Will-ing to serve

A group traveling by car is stopped by government soldiers.
The soldiers demand money from everyone inside.
One of the travelers has none to give.
He is shot.
The rest of the party is told to continue. They drive on, blood splattered in their vehicle and a dead man slumped by their side.
They can not afford to stop, for fear they would suffer the same fate.
This is South Sudan.
••••••••••
That scene is just one of the horrors that stand between the South Sudanese people and the safety of Uganda, where thousands of refugees have poured over the border the last couple of years.
For those who are lucky enough to survive, Scott Will is there to help.
Will, who grew up in Fort Recovery and was a member of the Indians’ undefeated 1996 state championship boys cross country team, left Oct. 29 to return to the East African country that sits on the equator.
“It’s been so awesome to be back,” Will said last week of his return to Uganda. “In many ways it feels like a homecoming.”
He’s far from a newcomer to the area.
Will was in Uganda as part of his clinical work for medical school — he holds master’s degrees in medicine and public health — during the 2007 Ebola outbreak. He volunteered to overstay his planned 60 days there, remaining for six months as one of just three doctors for 250,000 residents in the district.
He felt a calling to long-term mission work, and on a visit to the country to the north in 2008 he decided, “I’ll go to Sudan.”
Will began a five-year commitment with World Harvest Mission the next year and continued to serve after the country split into two — Sudan and South Sudan.
He returned home in January 2015, all along planning to return to South Sudan to visit those who had become his friends and family while living in the city of Mundri. But the situation in the area, which was already unstable during his final year there, has continued to unravel.
The missionaries he worked with had to evacuate shortly after he left.
“The fighting has got so much worse,” said Will, who spent part of the time in between working for Resurrection Health in clinics in a poor area of Memphis. “There’s been a lot of fighting around the village where I used to live, making it almost impossible for me to get back …

He still wanted to go, so he started looking for other ways to help the South Sudanese and was put in contact with Medical Teams International.
••••••••••
The fourth of Dave and Norma Will’s five children graduated from Fort Recovery High School in 1997 and went on to Wright State University. He ran cross country for the Raiders and through the organization Athletes in Action met Scott Shepherd, the man who would become his mentor.
Will’s focuses in life changed. He wanted to turn his life over to Jesus.
That led him to Africa for the first time, which sparked his desire to commit to a long-term stay.
Now, the area has his heart.
“I knew I would like it there, but I had no idea how much I would love the people there and how much they would love me,” he said last month, a day before his flight left from Dayton, Ohio, to begin his latest journey to Uganda. “They just included me as part of their families, as part of their community.
“I just felt such a part of the community and such a part of people’s lives. And they were such a part of my life as well.”
He lived in an 8-foot-by-10-foot hut with a grass roof and no running water, using an outhouse and bathing outdoors. His concrete floor was considered a luxury.
South Sudanese friends stayed with him frequently.
One of those visitors — Kaya, also known as John — had been by himself while his family was away at a funeral and woke up to the feeling of someone choking him. He became scared to stay at home the following night.
“It really freaked him out, so much so that he did not want to stay by himself,” said Will. “So the next night he asked if he could sleep at my house. And three years later he was still staying at my house.”
Will developed a connection with the young man, who is now probably in his 20s (many in the area aren’t sure of their actual age), considering him like a brother or a son.
“I feel like I have several brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents in South Sudan. And every single day since I’ve left … I’ve thought about South Sudan,” said Will, noting that there are three or four families he speaks to every week. “Their suffering is just so great. The fighting, the conflict, the trauma, the lack of food. It’s so intense there right now.
“So for me, personally, I’m just so involved in these people’s lives and I just love them so dearly that I just want to do what I can to help them.”
••••••••••
Will’s travels from Dayton took him to Detroit, then the Netherlands and finally Uganda. He spent about 18 hours in the air in total. The next morning, he drove about eight hours to Arua, the northwestern Ugandan city that is home to more than 50,000 refugees.
He was based their for his first two weeks and has since moved to Adjumani, in north central Uganda. There, the need is even greater, with more than 200,000 refugees, about 90 percent of whom have arrived in the last two years.
Those two cities — Arua and Adjumani — are home to the largest refugee camps serving the South Sudanese who are escaping their war-torn home.
Will’s day starts with a drive — it takes about 45 minutes to get to the area in Adjumani; his travel time in Arua was about twice as long — to one of the multiple camps, which are housed in large tents. If the camp offers inpatient services, he and partner Mary Owen, a 68-year-old retired internal medicine doctor from Seattle, begin with rounds. When they have visited everyone, Will begins to attend to those seeking outpatient services.
