Living The Dream

Closing This Blog

2011-07-29T03:46:00.000-07:00

Greetings Family!

I now have an official webpage which also contains a page for all my blogging. I think you will enjoy looking at my page better because now you can see pictures and see where my itinerary takes me and all that fun stuff. Even now I am writing from San Antonio Texas, as I just arrived last night for some R&R!

So, if you are a subscriber here, please be a subscriber at my new internet residence :-) It is:

www.called2follow.com

See you there, and thanks so much for your interest in the people of the Republic of South Sudan!

Love you so much,

Carolyn

Abyei

2011-06-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

This week has been filled with the sound of children in the play yard and toddlers crying and babies laughing. The toddlers don’t do as well when the children are on holiday from school because there is so much activity on the compound. I think they get a bit overwhelmed sometimes. The babies are happy because there are so many here to carry them around. I went to the market and bought balls and cards and Lego blocks and cars. We have a new market here and they have toys!!! Yippee!

The older girls sit and do needlepoint from sun up to sun down when they aren’t doing chores. The custom here is to purchase a bed sheet and then draw a huge flower design in the middle and they fill in the design with all colors of thread. I had a man in Juba draw two for me, one with the Mundari cattle herder and his prize cow and another with a lion on it. The girls and women never seem to tire of sewing and they do this intricate work for other people, no charge. All that work and it doesn’t even belong to them! Theirs is such a spirit of helps and servant hood. All the women are this way. I learn everyday from them. They are always calling me, “Sudanese woman” because I do what they do. I walk bare foot more than I wear shoes these days. How freeing! I dig and plant and harvest and carry stuff on my head. Now I just need to learn the language!

Our bore hole is now fixed and we have water aplenty praise God! We called the bore hole fixer people and they came out and pulled 80 meters of pipe from the depths of the earth and one of our pipes was cracked, hence the low water pressure and flow. Now the water practically pumps itself, there is such little effort required. All are happy and even the toddlers pump their own. And so the word of the Lord in Exodus 23 is fulfilled, that He shall bless our food and water.

I was reading in 1 Samuel 13 this week and noticed that when the Israelites went to war against the Philistines, they didn’t even have weapons. Not a blacksmith could be found because the Philistines were afraid that the Israelites would make weapons against them. Instead the Israelites took their plow shears and sickles and axes and had the Philistines sharpen them. They took their harvest tools right to the enemy to be sharpened.

If we want to reap the harvest, we will have to go into the enemy’s territory. Preaching about the harvest in a nice cozy comfy church is like watching the corn grow but never picking it. When we go into enemy territory, our weapons become our harvest tools and they will be sharpened as we go. They remain dull as long as we don’t use them. I can just picture and army of harvesters standing at the edge of a field, weapons gleaming with sharpness as they ready themselves to plunge into the unknown, rows and rows of grain ripe in the field, as high as their heads, ready for the harvesting.

These last two weeks we have had a team from YWAM (Youth With A Mission) come and visit three times a week to play with the children. They are here for another two weeks and then they head back to Australia. They are all in their early twenties and all full time missionaries. How encouraging it is to see these young people so excited about missions and the nations of the world. They attended our church on Sunday and commented that they received more from the Lord listening to a 16 year old girl preach than sitting in some of the big churches in the West. They were amazed that children so young (7-8-9 years old) could worship the Lord with such passion. I am reminded of the scripture in Romans 8:17,

We are heirs of God IF we share in Christ’s sufferings – only then can we share in His glory. Our present sufferings cannot compare with the glory that will be revealed in us. All creation waits to see this.

These children have suffered much. The glory being revealed in them is incomparable. Christ in us is this hope of glory. A friend of mine, who’s ministry has planted thousands of churches, raised the dead, brought sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and cripples to their feet through the love of Jesus says, “If you insist that the Christian life on earth shouldn’t involve suffering then you’ll deprive people of a lot of joy.” Jesus suffered the cross FOR the joy set before Him. We are His joy and He suffered for us. I see so much suffering and it grieves my heart but when I touch the people and am touched by their plight, I am filled with the joy of Jesus because I know how He loves us, even through our sufferings.

True joy is being able to comfort those who need comforting. True joy is being able to pray for someone and see them healed and set free. True joy is being able to offer a home to the homeless and then watch them be transformed only by the love of God. Here at Yei Children’s Village Iris, we don’t ever counsel children when they arrive. Many times we don’t even talk about what they’ve been through, unless they want to. The Presence of God and the love of the Father is so tangible here that these children are touched and changed by His love through all of us. We just love them through.

We don’t allow darkness to come into our home. Yes, our children are sheltered from the world but they are not oblivious to it. We go to public places and evangelize and pray for drunkards and prostitutes and we see demonic people and witch doctors. The children know about these things. But within the confines of our home here, we don’t allow it. The children sing only Christian songs and watch only family rated movies. There are no magazines or books which have questionable content. There is so much light here that when we go out to evangelize, it really is the overflow of their hearts. They carry living water with no stagnant pools to be found. Do we live in a perfect world? No, we still have our share of squabbles and misunderstandings and occasional disobedience. After all, they are children like anywhere else in the world.

Saturday evening, we took our big tipper truck and went to the biggest produce market in Yei and we brought our worship team, 30 children on fire for the Lord. They stood in the filth of that place, trash all around, with drunks coming near and dancing a little too close at times. There was no fear in them. I preached a message of salvation from the bed of the tipper truck and then I told of a dream that the Lord gave me the night before. I dreamt that I was standing next to a ditch that was being dug in the streets of Yei. In real life, there really are ditches being dug in Yei to make way for a water system finally. Anyway, in my dream, some of our older boys saw a snake in the grass and they began to beat it out. The snake slithered into the ditch filled with water. The snake was about 10 feet long and about 6 inches in diameter and was solid black. It began to swim toward the other end where men were working and the ditch was filled with water. I yelled at the men to get out because the snake was going to kill them.

I then told the crowd that the snake is the devil and he is going to kill them if they don’t choose life. The dream was sent to me as a warning to the people of Yei. You could literally see the faces of the people change. They believe in dreams and there is even said that Yei has water spirits. When the call for salvation came, ninety five percent of the hands shot up. Then we sent our young children into this crowd of about a hundred people, two by two, to lay hands on people and pray for healing. Everyone we prayed for was healed, glory to God! It was so awesome. I was the only adult praying. The rest were our children. This is the joy set before us, to see people set free and darkness to flee. Perfect love casts out all fear. These children know the perfect love of the Father. They are not orphans.

This week I am working on securing transportation to go north to visit Turalei, a small community near Abyei, which has grown overnight to over 40,000 refugees. The UN says they cannot possibly handle this surge of humanity because the gas shortage has all but stopped them in their tracks. The situation is desperate already. Please keep us lifted in prayer that we can go and be of some assistance. We also want to visit our pastors in Darfur. Both of these places are still considered not secure but we believe God is calling us to go and that He will make the way there and back for us.

I have attached an article below that describes the situation in Turalei. Pray for these people. They are desperately in need of everything.

Residents fleeing Sudan's Abyei region flood nearby town, making food and fuel scarce

By Maggie Fick, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Fri, 27 May, 2011

RELATED CONTENT

Thousands of displaced persons from Abyei collect food rations in a makeshift camp …

TURALEI, Sudan - Ayak Adiang and her children will soon run out of food — but only because Adiang opened her home to villagers running from violence.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese are fleeing from the contested north-south border region of Abyei, and the top U.S. official in the region warned Friday of a humanitarian crisis over the north's invasion.

Food and fuel are running short. There is not nearly enough shelter.

Adiang's single-room house is now bursting with people. Martha Abiem Deng arrived empty-handed with two relatives and a dozen children between them after fleeing fighting in Abyei. Adiang took them in.

"They will consume the little we have," said Adiang as she sat near the dark, pungent hut that serves as her kitchen.

All Adiang has left is a pot of meat and three bowls of pounded porridge. Turalei's market is empty after an influx frightened families arrived over the past few days, almost doubling the town's population. The only things still for sale are cigarettes and telephone chargers.

County Commissioner Dominic Deng said Friday that up to 40,000 people have arrived in Turalei, a town just south of Abyei. He said at least 80,000 people have fled Abyei, a zone about the size of Connecticut which northern Sudan invaded last weekend.

On a visit to Turalei on Friday, the top U.S. official in Southern Sudan, Barrie Walkley, said "we have a perfect storm" creating a humanitarian crisis. Sudan's north is blockading border crossing points, preventing food and fuel from getting to the south. Militias are attacking southern forces, and the northern army displaced tens of thousands of people by invading Abyei, he said.

Lise Grande, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official in Southern Sudan, said there are not enough stocks in the area to supply all the fleeing families with food and shelter. The fuel shortage is greatly hampering relief efforts, she said.

"It's double the number of people we were planning for," she said. "We have to face the fact that if they are here for a while then what we have is not enough."

Outside Adiang's hut, Deng sat under a tree and gestured to one small jerry can. Her whole family must share the water within it "We don't have any money and there is no food in the market anyway," the 49-year-old said.

Both northern and Southern Sudan stake a claim to Abyei, a fertile grassland near several oil fields. Fighting between north and south broke out last week, and northern troops moved in with force.

Southern Sudan's president says the south will not respond militarily and risk a resumption of the country's civil war. More than 2 million people were killed during war, which ended with a peace deal in 2005.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, said Thursday that the north's movement into Abyei appears to have been premeditated.

Rice said government forces seem to have used an attack by southern forces on a convoy of government soldiers from the north last week as a "pretext" to move into Abyei, the border town between Sudan's Arab-dominated north and mainly ethnic African south.

North and south Sudan ended more than two decades of civil war in 2005 with a peace deal that promised both Abyei and the south a self-determination vote. The south voted overwhelmingly in January to secede and becomes an independent nation July 9. Abyei's vote never happened, so its future was being negotiated by the north and south.

But since fighting broke out last week, families have been pouring into Turalei, hoping for refuge. Many walk for days barefoot through the thorny jungle, carrying screaming children in their arms. Some end up sleeping under trees. The lucky ones are taken in by families, where they face the agonizing realization that every morsel that feeds their own children is taking away from the children of their hosts.

"The food will soon finish," said Adiang quietly, watching her toddler play in the dirt with the children of her guests. "Maybe the humanitarians will help." But despite the shortages, she is glad to be helping her kinsmen. "If I had fled to their place they would have taken me in," said Adiang. "It is our culture."

The Blessing

2011-06-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

I’m going to just dive right in. The border area of Abyei (oil land) was taken by force this last week by President Bashir of the North. He sent war planes and dropped bombs on 10 innocent villages and killed innocent civilians. He dismantled the government by force and replaced it with his own. He made a public statement that if the South took Abyei, he would not recognize us as a nation and war would ensue. Well, he jumped the gun and started his own war. Abyei is now in the hands of the north and I don’t know what is going to happen next.

