed,” Borgelt said. “With everything we do, we hope that it’s reproducible by the believers in the community, because we don’t intend to stay there forever. Our goal is to see Christ-centered churches that are self-propagating among the Laarim – churches that reproduce themselves.”

Borgelt noted that one of the youth with whom he worked completed his secondary schooling in Torit and came out to be with the team and help with ministry.

“He’s been a lot more effective in sharing his faith and bringing people to Christ than we have as missionaries coming from the outside,” he said.

Borgelt has enjoyed working with the Laarim.

Borgelt has seen heartache, too, however,

He’d worked with a teen, who put his trust in Jesus.

The boy later became sick with malaria. Borgelt urged family members to get him to a clinic and drove them there, but the boy died.

“It was one of the low points for me,” Borgelt said.

Borgelt returned to Nebraska in August and plans to go back to South Sudan in January for another estimated, three-year term.

“I would prefer to work with the youth and children as I have, but I’m also considering that it might be more effective to meet at family homes and share Bible stories,” he said.

He and team members plan to continue working until they see churches be able to stand on their own and continue the work of spreading the Gospel.

“That’s the time we’ll start moving on, maybe to other unreached people groups,” he said.

Borgelt isn’t certain what all the future will hold.

“We don’t always know what God has in store for the future, but this is what I believe he’s calling me to do right now,” Borgelt said.

And there have been good times.

“The most exciting thing is to see people growing in their love for God and his word and seeing Christ transform their lives one at a time,” Borgelt said. “It’s a privilege to be part of that.”

Borgelt said the group hasn’t seen mass conversions.

“It’s one person at a time,” he said. “We’re seeing change.”