He sees patients, who line up on benches and the floor, from about 9 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m., treating 50 to 85 daily. (Relief workers must leave no later than 4 p.m. in order to ensure that they are home before dark.) That can leave as little as five minutes per patient.
The most frequent medical issue he sees is malaria, which, despite the fact that the rainy season is coming to an end, affects more than 50 percent of those who visit the clinic. Other major problems include pneumonia, other upper respiratory infections and watery diarrhea. The lack of regular access to clean water creates hygiene issues that lead to skin infections.
Perhaps the largest issue beyond disease is hunger. Food is in short supply, and sometimes food deliveries from service organizations do not arrive.
“There’s a lot of challenges, but I am so incredibly thankful to be here,” said Will, whose ability to speak the most common language, Arabic, is helpful in his service. “People are so incredibly appreciative here. And hope is such, such a strong motivating factor. And the resiliency of people here is just absolutely tremendous.”
••••••••••
When escaping a country marked by frequent fighting, resilience is a necessity.
The harrowing stories are endless from those who have fled South Sudan.
“Many people are coming with nothing, no food, walking for days on end, very traumatized,” Will said. “A lot of people whose family members have been killed … in the fighting.”
As they try to make their way to the relative safety of Uganda, whether by car or by foot, they pass vehicles that are burned out, shot up and overturned. They wonder, could they be next?
“They can’t travel on the roads for fear that government soldiers will beat them, kill them, steal from them,” said Will. “But they can’t really go into the bush either for fear that the rebels will beat them, steal from them, kill them.
“So no one feels safe. There’s no safe place for people to go.”
Will has heard story after story of hardship from the South Sudanese, some strangers, some friends from his previous stay.
One of those friends, Noah Majira, made the trek to Uganda with his family. The stress of doing so sent his wife into premature labor. Their child died within 48 hours.
And yet, Noah is happy to be in Uganda. He and his family may be hungry. They may not always have fresh water. Education is lacking — one first grade class in Noah’s camp has 300 students and just one teacher.
But they don’t have to worry about getting shot or beaten.
It’s an improvement.
••••••••••
While there are other needs — food and money being atop the list — what Will asks for most is prayer.
Conditions are far from ideal, but he hopes that some of the children in those overcrowded classrooms will get an education, that some of the refugees will be able to create a business, that, somehow, they will be able to start a new life.
“I just love the people here,” said Will. “I just want to hug everybody and never let them go.”
Beyond prayer and aid, Will notes the importance of being informed, of not just setting aside the atrocities from Syria, South Sudan and other war-torn locales around the world. He feels lucky to have been born in the United States, a place where many wish they could have been but weren’t, and feels the need to share that privilege to better the lives of others.
“I just really encourage people to commit to something, be passionate about something, seek to help your neighbor, whoever your neighbor may be. Don’t fear,” he said. “I think fear is such a motivating factor for some of us. And sometimes fear can be good, but sometimes fear can be really bad, especially fear of the unknown. Don’t let that prevent you from trying new things, from taking risks, from engaging others who may be different from you.”
••••••••••
Will is scheduled to be in Uganda with Medical Teams International, a relief organization based in Portland, Oregon, through the end of January. He’ll get to spend part of December visiting friends in the country, but the bulk of his time will be in medical service.
Even before he left for Africa last month, he had already planned to commit to long-term mission work again. He just isn’t sure where.
The answer to that question will come, he’s sure, by continuing a principle he’s followed for the last decade. It’s not about where he wants to go, but where he is most needed and where his missionary work can make the largest impact.
“I’m willing to go wherever. Wherever the lord may lead me is where I want to go,” said Will, whose first stay in Sudan included developing a Christian church in addition to serving medical needs. “I like rural areas. And honestly I do pretty well in kind of unstable areas, or better than what most people probably would. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
“As long as I’m relatively young, and I’m single, I don’t have family, I want to go to places where other people don’t want to go.”
The 38-year-old — he celebrated his birthday last week — wants to be able to help those who are in the most dire need, like Repent, his South Sudanese friend. Repent was sitting next to the man in the car who was shot because he didn’t have any money to give to government soldiers.
Stories like those can be alarming. But Will points out there is danger everywhere — he had a gunshot go through his window just a few weeks before leaving Memphis — as evidenced by the news every day.
And the rewards of his service to others have far outweighed the potential peril.
“Honestly, in the process, I feel like I’ve been blessed over and over and over and over and over again,” said Will. “And it hasn’t always been easy, but I feel like the Lord has radically just blessed me beyond what I ever could have imagined.”