The people are displaced and running south. I dug through what little I own concerning clothes and managed to give two pairs of capri pants and six shirts and a pair of sandals and one set of bed sheets. This is just a tiny drop in the bucket but every little bit helps. I am still hoping to make a trip up there myself in the next few weeks. I will wait and see what God has in mind for me. I feel such a pull to go and encourage these people and so I wait on His leading to go.

The price of fuel here has hit such magnanimous proportions that even many NGO’s are not driving unless it is unavoidable. This is not an exaggeration – the cost for one gallon of gas is $14.00. This has caused a major chain reaction concerning food and transportation costs. Everything has doubled concerning taking public transportation. The price of maize, the main staple of subsistence, has doubled and the price of beans and rice and baby formula has gone up 50-70%. Things are becoming very hard in South Sudan and many say it will get much worse.

This new country (as of July 9^th, 2011) will have no major industry or exports and so where is the money going to come from? Abyei is in the hands of the north and so we don’t even have oil money. It’s not looking good. The scripture, “Blessed are the poor….” Really hits home. This was this morning’s message from the mouth of a sixteen year old preacher, one of our girls. She preached that we are not here to be blessed but to be a blessing. We should rejoice in all things because Jesus has prepared a place for us when all is finished here on earth. These kids have no parents, a few sets of clothes, maybe two pairs of sandals and beans every day for food. They understand blessing.

Now for some good news. I took our abuba to the clinic, the one who couldn’t see very well, and she received an eye exam and a pair of new reading glasses for $3.00. That is awesome. There is a ministry here called CMS Ireland that runs a clinic and the prices are amazingly cheap, including meds. This is where we take our children for treatment. I don’t think they have any real doctors on staff, just bottom of the rung nurses with limited training. I have again spent most of the week at the clinic as the children are going through the cold and flu season and so there are a lot of coughs and sniffles going about, and malaria. So, we have checked all beds and all now have new mosquito nets and so we have declared war on malaria in Jesus Name!

I have also been busy with the business of running the base. There is still much building and just the daily needs are somewhat time consuming. I have been enjoying it and so am not complaining. But, this has once again left me so little time for outreach type ministry, although I spend major chunks of time with the children and so I think that qualifies as ministry J.

I was invited to speak at the Church of God Sudan conference for pastors and leaders on Saturday. I spoke about leadership and what it takes to make a great leader. Somehow the theme, “Follow Me”, was the basis of my talk. Everything that I do here seems to come back to that, follow the Lamb. It makes leading so much easier.

It has been raining every afternoon as the rainy season is upon us. The rain comes in sheets and soaks everything for about 15-20 minutes and the sun comes out and the children come back out and things grow almost before our eyes. When I left to Nairobi the maize plants were to my ankles. Exactly one month later and they are taller than me (over 6 feet). I sit on my front porch and 10 yards out there is a beautiful field of maize corn to look at. To my right, same distance, are onions. We are also growing ground nuts and cassava (my absolute favorite). Soon we will plant potatoes and greens. I love the rainy season here because the nights are amazingly cool. Talk about the best sleep ever!

Every day I eat my fill of fresh mango. They are so numerous that we have to eat one or two a day or they will spoil. They are my absolute favorite fruit and I never grow tired of them. The Lord has blessed me with excellent health and I feel great. Thank you for all your prayers for keeping my body healthy and strong.

I close my update with this wonderful scripture that I have been declaring every day now. Our borehole water supply is running slow and not as plentiful. It takes more effort to pump the water up and it is not as rich a flow. And so we lay hands on our borehole and declare out of Exodus 23:25 that we worship the Lord and he blesses our water and our food and He takes all sickness from among us and gives us a full life span. Every night I dance and sing and pray with the children under the stars, the heavens that the Lord put in place. We worship the Lord before we lay our heads to sleep each and every night. We will see our blessing, Amen!

Multiplying Mangoes

2011-06-05T20:55:00.001-07:00

This week I have been to the clinic every day but one, not for me, but for malaria and wound care for the kids. Malaria is a part of the daily life here in Sudan. For children it is critical and so we don’t delay in getting them treatment. Their little bodies can’t handle the fevers and dehydration and quick treatment is the order of the day. My spider bite wound is still healing slowly. Believe me, I don’t complain at all, even in my heart, because there are much worse things going on than this light affliction on me.

Jesus spoke to me this week about the things that belong to Him. If everything belongs to Jesus, then nothing belongs to me. If I truly gave Him everything, then nothing is mine to keep. Jesus even wants all these light afflictions from us. He wants everything we have to be His. He carries it all. All we have to carry is the cross. We take up the cross daily and carry it. We drink from the cup of suffering. We taste here and there, we carry here and there, but none of it belongs to us if we give Him everything. I can just picture the devil handing us sickness and immediately I turn to Jesus and quickly give it up, handing it over, letting it go. I certainly don’t want to hold onto it. Jesus “took up” all of our sickness and disease, all our infirmities. He is so wonderful and amazing to look down the line of time and see what lay ahead, and He took it up before it even came time to be. Deeeeeeep……

I was so excited this week to pick a package from the incoming MAF flight at our airstrip, which is about a 30 minute drive from here. Someone mailed me a package back in March containing much awaited balloons and marshmallows for the kids and I so wanted them to have it all. So, I took four of the older boys with me, as they just like to ride along. We got there and they unloaded the plane and there sat one small box, 12 X 12 inches, not for me. Awwwwwww……. So we drove back and laughed about how it took five big people to retrieve one small box.

We didn’t waste the trip. I took them to lunch at a small roadside stand and we ate our favorite meal ever, cassava posho and kabob. It is a sticky gummy maize dough with chunks of beef in a rich sauce, all eaten with our fingers of course. I had taken the girls earlier in the week to the same place. All were so happy and we were fat when we left J. Yes Jenny Joy, it is your favorite place! Sorey! Haha. I think I am going native as I am preferring to eat with my fingers more often than using a fork or spoon.

On Friday, I went to the local taxi park to pick up two very important packages from Juba City, the place where I did street ministry for a week in April. A teen girl and her younger brother came to live with us here in Yei. They lost their parents when they were young and have been living with their stepmother who abuses them. She was ready to take the girl to a village to marry her off to an old man. The stepmother told her to either marry or go live on the streets and to take her brother with her. She was prepared to live on the streets and so we have become their safe haven. The taxi guy said to meet him between 3-4 pm to pick her. We sat there for two solid hours, as he was very late.

The taxi park is a horrible place to be. The guys sit around and drink and chew this green grass stuff which is a type of speed/cocainish stuff that makes them nervous and edgy. There is always arguing and fighting and drunkenness. We watched this for two hours and it was like we were invisible because not a single person bothered us, which is highly unusual. Not a single drunk came near. Highly unusual. There was a small girl of about eight selling a huge sack of mangoes. She was selling them seven for one Sudanese pound (about 35 cents). I asked her if she would sell the entire bag for 10 pounds. She did. I figured there were only 70 or so mangoes inside.

This morning I washed them and counted them and I prayed that God would multiply them so that all 110 or so kids and the 10 mamas could enjoy. All the children came and all the mamas came and everyone had a mango and there were even five left over!! That is like 125 or so mangoes. I can’t prove or even say for sure that God multiplied them but I know these street kids. They know how much they have to sell and always get the best deal for produce. This little girl would not have sold me twice the amount of mangoes for that cheap price. But God! Haha! Makes me smile.

I found a really cool verse this week. In 1 Samuel 7:5, the prophet Samuel tells the Israelites this: “I will intercede WITH the Lord for you.” Jesus intercedes before the throne day and night for us. When we pray, we are not praying to Him, we are praying WITH Him to the Father, in Jesus Name. How way cool is that? We intercede WITH Jesus, right there alongside of Him. The scripture says that we are seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. We are right there with Him when we pray. Samuel ministered before the Lord for hours every day. He got a revelation of true intercession. He knew it was a partnership with the Lord, a position of sitting with Him. There are so many sweet nuggets like this sprinkled all over the Old Testament, telling of things to come when Jesus got here. God is ALWAYS telling us before hand. We just have to listen better, me for sure J.

I had a soaking session with the teenagers on Friday morning and we prayed from this position. We waited on God to answer us, Jesus and us, and we received the same things to bring to prayer on Friday night at our Friday Night Furnace meeting. I am teaching them to wait on the Lord for His leading concerning prayer and what to pray WITH Him when we intercede on Friday nights. This is powerful because we are in agreement with Jesus. We intercede with Him. I really like that.

Today, Sunday, I presented the message to our church about Psalm 23. As we went through each verse, I had three little sheep (children) enacting the verses. Green pastures equaled one green sleeping bag. Rod and staff equaled a broomstick minus the broom. Banquet table equaled a mango, some bisquits (crackers) and lots of “laua” (candy). Boy did I have their attention.

As I talked about the table set before us in the presence of our enemies, I poured out the candy at the feet of the sheep and one of our toddlers, Patience, who just learned to walk, she yells out my name in excitement, “Owlina!!” and starts toddling over to the banqueting table and sits right down at the candy section for her share. Ahhhhhh it was so perfect. She didn’t care what the church crowd thought. She had a single eye for that table and she walked sweet as you please across the alter, her eyes on the prize. When we sit and feast with our Shepherd, people will see the wonderful pleasure and abundance that is to be found there and they will come to dine with Him. When we see the feast that He gives us, do we take notice and yell out His name in excitement and go single eyed to His table? Do we care that everyone is staring? Where is our focus? Oh the things that I learn from the mouths of babes……

As I was sitting with one of the older mamas this week, we call her Abuba, I asked her why she didn’t do needlepoint like the other mamas and all the older girls. She said, “I can’t see.” I never realized. She never complains or squints or acts like she has a hard time with small things. It’s just amazing how people really don’t complain about stuff here. They are happy, no matter what. Everyday I seek this kind of attitude, being satisfied with much and with little, just being thankful for the goodness of God, however He blesses me, just being thankful.

Snakes In The Rafters

2011-05-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

I send you greetings filled with the peace and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and His power residing in you who believe. This week as I prepare to bring the “Easter” message in our church, I am constantly reminded of my citizenship in heaven. Being in a foreign country, it is never far from my thoughts how easily my being here is questioned. Whenever I travel outside of the area of Yei County, I am asked for my papers giving me a right to be here in Sudan.

God has reminded me of my citizenship in His country, His kingdom (Phil 3:18-20). I have diplomatic immunity whenever I enter into the kingdom of darkness to rescue those who are caught there. I have my kingdom passport, stamped with the Blood of Jesus, giving me access in the foreign country of darkness. The devil will question my right to go into his domain but he can’t legally stop me from getting what belongs to the kingdom of light and bringing it out. He can use corruption to try and stop me but as long as I stand firm in who I am and where I come from, he fights a losing battle. I love that!

This week, as we have been continuing our ministry of teaching the nurses in the hospital to pray for the sick, we have been praying before we go there. As we have been praying, I have been asking God for the dead and meaning it. Oh, I have asked God to anoint me with the kind of faith it takes to pray for the dead to be raised, but I don’t think I ever believed I could have that extreme kind of faith. I have never even prayed for a dead person. As we were praying this week, I began to ask in faith, believing, for the dead. It just came out of my mouth and so I know it was not me purposely asking for this. Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. I am tired of seeing the dead. I want to see life.

That day, as we arrived at the hospital, there was a lady lying in the dirt under a mango tree crying and wailing because she had lost a loved one. We looked and kept walking toward our classroom area to get ready for the teaching. I kept looking back at the lady and I finally had to go to her because I felt such compassion welling up inside me. As soon as I laid hands on her, I began to cry with her. I felt her pain and I didn’t even know her. The tears wouldn’t stop flowing, although silently. In Africa, when a person dies, all the women gather and cry with the grieving family. I felt a part of them this day. I felt their pain.

After praying, I then returned to the classroom and just kept looking out at the small crowd. Then I heard the Lord say to me, “This morning you asked Me for the dead. Did you mean it?” I was taken aback. Well, yes, I meant it, but now? I went back out to the crowd and asked where the husband was, in what ward. A lady took me to him and he was lying in the dorm style ward, people all over visiting their family members who were sick. No one seemed to pay any mind to the dead guy covered in a green sheet with his wife’s embroidery on it, right there in the midst of life going on all around him. There was one man standing there and I asked if this was his relative. He was the nephew. I asked if I could pray for his uncle and he said yes.

I stood at the foot of the bed and firmly took hold of his cold and stiff feet and began to pray. People were watching me all around and I was by myself in this. I closed my eyes and began to speak life into him and began to imagine his feet warming and moving beneath my touch as Jesus breathed life into him. I thought about a missionary to Africa, John G Lake I think, who said that when you pray for the dead, grab their feet because if their feet get warm then life is returning. I prayed with all this running through my mind and I was really expecting life to come. The world seemed to fade away and it was me and the dead guy and Jesus. After about ten minutes, I moved to the head of the bed and placed my hand on his head, which was still hidden under the sheet. I then told the uncle sorry and the uncle was glad I prayed, even though nothing happened.

I believe this was just a huge step of faith for me and there was no fear in me, even though people probably thought I was nuts. I just know that Jesus and the disciples were raising the dead and Jesus said we could too and so I went after that and I felt such compassion for the wife. I feel like this was a seed sown and the next time I step out in faith and pray for a dead person, something good will happen. In Luke 18:8 Jesus asked the disciples, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” Jesus mentioned the word faith 46 times just in the gospels. I counted them. Faith is a huge deal to Him. I want bigger faith, I really do. I don’t want to fear man’s reaction anymore concerning what I do with my faith. I want to live the gospels in my heart and not just in my mind. It is with our mouths that we confess but it is with our hearts that we believe.

The cross is faith in action. Jesus had such great faith in what He was doing for all mankind on the cross, faith that would change the entire story of every life into eternity. He knew that people would think He was crazy, a heretic, doing things and saying things that were not normal. The Christianity of Jesus is the normal. Everything else is abnormal.

FAITH…… What does it really mean in each of our lives? I have not come even close to attaining it, but everyday I contend for it.

This week I planted almost two fields full of peanuts. Here we call them ground nuts. We have no tractors or plowing oxen, just out backs and hands and feet. It is hard and tedious work but we all work together, planting in other’s fields. This week some of us went to help a pastor’s wife plant her field. Then we planted a friend’s field, she is single and has a small child. Neither field belonged to any of us but we planted and sowed happily until it was finished. Job 12:8 says, “speak to the earth and it will teach you”. So many times, the earth teaches me about the great mysteries of the kingdom of God.

We planted another’s field with no expectation of a personal return. We just wanted to be a help to another in need. This is the fellowship of the believer’s. We shall all reap together in heaven, a great harvest. It’s not about what we reap here on the earth. I used to always think about seeing the harvest of the kingdom. I would do ministry for the reason of seeing a harvest. Now, I minister from the stance of only wanting to sow extravagantly, sowing everywhere in all fields, knowing that the harvest will come and bless those whom God has in mind to bless. I receive my blessing everyday because I know that He makes my heart grow bigger each time I sow. My heart is God’s harvest field. From that abundance I can sow extravagantly.

Last week at the hospital we prayed for a nurse, Felix, who came up in front of everyone and said that he could not quit drinking and smoking and he wanted to be set free. He was so humble and desperate for help. We prayed for him. Tuesday, he brought a friend who was in the same trouble. A week later Felix is still free from alcohol and cigarettes and he brought yet another friend! Felix is a new man and is so excited. All we did was pray with him. Jesus changed his heart and his life. We went to the hospital on Good Friday to pray for the sick and we went to visit Felix where he works on the TB ward.

He brought all the patients who could walk outside under a mango tree and we told them the good news of Jesus the Healer. We prayed for each patient and gave out Bibles. I prayed for one man in a wheel chair who hadn’t walked since January. When I finished I asked him to stand and take a few steps with me. He did! Haha! I told him to contend for the Lord’s strength and to not give up. We left and people were encouraged. Even if all we do is encourage people, it is more than not going at all. People need to hear good news. It is a sad and scary world for many and good news is hard to come by anymore. Jesus is always good news. In every situation, He is the good news.

Today is Resurrection Sunday and I preached this morning about the first sacrifice, in the Garden of Eden, when God had to kill an animal to make skins to cover Adam and Eve. I talked about how the Israelites had to depend on the high priest once a year to get atonement for their sins. Then I finished with the cross.

Well, during worship, a snake was found crawling in the overhead rafters. Everyone started focusing on this snake and it was too high up to do anything about anyway. I got everyone’s attention and asked them if they wanted to look at the devil today or look at Jesus. They all yelled, “JESUS!” and we commenced to worship again, eyes closed and taking no notice of the sneaky snake, who kept peeking out at us. When I started my message, I told them how ironic it was that Satan would attempt this day, of all days, to distract us. Satan tried a long time ago to make himself higher than God and it didn’t work then. He was cast out of heaven and made to crawl on his belly. I pointed to the cross in the center of our church and told them that Satan would never be higher than the cross, not ever! He was defeated at the cross. The church went crazy and cheered. Ha! Satan was put in his place and I gave the message with this snake hanging over our heads and never giving it any mind.

After the service, two of the older boys climbed up in the rafters and struck it down and cut off its head!!! Such a perfect resurrection message and the power of the cross and Satan being defeated!! I loved it! Earlier this week I prepared 120 little gift bags for the children, which contained plastic laces for weaving, beads and stickers and a cross bracelet and candy. They were so happy and spent the entire afternoon working on their crafts, even the older boys. A very pleasant day.

Sticking To Jesus

2011-05-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

The rains have come and planting has begun in earnest here in South Sudan. Well, not frantic, but everyone’s planting. For many, work gets set aside, school gets set aside, planting is what’s in right now. I am learning how to plant maize corn and moringa trees and onions and all sorts of things. No tractors or farm equipment except for hearty backs and arms and the sweat of our brows. It’s still very hot when it isn’t raining so the nights can be a battle with constant thirst and a swimming pool for a bed. But when the rains come, it is a cool 65 degrees! Crazy!

And now, an update on my last update. The lady who was pregnant and bleeding out that we sent to the hospital in the back of a pickup truck, well her baby was still in the hospital when I left to come back to Yei. And the baby who was on his last breaths because the mother was a drunkard, well we went back to give him formula and found that the grandmother was the one who took him to the hospital. The doctors found that he had alcohol poisoning, which means that the mother’s breast milk was so full of alcohol or she was actually feeding her baby alcohol. Our recommendation to the grandmother was to take baby formula from us and feed the baby herself, not allowing the mother to breast feed if possible.

The mother with the twins left by themselves all day, well we found encouraging news about her. The reason she leaves during the day is so she can go dig through trash to find food or bottles or things she can sell to care for her babies. She does not drink and when we last visited her, we found her bathing her babies and they were smiling and crawling around and seemed to be loved. She is married to a very old man who is also sickly. She was forced into marriage with him because he was able to pay enough cows to her father. That’s life here in Sudan. It’s all about the cows to some of these tribes. And so we brought her a new tarp to cover her hovel to keep the spring rains out. She will receive regular visits from Cathy to help her.

I arrived back in Yei right at lunchtime on Monday and the children came running and all were happy to welcome Abuba and myself home. Abuba is one of our mamas who traveled with me to Juba to visit her family. I entered my room and found a mess. I keep all of my dry foodstuffs in ziplock bags in a suitcase to keep the rats and bugs out. I accidentally left the suitcase unzipped and found that some rats had a great vacation inside my suitcase. I had to throw almost everything out as there was rat feces and food spilled from open bags. Then to clean the rat droppings from around my room I had to move everything out to clean. All this took about two hours as I had to clean everything with bleach and water.

That night I was resting and watching a DVD on my computer and I heard a rat in a box under my bed. So, I had to move everything out from under my bed and this rat went scurrying out the door. So, I moved everything back and settled in to finish my DVD. Then I heard another! Again I moved everything out and still no rat. Then I tossed my gumboots out and there it was, running for it’s life. And so I fixed a last supper for those rats and left it outside my door for them to enjoy, spiced up with a dollop of rat poison of course. The next morning, dead rat! And now there is peace in my room!

This week we have taken nine more children into our midst, three teen girls and six little boys, all without mothers as they have died. Tomorrow, Monday, we are taking in five more. I think we have about 120 children now. Again and again I am challenged by the resilience of these kids. These children have just been taken from all they have known and brought into a strange place, knowing that this is where they will stay. And yet they seem happy for the most part. The boys play and run and laugh and the girls have made friends and have become part of our family in just these few days. It speaks much of the culture here, which embraces strangers and makes them feel welcome. No one is a stranger for long.

Yesterday I was talking with one of our staff about the study habits of the children. The girls are so focused and the boys just want to play. I told him this is the same in most cultures I think. He then told me a great story about hard work and discipline. He said there once was an old man who was dying. This old man had great fields of harvest. He was rich in produce and the land was good. He had a lazy son and called him to his bedside and told him that when he dies, that the son should know that there is a great treasure buried under the dirt and for him to find it after his death. So the father dies and the son spends the next year doing nothing, just eating up the crops and enjoying the harvest.

Soon the harvest was finished and there was nothing left to eat. He began to fret because he would starve. Then he remembered what his father had said about the treasure. And so he got the hoe and began to dig looking for this treasure. He dug all day. He dug all the next day. When he surveyed all that he had done and still no treasure, it was then that he realized that the earth itself, which grew the harvest, was where the treasure was found. It was up to him to plant the seed and the earth would yield the crops, the treasure.

Many times, we as Christians, we enjoy the harvest of the Word of God and we enjoy seeing the result of another’s ministry and even partake of the fruit of it. Yet when we are then asked to go out on our own, to dig for the treasure, we continue to partake of what is already there. Soon we find ourselves hungry and dissatisfied and we don’t know why. We start looking around for a different diet, a new wind of refreshing for our souls, food from another’s field. When all the while, the treasure is there, if we would just put our hands to the plow and dig. We are all called to go to the fields and find treasure. Those who put their hands to the plow will find it and be satisfied. Those who continue looking at what is planted by another will soon become dissatisfied. It is only a matter of time.

My friend told me another “parable” about how when a young tree is planted, you must tie it to a stick so that it does not fall or break when the winds and rain come. The young tree remains with this stick until it is strong enough to stand on its own, then the stick can be removed. This is the way of a father who raises up his child. The child remains close to the stick, tethered to the stick, the stick being firm and seasoned, yet leaving enough room for the small tree to grow. This way the young tree is not allowed much freedom to bend the wrong way or be broken by standing alone.

So many times in the Bible God talks about trees. He says we are the planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor (Isaiah 61:3), and we are planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:3), and we shall be called oaks of righteousness (Isaiah 61:3), we will have the right to the tree of life (Rev 22:14). In Genesis 2:9, God told Adam that he could partake of any tree, even the tree of Life, but he could not partake of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because then he would surely die. The Tree of Knowledge represents the Law. Deut 21:23 tells us that anyone hung on a tree is cursed. Jesus allowed Himself to be hung on a tree so that we could again have life, the life that was lost in the Garden of Eden.

When this friend told me the parable of the stick, I thought about Jesus and sin and Law. I thought about how in the Old Testament man tried to follow the Law standing on his own and he couldn’t. It was a stick tightly bound, leaving no room for growth or grace. Jesus became that stick that we need to have life. He brings discipline and growth, not through laws and regulations, but through mercy and grace, allowing us room to grow, yet still tethered to Him so that we won’t fall when the storms come. As long as I am walking on this earth, I will remain “as a” child so that I can remain tethered to that Stick, to the cross, to Jesus.

Three weeks ago, we went to the village to visit the father of two of our children who was diagnosed to die. I gave the testimony in that update how the two boys prayed for him and how we declared life over him. This week, one of our mamas talked to him and he was walking around, the swelling all over his body almost completely gone and he feels good! Praise Jesus! What a testimony to these children about the power of their prayers. It was a great testimony in church this morning and they were excited to hear the news.

This week we also received permission from the Yei County Hospital to hold training twice a week with any nurses or doctors who would like to attend on how to heal the sick through prayer. The first day we had 12 come. The second day we had 17 come. After each session we pray for those who need healing and many of them receive their healing. This is such an amazing opportunity to bring prayer alongside medicine in the healing of the sick. This is just amazing that we even get to do this on hospital time and property! Only God! All this came about because for three months we have gone every week to pray for the sick. There is so much that God wants to do.

This week I have continued my training on how to plant and harvest things in the earth. Yesterday I learned how to sift sorghum. Sorghum is what is used to make posho, which is a staple with every meal. It is doughy and great to fill the belly. It grows as tiny seeds on bushy branches. When harvested, they are set out to dry for days and days. Then we beat them with a stick until all these tiny seeds fall off and we remove the branches to see all these millions of seeds. Then we have to take the seeds and fill little woven half shaped baskets. We hold the baskets above our heads and slowly pour out the seeds as the wind catches the chaff, or hulls. We do this at least twice, even up to three times. Then we take these seeds in these same baskets and gently shake them back and forth until the remaining chaff comes to the top and we blow it off. It is a tedious and hard process in the hot sun.

Of course, I thought about a parable to relate to all this. You know me! God takes us through this same process of refining and shaking off things off of us. The winds of change must come to blow off the things that won’t produce a good result. Some have to go through it again and again until it is finished. And then there is a final shaking, a cleansing, to bring forth that good fruit. Hebrews 12 tells us that God will shake everything that can be shaken until only He remains. I want to be good posho, good tasting to God, a delight to His lips. I welcome the sifting and gentle shaking when it comes. It is a good thing.

This week brings us closer to the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us go about doing good to all so that when the day of celebration comes, we can say with confidence that He lives in us and through us. May the Lord bless you and keep you and be gracious unto you. May He cause His face to shine upon you and give you much peace this week. Shout GRACE to your mountains! Halelujah.

Street Girls

2011-05-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

I left Yei on Monday morning to travel to Juba, the current capital city of South Sudan, the seat of the current government. I was dropped at the “taxi park” and found a ride in a Landcruiser with 11 other passengers. We were packed in like sardines, it was crazy. At one point the guy was going to shove another passenger to sit on a two person jumpseat where two people already were, one of them being myself! I got out and demanded my money back and wanted to go in another vehicle. The guy refused! Simply refused. That’s how it is here. Corruption! The guy finally relented and didn’t put another person in probably because he got tired of my persistence. They don’t usually give up the making of more money that easily.

The taxi park in Juba is out of control crazy. There were so many taxi vans that I couldn’t begin to count them. The city is also slowly paving its roads and it felt so nice to be on a smooth surface after 10 weeks on dirt roads. I am staying at a guesthouse where the owner also has a street kid ministry on property. The area where they bathe and eat and play at small desks is literally one step outside of my bedroom door. The girls are here for bathing and breakfast at 0730 and then off to school except for two smaller ones. They all return a little after 1200 for lunch and stay until after dinner, going home before dark.

These girls then go home at night to severe poverty, to parents who beat them, neglect them, or are drunks and/or prostitutes or all of the above and some go to shacks made of tin or old tarps and care for themselves. There are two sisters currently with us in Yei who were living alone, ages nine and three years old. Three of the smallest girls at this Drop In Center live in “The Dying Place”, which I will tell you about later in this update, and Abuba, the resident grandma, cares for them as best she can. One of the girls I am pretty sure has some form of cerebral palsy or something like it and has just started walking this last year. She is seven years old. She came to us yesterday with a 2 Sudanese Pound note, which is about 30 cents USD. She said that a man gave it to her after he had sex with her on her way home. That is the going rate for sex on the street, 30 cents. She left for the Iris Children’s Village the very next morning. She is now safe.

Today I went to visit these slums all morning and then again tonight. There are shacks and hovels everywhere and the people are living in filth. We went to this one area where a little girl sat and there were so many flies on her I could not count them. I peered into another hovel and there were twin baby boys sleeping, covered with flies, and small piles of feces next to them and even on the foam mattress. These boys were not even two years old and their mother was nowhere to be found. She leaves them all day alone because she can’t cope and who knows where she goes.

We visited another place where, again, the kids were so covered in flies it was hard for me to hold them, but I did. I found one little treasure and carried her around and had flies all over my face because she had them. I couldn’t put her down though and I hugged her even closer so she could bury her face in my clean shirt. It broke my heart and I fought to control my emotions. The people here don’t understand crying publicly and it wouldn’t help things and so you have to hold on to your heart tightly. In this place there was a hovel that had beds and sleeping mats and nicer cloth throws. It was the brothel where young girls earned their money at night.

There was also a tarp and tin structure with a grandmother sitting inside holding a severely malnourished baby, who was on his last breaths. She said that her daughter, the mother of the little baby, was a drunk and didn’t care to stick around to breast feed the baby boy and so they are just waiting for him to die. He had flies all over him and he was so weak that he couldn’t even cry, just a tiny squeak. I almost lost it right then.

And then a very old looking grandma came hobbling up on a cane, barely moving, her shirt unbuttoned. She was wrinkled and emaciated, and she sat down in the tiniest of hovels. You couldn’t even kneel in it because it was so tiny. This was her house, about three feet by five feet. She sat on the front mat in the muddy pathway, half in and half out, puking her guts out, her daughter helping to wipe her mouth. I wanted to just cry and cry and cry at the injustice of it all! I have seen such poverty and filth all over Africa. The filth is mostly due to no sanitation because there is no sewage, water or trash disposal system in place. We left the grandma and visited another place in the market. There are so many back alleys in the market that one could so easily get lost.

We made our way back to what Cathy calls, “The Dying Place”. This is a small area, about 20 x 25 square yards, enclosed by a ragged bamboo fence with one large covered area under a ragged tin roof and mats strewn about. This is where the older alcoholics come to drink until they die. They come here to just die. There are three old men who lie on mats outside and when it rains, they just stay there soaking in the mud. They don’t care anymore. Inside there is a wonderful lady, very healthy (fat) and jolly, called Abuba, which means grandma. She takes care of everyone. She lives here in this poverty stricken place to care for everyone! She loves these people and stays with them.

There was a lady sitting behind a thin curtain who was in labor. It was the mom of one of our children in Yei. Saida’s mom….. I went to pray for her and we found that she was bleeding out. The Abuba and a couple of other ladies said that they could do nothing for her and she will probably die there. We asked someone to go get a taxi and take her to the hospital. I paid 100 Sudanese pounds for the pick up truck and the hospital birthing fees. That is about $31.00 USD. So this bleeding pregnant lady has to walk through alleys to get to the truck and then climb in back. Not a whimper or grimace. I prayed over her and the baby and off they went.

We then made our way back through the market and stopped to buy some clothes for the children. I also purchased two skirts and two blouses for the old grandma in her small tent. We came back to the guesthouse and I spent the afternoon doing beads with the girls. After the girls ate their dinner, we went back to the market to see about Saida’s mom and if she had the baby. The Abuba told us that she had the baby but it was born not breathing. They were able to resuscitate him and mother and baby are okay, praise God. Now I am praying for Saida’s mom who is an alcoholic. She couldn’t even care for Saida and her sister and now she has a baby boy.

I cannot look at all of this and think, “What the heck can I do to make any difference when we get the kids away from these people and they just have more????” I have to take one child at a time and believe it makes a huge difference. I see the transformation in the kids we save. Until something drastic happens, one kid at a time is the only way to survive and keep my mind and heart intact. Otherwise I would fill up with grief and despair.

Wednesday I hopped on a minivan bus and headed further into the city to the ZAIN office to get my modem fixed which I bought last September that has never worked. I arrived in the inner city and got out and just walked, asking for directions until I found the place. Problem solved and now out to explore some of the city. I walked all over, down trash littered dirt alleys where the real treasures are hiding and up paved roads, by myself. There was a group of old people sitting on the side of one road in the dirt, eight or nine of them. They were all missing limbs or were blind or deformed. They obviously lived on that corner as they had ragged tarps and basins for washing and a small cook stove and some pots. I knelt and visited with them for a bit and left them with some money for food. My heart again wrenched and broke for these broken people.

I then hopped in a minivan bus and actually found my way back to the guesthouse without asking directions. I was amazed because all the streets look the same, filled with trucks and cars and rubbish and razor wired walls and all the side roads are still dirt. I am so glad that God has given me a spirit of boldness to go places by myself, yet common sense to know where not to go. In all my travels I never see white people walking anywhere. I am not exaggerating here. I am just so amazed because you miss so much of what is going on and who the people are. The white people mostly go from point A to point B in a taxi or organizational vehicle. I guess what I am saying is this, don’t be afraid to get out and walk among the people in a foreign country, even a place like Sudan. That’s where real life is happening, not behind the glass window of a car. Ah there is so much life on the streets. And death…..for those who are dying there.

Last night Cathy and I actually did the unthinkable. We went in her car to the market to visit a couple of children’s hovels. The streets were practically lined with groups of chairs in half circles to form makeshift drinking places. The streets are alive with alcohol and very loud music being blasted distortedly from generator powered speakers. We drove down back alleys where the little car barely fit and parked and got out and walked a little ways to our destination. People come up and ask for money to buy alcohol and are almost in shock to find us in their midst, especially me, the kawaja, and we go on our way untouched and even respected. Some places were so dark that you couldn’t make out facial features. The people were actually friendly toward us. I never once feared because I knew God was with me.

This afternoon, Wednesday, I hung out with the girls and we made African clay stuff. A guy comes once a week and brings his dirt mix which is the mud here and water mixed to a consistency resembling clay. It was quite cool. I have been watching the girls and am almost shocked by their behavior sometimes. I don’t show it but inside I cringe. They change here and wash their street clothes and hang them to dry each day. A few of them pose and shake their hips in front of the mirror acting like they are dancing for men, real sexy. These are girls that are only ten years old and a little older. They hang out at the street bars at night and dance and sell their bodies for money and attention. I tell the girls that they are beautiful to God and they don’t have to do this. I hug them and tell them they are treasured no matter what. They smile and let me love them.

I am only here a week and so I love them as much as I can, giving so many hugs and holds, and pray for them and spend the days with them. They all want to go back to Yei with me but that is not possible. We can’t just take them from their families, and they bring in money so their families won’t let them go. And so I continue to pray and love.

Yesterday, we went back to visit the dying baby who’s mother is a drunk and won’t feed him, to bring him some formula. We arrived after dark because of the urgency of the situation. We found that the baby was taken to the hospital as he was on his last breaths. I thank God that the mother at least did that, or maybe it was the grandmother. We also brought some food for the grandma who is living in the small tent. She is also blind and so she didn’t even see me standing there waiting to hand her the bag. I had to say, “Abuba, inni”, Grandmother, here. She then took it with a grateful smile.

I am amazed at the places I found myself this week after dark. I never saw any white people in these places in the daytime, much less after dark when the drinking starts and such. The people were so nice and welcoming to me. I felt safer in these places than most places in downtown USA at night. I never felt threatened or frightened. I even had to be outside by myself to guide the car in the dark for it to back up and not get stuck. People would come and shake my hand and kids would run up and hug me. When Jesus sends you on a mission, He goes with you. The people know it and they welcome you most times.

We also went to visit the mom of the twins and found her very pleasant and sober, which was a very good thing. So, I don’t think she left the babies to go and drink. I think she just goes to find work and find ways to earn money to support herself and the babies and has no choice but to leave them. They looked happy and I tried to hold one but the flies were so bad that I had to set this one down. They were trying to go up my nose. Had to draw the line. We also learned that the lady who was in labor that we rescued, well the baby is still in hospital.

Tonight is Saturday night and there is one of the small girls from this Drop In Center standing outside my window literally wailing because she does not want to go home. It is now dark and she is still wailing loudly and I am sitting here with my heart in pieces tears running down my face because I DON’T know what to do! All I can do is think about the terrors that will now face her on her walk home. I don’t have a car. She won’t tell me where she lives. She won’t quit crying. I can’t have her here in my room because she has to learn not to do this. Then the lady who I have been working with all week comes to my room and says, “Let’s go and take her home”.

I hurry out to the dark street and scoop her in my arms and we are crying together. We take her deep into the market where there are so many drunk and mean people. There is a man in the middle of the path, pants down to his ankles, and he is scooting along in the dirt because he is too drunk to stand. There are a group of men fighting and swinging beer bottles. We get to her alley and there are three men standing there. I have been praying the whole time for Jesus’ angels to surround us, and the little girl, because these are the mean streets. We tell the little one to run down the dark alley to her home, “Jeri jeri, guam, Jesu rua itta!” Run, run quickly, Jesus goes with you! As soon as she gets out of the car, the three men are already leaving down the trail, totally unaware of us, and her. Jesus is already there. As we are driving out, the man scooting on the ground is still there trying to pull his pants up, still sitting in the dirt, people still walking casually by him. It is impossible to describe the craziness here in this place.

I am so upset inside for these babies. I even feel somewhat depressed and so terribly sad. I have to keep my gaze upon Jesus and His grace or I couldn’t continue to do this. My heart can’t contain this hurt for them. I am so angry with the adults who are so negligent, from the government down to the parents to the drunks and pedophiles. I literally felt helpless tonight and I hated that. I hated that I couldn’t help her and I put my hands to my face and cried, asking Jesus what can I do and He came. Jesus is breaking my heart all over again for these broken lives. Even the drunks who are so addicted that they would leave their babies in filth to go party or crawl naked through the street. I am asking God to break me even more. I don’t ever want to become immune to all this or to harden my heart toward anyone, whether the adult in the wrong or the victims, the tiniest ones.

Today I am spending the day with 17 girls singing and making beads and dancing and watching one last movie before I go. Tomorrow I head back to Yei, back to paradise compared to here, but I know that soon I must come back to this type environment and stay and minister. The Lord and your prayers strengthen me. I love and bless you all in the mighty name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is able where no man is.

Jesus Wrote The Book Of Faith

2011-04-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

I have just realized that I have been back in Africa for ten weeks! Time just marches on and March has left us! This week we are somewhat back to normal here at the Children’s Village. Well, we were. Then Monday morning we had to take a nice little trip back to Morobo, the village where I camped a few weeks ago. Two of our boy’s father called and said he is dying and wanted to see his sons. And you are asking why are the boys here if they have a dad? Their mother was horribly abusing them and after meeting her, I think she isn’t all there upstairs, so….

It was a very emotional time for the boys. As soon as they got off the truck they started crying. Then my eyes were watering up. Then mama Eudita’s eyes were watering up. The father was really sick. I told him about the miracle that his son received during our Friday Night Furnace prayers. He was the one who was in extreme pain and then dancing ten minutes later, free from all pain. I also told the father that his sons knew how to pray and pray powerfully and that they were going to pray for their daddy to be healed.

We prayed and prayed and didn’t see any immediate results during our visit. The good news is we haven’t received any calls saying he died and so we continue to believe that God touched him and I did declared the Word, “You shall live and not die and you and your whole house will serve the Lord.”

I left there thinking about “faith”. The Book of Hebrews 2:10 and 12:2 says that Jesus is the “author” and perfecter of our faith and He is also the “author” of our salvation. So, the Bible also says that if we are saved then our names will appear in the Book of Life. So I was thinking that if there is a Book of Life, where Jesus is the Author, then there must be a Book of Faith, where Jesus is also the Author.

Jesus gives us perfect salvation. Jesus also gives us perfect faith. So anything that we set ourselves to do that will honor Him, well we have the entire Book of Faith behind us! Jesus wrote it and He made it perfect. We each have our own book of faith to draw from, to fill the pages of. Every time we take a step of faith, Jesus writes it in our book! We can have a pamphlet of faith or we can have a best seller, a novel packed with faith stories.

And so I like to throw off everything that hinders me from walking in faith and doing the stuff that takes great faith. When we do stuff in faith, Jesus adds it to our book. He is the Author. He writes it all down because He loves to read and reread the faith stuff that we do! He writes really great books too! We are the subject, He is the Author and He perfects us. We don’t have to stir up our faith or have perfect faith because He perfects us. Practice makes perfect. Let us practice our faith a little each day and see how He will make it perfect.

Tuesday morning we loaded all of the toddlers, 18 of them, into our tipper truck, which is like a low walled dump truck. We sat on a nice African mat, all of us mamas sitting around them, and one little five year old girl sang Jesus songs all the way to town as we headed off to get polio and measles vaccines. It was the cutest picture. Then they all stood in their perfect small line to wait their turn to get stuck with a needle. I am constantly shown through the actions of these small toddlers how Jesus wants us to come to Him. These little ones are so trusting and they just follow where we show them, even though they see that it might sting just a little. I stood with each one and calmed them and they trusted enough to come forward. I daily pursue this kind of trust in Jesus.

As we move closer to the July 9^th date of independence for South Sudan, tensions are rising a bit. There is a renegade SPLA General name George Athor who is leading a group of rebels that are calling themselves The South Sudan Democratic Movement. So far four of the ten states in South Sudan have groups that have joined him. He claims that the current government is controlled by the Dinka tribe and there is inequality in this. His rebel forces consist of warlords who have killed many in the Abyei oil field area to remove them from that land for the North. It is not looking good and some believe that there is a possibility of a civil war between the people of South Sudan. This group has also killed 200 innocent civilians in one of the towns where they are holing up. This is the North’s dream, their ambition all along for us here in the South, disunity.

And so we pray. If we don’t pray, then nothing will happen for the good of this nation and her children. We pray for a peaceful resolution to the disputes of her fathers for the sake of the children. We pray for wisdom and unity in Jesus in the hearts of those who seek to sit in government offices. We pray for the Hope of this nation, Jesus Christ, to be made manifest in the hearts of those who seek to cause disunity and corruption in South Sudan. As I gathered with the youth on Friday night for hour time of intercession, this was our prayer focus. They are powerful pray-ers, these youth of South Sudan.

Every night before I retire to my bed, I walk to the children’s houses and peek in, cuddling one or two here and there as they prepare for bed. In every house, the children are sitting on the floor, all huddled around a tiny kerosene flame, vying for the flickering light to see their school work. They are all working together to study and copy notes. The teens walk to and from school, about three miles each way, each day. Yesterday it rained in the afternoon and I thought about the children in the west and how cars would be lining up in front of the schools to take children home in order to keep them dry. And I thought about our children and wondered how they were keeping dry. Were they running into a friends hut or standing under a mango tree to wait out the rain? Most times, they just keep walking, soaking wet. They are amazing.

This is all they know here. There is no light switch and comfortable desk in each room by which to do their homework. No computers and textbooks. No school buses. Here, the children spend the day copying entire textbooks in order to learn because there is only one per class or school. Only a few can gather around the textbook at one time and so the others must copy notes from these few when they get home at night. The smaller children have small chalkboards on which to practice their skills, erasing it all to use again and again. And when the rains come, they make their way home however they can, hoping to arrive with dry books and notes and bodies. Also, since it is too far to walk home for lunch, the older children go all day without food until they arrive home in the evenings, usually around 6-7 pm. This is life in Sudan, at least our part of it.

Saturday, I attended the Police graduation ceremony in the town center along with a couple of thousand other people. We had planned just to stand along the sidelines with everyone else in the town. As soon as we arrived, two westerners and two of our older Sudanese sons, we were immediately escorted to the VIP seating area and we sat behind the top officers and the Central Equatoria Governor. There was enough brass and high officials to start a small war and here we were, two of three westerners in the midst of them and two of our older boys The boys said that just last week they would have been standing in the hot sun with everyone else and now look where they are sitting. Talk about God exalting the humble and placing us before governors and kings! Such an inspiration for these two young men to be exalted like this and humble enough to know it was God.

We were so proud of our police brothers, standing there in full ceremonial uniform. Then they did something simply astounding, never been done before. They had a small marching band in their midst and 450 police recruits marched up to the platform in a beautiful formation and stopped. The drum beat once, they dropped to one knee. The drum beat again and they snapped their heads to their left pocket over their hearts. The drum beat again and they snapped their right hands high in the air, still on bended knee, and there in their hands was a small Bible! They then repeated the police oath after the highest ranking police official in the land, swearing allegiance on the Bible. It was an amazing sight to see those Bibles lifted in the air and them on bended knee.

After the ceremony ended, I boldly walked up to this highest ranking police officer and shook his hand and told him how pleased we were with his men and that we loved them so much and spent every Sunday with them to minister spiritually. He was well pleased and thanked us. Next week I think we will meet the next set of new recruits and will begin discipling them soon. It is very exciting to be a part of the new police force in South Sudan. The speaker told the men that no longer should they look at each other as being from different tribes. They are now of the tribe of “Sulta” which means authority. A co-missionary and I looked at each other and said, “Yes, spiritual authority in Jesus over darkness”.

The continuing progress of two of our newest arrivals is as follows. Saida, the little girl who just began to trust me a few weeks ago now calls my name from across the compound when she sees me walk by. She laughs and smiles every time I pick her up now. She is playing with other children and beginning to interact more often. The transformation is amazing. The older girl who was tied to a tree is healed and happy. Her hands work, her scars on her arms are almost completely healed and she interacts with others on a regular basis and she helps in the kitchen all the time. Again, the transformation is amazing.

The children who come to us are healed only by the love of Jesus and the love of each other. There are no counselors here, no doctors. We only have Jesus and each other and it is more than enough. God’s grace is truly sufficient for ALL our needs. I would love to duplicate this model of love for all the hurting kids in the west who live in institutions. Another huge factor here is that there is no comparing with other children. African students all wear uniforms and so no one looks any better than anyone else. Our children do not watch TV, only family type DVD’s, and so they don’t feel like they are missing out on anything. Children in the village don’t even get to watch DVDs as much as our children do (once a week on Sunday nights).

Our children have a few sets of clothes, they are fed three meals a day, they have mamas who love them and more than anything, a Father who they KNOW loves them. He is a life transformer. These children are happy and basically don’t ask for anything. They are secure in God’s love for them. And this is just another way how I learned to be that secure also in His love for me. He really does provide for our every need.

Tomorrow I will journey to the city of Juba, which is about a 100 miles north. It will take about 7 hours to drive because of the roads. I will be taking public transportation for the first time. We go into Yei town to the “taxi park” and pick a car and hop in with others who are traveling the same way and trust that we get a good driver and a good car. I am going with one of our mamas, who doesn’t speak English. So, this will be a new adventure for me. I will be staying at a compound in the city that ministers to street children and widows. This ministry is the type I want in Aweil and so I will spend a week there learning from the lady who runs it. I will also possibly be bringing home a seven year old little girl who was found abused and begging on the streets.

Salted With Fire

2011-04-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

Again, another busy week has passed into the eternity of time. We have been battling the enemy on all fronts, all week long. Monday morning I woke up with another boil in my nose, just like last October! I almost go out of my way to make sure I wash my hands and keep clean and still! I have talked to some of the other westerners and they have told me of similar stories where weird and strange skin afflictions have come upon them for no apparent reason. Africa just has some weird stuff! Today is Saturday and my nose is getting better and better. I just keep saying grace to this mountain and squeezing and bearing it!

Friday was our Revival Bible School graduation and mid week we ran into some major resistance in the spiritual realm. Our students were harboring offense in their hearts toward us and we were astounded because these are amazingly sweet and spirit filled students who are always so joyful and prayerful and sincerely loving. We learned that there was one student who was instigating the offense and planting seeds of offense in the minds of some of the others.

Thursday morning I was in charge of the sessions and we were spending the morning in worship and intercession for four hours. Right off, I noticed that my strongest prayer warriors among the students were just sitting there and not engaging. Then this literal wall of flies hung like a curtain on the south side of the church and were also flying around in the church. Our church has half walls and the rest is open with steel bars to keep intruders out. As I was praying, twice a fly flew right in my mouth and I spit it out! Then the head pastor and myself, we just looked at each other and both of us said that there was deep darkness hanging in the atmosphere. The enemy came like a flood, seriously. You could cut the air with a knife.

He is Sudanese and the men respect him and he got everyone standing in a line facing those flies and we went into warfare in Arabic. After a half hour of battle and worship we got still before the Lord and repented for holding others bound in our hearts. When you harbor offense toward another person, you are binding them in your heart. And so after this time of repentance, we worshipped again and every bit of darkness left that church and the flies left and we were all walking in love again, no one being offended. Sounds crazy but this stuff really happens here.

It is very obvious here in Africa when the enemy is lurking around. You can feel the atmosphere shift and the darkness descend like the night. I think in the west that it is more veiled or there are so many distractions that it isn’t easily discernable. Here, even nature starts acting out of sync, seriously.

For the graduation I bought three goats and we slaughtered them and grilled them up. Sadly, one of them was Abraham. One of the female goats that we bought was very big and healthy and our little boy goat, Isaac, is getting close to stud, so we had to sacrifice Abraham for the feast to make room for more babies. Kind of backward huh? So, in the kitchen lean to, there sat Abraham’s head and hooves in a bucket. I almost didn’t eat but I managed.

There are no “grills” here and so we went to town and bought some heavy gage window wire grate and bent it in half and put rocks under the corners and there you have it, instant grill. We feasted on grilled goat with my special seasonings of Rosemary and Oregano simmered in beef broth. Add this to fresh picked cabbage that is cooked in a yummy sauce and some rice. So good!!!

Iris Sudan is now reaching to all corners of South Sudan and even into the north. We sent pastors commissioned from the school to Chukudum to the east, Malakal to the northeast, Darfur to the northwest, Yambio to the west and all points in between. We have the map covered and are taking the gospel of love and the Father’s heart to many who are lost and destitute and need to know they are loved. The two guys from Darfur will be working with me up in Aweil when I get there later this year and I am so excited. They are amazing guys. This is going to be an amazing year for Sudan as the Holy Spirit moves across the land.

Earlier this week I was reading in Mark 9 where Jesus says that “everyone will be salted with fire”. I have long pondered this verse and have not understood the meaning or how one can be “salted” with fire. Yep, you guessed it, the Lord revealed it to me through nature again. So simple yet so profound.

I was talking to another missionary, who is here on an agricultural mission, about how we here at Iris don’t burn our fields because the director doesn’t like fire this close to our houses and kids. So, we have to hack away with machetes and such to clear fields. He told me something very interesting. When you burn a field, it leaves a rich deposit of salt from the burning!

So, we are the salt of the earth according to Jesus in Matthew 5:13. The only way we can become the salt of the earth is to be consumed by the fire of God. The salt is what remains. If we don’t let His fire burn off the dead things in us then we are “good for nothing and lose our saltiness and we become trampled by men” according to further reading Matthew 5:13. Jesus says that everyone will be salted with fire. He goes on to tell us that we need to have salt “within” ourselves and to be at peace with each other.

I believe that our hearts must go through the burning, the refiner’s fire, many times, just like a field for planting. We must allow the burnings of God in our hearts to be salted with His fire so that we can remain salty and be a good field for planting. God always wants to do new things in us and for us and with us. We need to allow the season of burning to come so that new things can come forth from our deep roots. We are rooted and grounded in His perfect love so we will not die when the fire comes. The root runs deep and true and He will bring us forth into a new thing, an even better thing. Spring is here! Let the fire come! Be salted by His holy fire! Let us be the salt that remains of the earth.

It is now Saturday night and I am sitting in my bughut so as to avoid the white termites that fly everywhere this time of year. The Sudanese love to catch thousands of them and pick their wings off, leaving only their fat juicy bodies. Then they roast them over a fire and eat them! Ugh! I had to kindly and sincerely refuse. I did try the goat intestines though! I am trying to fit in, really!

Tonight we also watched a movie on my computer, all 105 children gathered round and a handful of mamas. The entire movie did have some added actors (termites) on screen but we just learn to ignore them. No special Oscars there! I usually find myself getting up from the movie about every half hour, slowing picking my way through the dark with a small child dangling in my arms. They always seem to fall asleep when they reach my arms. I have a sleep anointing for kids and they are drawn to it J. Tonight there were two girls and a boy all within an hour.

It is now Sunday noon and we are just back from church. Well, we brought church to the Police Training Camp again. All of them were in their green uniforms and combat boots, sitting in formation, ready for the Word of God. They are graduating in two weeks and have asked for some discipleship training before they go to all parts of Sudan. We are happy to fill that request. The Christian man who was originally the leader of the Police Training Camp has returned. He is very much respected by the men. He loves the Lord and treats his men fairly.

We were told by some of the trainees that the Christians were being punished over the last week because they got baptized and were attending the church service. They were made to stand for long hours and given extra work. That leader is now gone and we don’t know why? Hmmmm, wonder if God had something to do with it? So we are happy to see the old leader returned. The doors are so wide open here in South Sudan for bringing the Good News. There is huge darkness but the Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is invading that darkness as we carry His light.

It’s sort of like walking into a strange place at night and not knowing what you will see. But then you light a campfire or turn on a flashlight or a kerosene lantern and you begin to see what is there and what needs doing. We carry His light to reveal the need and then we make camp and get to work, not letting ourselves get too comfortable, always ready to move on to another place, another camp, as carriers of the light. We are salted with fire and we carry light. How can there be any darkness in us? It’s all about trusting God with all. Culu culu! Culu hagiga! All all! All truth!

So, today’s lunch treat, along with our regular fare, was roasted termites served up in a nice bowl. Well……. Yep, I actually crunched on one, got it stuck in my molars I did. I ate one. I just had to say I did it. It wasn’t bad or good. It just was. And that is the end of that story, never to be rewritten again I think for me!

After lunch we gathered all of the children and we walked around our huge plot of land and prayed and worshipped and declared and decreed things to keep this land and this ministry consecrated to God. These children are amazing and they are serious when it comes to this sort of thing. Normally when we go for walks there is fighting and crying and playing around and lollygagging and such. This time, they were all focused on what we were about. We didn’t lecture them, we didn’t tell them how to do anything, we just went and they touched every fencepost and went about their Father’s business. It was awesome.

Miracles In Morobo Payam

2011-04-04T23:40:00.001-07:00

I am sitting here with my headlamp around my neck, sort of like a necklace, and my computer on my lap, listening to Peace, my favorite baby, crying in the distance. If I could seriously adopt a baby right this very minute, I would not hesitate to take Peace as my own. She is the cutest, funniest, happiest, sweetest baby I have ever known. A sheer bundle of pure joy. Her mother died in childbirth and her daddy just can’t care for her and so she has been here since her first week of life, eight months ago. Also we have just learned that her teenage sister died last week. Again, death is so much a part of life here.

Every single day we here news reports of fighting in some area of Sudan and it is beginning to get worse. Just this week there was a report of a rebel group who busted in on an orphanage and basically held 103 children hostage. None were hurt thank God. Really, thank You God. Here in Sudan there are wars and rumors of wars. With July 9^th looming closer, the talks between the two presidents, North and South, are strained at best. The Northern armies have also been positioning tanks and artillery in Abyei where the oil is, for an imminent strike it is believed. They are also building up the roads in that area. Right now, it doesn’t look so good. The church here is praying and we here at Iris are praying.

This week I have spent a lot of time at the clinics and hospital, trying to get care for one of our young boys. He fractured his ankle two weeks ago. I took him to a German clinic, which is the only place that I go to when I am sick. Of course I only see the German doctor who happens to be a friend. Our boy had to wait in line and see a Sudanese physician assistant, sort of….. Their schooling is extremely limited. Our nurses in the west know more than they do unfortunately. So, here we are in this hallway that is very narrow where knees almost touch as we sit across the aisle from each other on very small benches, everyone squished together, one big happy family. After more than an hour of sitting, I looked at all these people and said, “You know, we should just pray and ask Jesus to heal us all so we can just go home.” You guessed it, I began to pray for everyone. We all bowed heads and closed eyes and prayed. There were amens all around.

Hey, you gotta at least take that step of faith and just do it, hmmmm. So the PA called our name and he looked at the boy’s leg and squeezed it a little and that was it. Gave him some low dose antibiotics and told us to go to the Yei hospital for an xray.

The xray cost a whopping $3.00 which we had to pay for up front before any xray was taken, and then the power went out when we got there and so we had to wait untill it came back on. So I’m standing there and this drunk guy comes up to me, sits down on the floor at my feet and grabs my leg like he was going to hug it. I just backed up a step and stared at him. Then he started pursing his lips like he was kissing me. There are about 60 people watching this whole thing. I squatted down in front of him and quietly pointed in his face and started to cast out the demon that was in him and rebuked the spirit of drunkenness and he kept doing these lewd actions with his hands.

I told him that I wasn’t afraid of him and that the name of Jesus was a higher power than what was residing in him. I then told him in Arabic that God loves him. I looked him in the eyes even as he was lewd and said it two more times. I then stood up and he just turned around, stood up and walked off. I looked at the crowd and said, “Hey, if we don’t pray for him, who will?” Then our names were called for the xray.

So our boy got this cheesy little wrap around his ankle, not even an ace bandage and we were sent home. I went back today to insist on a cast. We finally found the cast room, which was this beat up little green wooden door in a dark foyer type room off of this dorm where the sick people were. We sat there for two hours just to learn that the cast guy, the only one in Yei, could not be located, not even by his family. So, you guessed it, we were sent home. The standard answer here, “Eh, you come back tomorrow” or “He is coming”. Unfortunately, the people so hate to disappoint you that they will tell you what you want to hear, even if it is wrong. Never ask for directions…… Meanwhile I am visiting a few of the patients that we prayed for last week and “making my rounds”. All these hospital visits were just more opportunity to stop for the one.

Earlier this week, as I was taking the toddlers for a walk, I had to smile at two of the smallest ones. They are always trailing in the rear and don’t walk very fast at all. They are only three years old. If I get more than two feet ahead, they start to whine. And so I slow way down, while yelling for the others up ahead to wait, “Wogi!”. Our roads are basically two tire tracks with grass growing in the middle. So, when we walk, we walk on one of the tire tracks. Sometimes I switch tracks because I want the two slowpokes to walk beside me. This particular walk, I noticed that every time I switched tracks, they would too.

They insisted on following my every footstep. There were places where there were rocks and small dips or rises and these two littlest ones would struggle to cross over the rocks and dips and rises just to stay with me. The rocks must have looked like boulders to them and the dips like valleys and the rises like hills. They never strayed from the steps I had walked before them. If the rocks were too much, they would struggle, and then I would go back to help them through it. They never once considered staying on the easier path.

It made me think about how it is when we exactly follow Jesus. There are these valleys and hills and rocks that we must travel over to stay with Him. If we follow Him, we can’t even consider the easier path. He is always looking back and helping us over the rough places. I could not possibly think about leaving these two to struggle alone, even though I had another infant tied to my back and it was a bit hot. I went slowly and I helped them, all the way to the finish line. I even lifted one little girl up so she could see over the tall grass that we were within sight of the compound and so don’t give up because we are there! So many times I have been tired and have wondered where the end of the line for that day was and then Jesus would lift me up so I could see over the tall grass to show me something and I would be encouraged yet again.

This week has been the week of fire, literally speaking. There is a well known prophet in America named Kim Clement who prophesied on his TV show about Sudan. A person who watched it transcribed it and sent it to our director here in Sudan and this is what he said word for word

The Sudanese were... I feel something about Sudan right now.

Where is Sudan? Sudan is... It's below Libya? ...ah it's on the east coast. Just above Uganda.

Here's the word of the Lord. And I want to prophecy this right now. And I say and I want you to listen to me. I feel something about Sudan. I feel like there is going to be South of Sudan, there is going to be a massive, massive move of the Spirit, where even Muslim people will travel from the North to the South and say, "What is happening there? What are the miracles that are happening in South Sudan." We were once one nation but now we are two but God said, "even though you are one that became two," God says "they shall become united, because there's been control, corrupt leadership, Muslim powers have tried to dominate with Sharia law and bring in great evil,

But, I have a plan for Sudan. I have a plan for them" says the Lord. "I have a plan to move and to shift and to come into South Sudan and to do something that will reach into the North and even bring Muslims in where they will shout out", "We want the Christ that you serve." "I placed The Nile through the middle of you" and God said, "so that you could cross over and be together. And this is my word to you." says the Lord, "I will bring about a move of my Spirit in Sudan which will reach and reach into the countries around them." Says the Spirit of God. "And they will look and they will say "This is a country that is the largest in Africa and yet this country" and I'm speaking from the Spirit right now, "this country has now become the largest in terms of the propigation of the word of God and the miraculous." God says "Sudan, I hear your prayers. Even those who have been persecuted and killed. I am going to come there and light a fire in the South of Sudan that will cause many to come into the kingdom and great news shall come from Africa. Great news shall come. They shall say, "there's a fire burning! there's a fire burning!" And God says "You will stand and you will say the Lord has done this great thing."

We here in South Sudan are greatly encouraged! We received this word on Tuesday morning, which was just after a fire came so close to our compound on Monday night, that it was within 10 yards of our fence. On Wednesday, the director of Iris Sudan and I were talking about this prophesy again and how encouraged we were. I left her house and saw a huge fire on our compound. I started running and grabbed the guard who had also seen it and we went running and came upon this wall of fire. There were five of our guys already fighting it and so we grabbed some tree branches and started beating the bush. The fire went all the way to the road in front of our church and stopped right there! Nothing was damaged and no one got hurt. I got a small burn on my arm but no problem. The fire burned our grass but they would have burned it anyway for planting.

As I have seen many fires here now, I have learned something amazing about fire. At the hottest part of the fire, in the air above, the birds ride on the current of wind that is created by the fire. The very atmosphere changes where there is fire. A current is created, a wind that rises. In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit came as tongues of fire and there was the sound of a rushing wind. After the fire rested on those in the upper room, they were transformed and speaking in languages they did not know. Fire changes the atmosphere, it transforms the landscape. When fire comes, everything changes. There is a fire that comes from God that will change the very atmosphere of a place, a church, a city, a nation. The fire brings a wind of change and these places will be transformed.

The Lord gave me the name, “Friday Night Furnace”, for our prayer movement here at Iris Sudan. I believe that we will partner with God in bringing the fire of His Spirit into this region. Prayers are incense, they are smoke, going up to the very heavens. Change is coming. I am excited and encouraged!

I have also learned of an amazing tree that grows here in Sudan called the Moringa tree. It is very rich in vitamins and nutrients, as I told you in the last update. I have acquired some seedpods so we can plant many here on our compound. As I was sitting here thinking about drying these seeds, basically letting them die and get dry as an old bone before planting them, my mind started spinning again. It does that a lot J

I thought about how in America, every year at Easter, I would buy an orchid or iris plant and then when it started to wither, I would set it out on the back porch and never care for it. It would become nothing but dry dusty dirt in the hot summer sun and remain cold lifeless dirt in the winter. I didn’t shelter it or protect it. It just sat out there, through every season, in its plastic pot. And somehow, amazingly, right before Easter, it would come up from seemingly nowhere, and grow into a beautiful flower again. I thought about how I had to kill these Moringa seeds before I could plant them and then I would water them and make them grow into these amazingly rich trees, full of life and nutrients.

The kingdom of God is so upside down. The wise cannot comprehend it. It doesn’t make sense at all sometimes. A dead seed, a new tree, so full of nutrients bringing life to the desperately malnourished. Jesus, a Seed who had to die, bringing new life to the desperately malnourished and dying. God is simply amazing. I feel like I am doing somersaults sometimes because just when I think I am right side up, He turns me upside down again! He changes my thinking and opens my eyes to see things perfectly in the simplest of ways. Even a child……

Friday morning, I left for Morobo Payam to a village called Lukuja, which is about three miles from the Congo. Here in Sudan, counties are called payams. It took 3 hours to drive 37 miles. We stayed in the bush, way in the bush, where a new church was being planted. The church was a structure made of big tree limbs with tree branches as the roof and a grass floor and no walls. I was so honored to be the first preacher at this new church on Sunday morning. They were actually building the church while we were there. We stayed for three days and two nights, praying for the sick, discipling new converts and we also went on Saturday for street evangelism in the local market about 5 miles away. By the way the Congo is a lot cooler at night than where I live in Yei. I was actually cold because I didn’t think to bring a sweater or sleeping bag. In the mornings I would go and sit in what I call “the smoke house”, which is a mud hut that is used for cooking and storage and when the fire is going, the smoke lingers in the air and you basically get smoked, but it is very warm inside.

We prayed for three people on different occasions who had eyesight so poor that they could not see further than five feet in front of them. Their eyes were crossed also. Every one of them had their eyesight restored. We tested it before and after and had witnesses who knew them who agreed that God did a miracle this day! Before they could not see anything further than three steps away and now they can see the distant mango trees across the valley. They can describe what the man coming down the far end of the path is wearing. One of them could not read his Bible because he could not see very well up close. After we prayed we tested him and he was reading like there was no tomorrow! They were once legally blind and now they can see! Also a little girl who was crippled on her left side and had the same eye problem was brought to us. She was one of the three who could now see. And so we continued to pray for her leg to work and for her hand to straighten.

We prayed four times until we saw a change. Each time, we asked her to do something she couldn’t do before. She began stomping her left foot, which was weak and feeble earlier. She also began to straighten her crippled fingers, which remained curled before. God moved in power in her small body and brought hope. The mother was so very happy. And the little girl too J. She still has some weakness in her leg but she is much stronger today than she was yesterday. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead has raised her body up from the crippled place. It was a glorious weekend and we rejoiced as we drove home at all that God had done in that place and in the hearts of the people.

This is the last week of our Bible school and all will return to their villages on Saturday. I am excited to watch them being transformed right before our very eyes. God has really been speaking to me about transformation, but that will have to wait until next week! Again, thank you so much to all of you for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. Please, feel free to email me to say hello. I rarely hear from home because so many people tell me that they don’t want to encumber me with so many emails, and now I rarely receive any. I could never receive too many emails. Your lives are very interesting to me. Eighty percent of my life here is just everyday living, playing with children, sitting with the mamas. I like hearing about your daily lives too. Keep me in your loop because I miss being there too!

Still Following The Unpaved Road

2011-04-04T23:36:00.000-07:00

Summer has arrived in full force here in Sudan. The days are made bearable here in Yei as we have many shade trees and a fairly steady breeze blowing across the fields, which mostly lie barren as they wait for the spring rains to come. The nights are in the 90’s and we lay as still as possible so as not to exert much energy which then causes us to sweat, which we do anyways, sweat that is. We have no electricity and no fans or AC or even cold water to bring relief. The mamas sit out on the porches and talk late into the night, even after midnight, before going inside to catch a few hours sleep before the sun rises again.

Well, with all the heat and no rain, the ants are working overtime in their desperation to find water and food. Earlier this week I found ants trying to eat their way through one of my bottles of water, millions of them living inside the card board box that houses my bottled water! I got rid of them and then found some ants trying to find a way in through the screw cap! Then I had a still hot sweet potato sitting in a bowl, covered with a metal pot lid. I went to take my shower (bucket cup bath) and returned to find them invading my potato. I shook them off and rinsed with water and commenced eating my potato. It’s a daily battle. If I don’t toss out the excess water in my teapot and turn it upside down on my table, I will have village of ants swimming their way to oblivion in my teapot! And so our days march along to a steady rhythm of chasing the shade by day and capturing the stillness of night to cool our tired bodies and minds and serving eviction notice to the ants who inhabit our very lives.

I never cease to be amazed by the servitude and fortitude of the women here. Everyone helps everyone. Some of our mamas are building huts for their extended families to stay in and one of our workers is building one close by so she can be closer to us here at Iris. And so the ladies spend long days in the fields cutting elephant grass to make the thatching for the roofs. These ladies work all day washing the children’s clothes, running after toddlers, doing needlework, cooking, tilling and planting entire fields, harvesting from fields and then they add the work of helping others. I am ever, ever humbled by their amazing hearts. They never seem to tire of doing good. They truly live the scripture in Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”

We are in the last weeks now of our Revival Bible School. We have all grown so close and it will be sad to say goodbye two weeks from now as they return home to their villages across Sudan. Two of the men are from Darfur and I am so excited to be partnering with them when I eventually move up to that area later in the year. They are our door into Darfur and they are filled with the Holy Ghost and fire!

This week when we went to visit the hospital, we stayed longer than ever before and were able to really spend time ministering to individuals. I visited with Sunday, the girl who was stabbed in the back of the head. She was very alert, her eyes bright and shining, and fully able to converse with us. She seems to have no ill effect from the stab wound praise Jesus! She says her back hurts because the man punched her there really hard. Also her right arm is seized up where the muscles won’t relax and so her arm is always folded in half, her hand up by her shoulder. As we prayed for her, praying peace and the loosing of heaven upon her arm to loosen her muscles, slowly we were able to help her straighten her arm and her clenched fingers. We believe that she still carries a bit of the spirit of fear or terror and that is why her arm seized. We will continue to pray for her full recovery.

She has such an amazing believing spirit and is so resilient. All the children here are so resilient. You see big gaping wounds on their legs or feet, seriously, half their toe hanging by a sliver of skin, and they just go running along, never complaining. One of our boys sprained his ankle really bad and he never said anything until days later and was walking on it the entire time! It is huge swollen! I definitely don’t complain here. We just deal with stuff and move on. There is life to be lived and we don’t want to miss a beat!

Also, our girl who came last week who was found wandering in the jungle, well she isn’t the same girl anymore. She is being transformed before our very eyes. She smiles all the time, she holds our babies, she tried to help crack peanuts and bath and do as much as she can with her still weak hands. She is being healed inside and out and it is such a peaceful feeling knowing that Jesus is with her all the way. His touch is so amazing. The Presence of the Lord fills the dirt playground and the concrete huts and the mud hut kitchen here. His peace lives here and we are very much aware and in tune with Him. And I know that it is the children who usher in His Presence.

Every night they sing and worship in the dark before bed and every morning they awaken the dawn with their praises. No adult tells them to do this. They just do it because it is in their hearts to do it. I can never say enough about their servant hearts and I learn from them daily. Come to me as a little child and you will see the kingdom of heaven. Learn from them. I do daily. And when they throw rocks up into the mango trees, they still offer me the best mango. I am undone!

Here are some testimonies of the things we have been a witness to as we go on outreach. We have noticed a marked difference in the population of the hospital. When we first started the hospital outreach a month and a half ago, the hospital was full to overflowing. Now, there are many empty beds. The nurses and doctors have commented that they want us to continue coming and they even like for us to pray with them because they are seeing the power and the love of God as we minister. They are encouraged by what we are doing and what God is doing.

We went to visit some of our neighbors one afternoon and as we went to a hut, the man answered the door and said that he had a dream the night before that two men would come and bring healing for his family, which were all very sick. When he answered the door and saw two of our pastors there, he knew that his family would be healed. The pastors went in and prayed with them all and all were healed! Amazing!

Two other pastors went to a village bar and as they went in and sat down, they were asked if they wanted a beer. They responded that they didn’t want a beer but they did have some good news to share. They were given permission to share the good news and a lady came forth for salvation and when they saw her later in the week, she said she had been to church and not been back to the bar. The bar owner was happy for the message.

A lady was in the hospital with her baby who hadn’t eaten in a couple of days and was very weak and feverish. Our team prayed for her and the baby. They asked the woman if she went to church and knew the Lord. She said she left off going last year and they said she should go back to the Lord and healing was waiting for them both. The baby immediately suckled at his mother’s breast after prayer. He was eating again!

A man in prison says he was falsely accused of murder six years ago and has been there ever since. He had pain all over his body and his head always hurts. We talked to him about forgiveness and he forgave his accuser. Then we prayed for him and all the pain left his body, even his head. He received the peace of the Lord.

We came upon a lady in the hospital who had such back pain that she could not move. We prayed for her and asked if she could move. She tried but was still in extreme pain, not even able to lift her head. We talked with her about if there was someone in her family that she was fighting with as I felt this was the case. She said that yes her daughter beat her a few days ago in a drunken rage and that is why she was in hospital. We talked with her about forgiveness and to pray for her daughter’s deliverance from alcohol and not to give up as we all had testimonies of praying years for family members who had been set free. We then prayed over her again and for her daughter. When we finished, this lady sat up on the edge of her bed by herself, where minutes before she could not move! Jesus brought the peace of forgiveness.

So many testimonies in just one week. I now know why Jesus said that all the books of the earth could not fit all the testimonies of what He does for us! It is so true. He is always moving and working and interceding and loving and bringing freedom wherever His name is cried. This week I taught the Revival School students about the reality of the kingdom of heaven. The reality within is what our reality without will be. What we believe and say amen to in our hearts has to be what we live in our surroundings. If we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus according to Ephesians 2:6-7, then we carry heaven everywhere we go.

Think about it. We carry heaven! Heaven goes everywhere we go! All we have to do is release it. There is so much power and force and richness in heaven. Jesus is seated there. Ha! We carry heaven! We carry so much and yet we hold it all in so many times. We are the gate of heaven. Lift up your heads O ye gates and let the King of Glory come in!!! We are the gate of heaven and people want in. We have what the world is looking for. We carry eternal life. We carry the promise of heaven, Jesus Christ. We carry hope. We carry love. We carry Him……… Open the gate.

Last night, I had just settled into my bughut with a good book and my headlamp when I heard the crackling of burning bush grass, seemingly right outside my window. I got up to investigate and found that our neighbors were burning their fields this night. The fire was right there next to our back fence line. All of us westerners came out to watch it. There are four of us here now and three of us (not me seriously) were nervous and anxious about it jumping our fence line. They even called the guards to come and make sure it was under control. I figured, they’ve been doing this for years and so they sort of know what they are doing?

After all the excitement died down I tumbled back into my bed and fell asleep to crackling bush and soon a heavy rain. I am ever amazed at how these people seem to know it will rain! There was not a cloud in the sky, not a one when the fire was started. I notice that they just seem to know. Hmmmm, how is it we know the signs in the sky and the weather but we fail to see the signs of the times, sometimes…. You know me, always finding a scripture to link to my life stories J!

This week I have made two airport runs to drop off and pick people up. It is so strange how our minds shift from one realm to another. I wasn’t even leaving the country and yet as I pulled onto the dirt airstrip, I had visions of stepping onto the plane and how immediately my reality changes. It’s like stepping out of the third world of Sudan knowing that we are now in the realm of modern civilization, where there is electricity and running water and stores and malls and television. Even though I didn’t physically get on that plane, I felt the reality shift just by being in close proximity to that plane and seeing it and remembering what it can take me to.

That is how it is with kingdom living. We live in the reality of a world full of chaos and problems and trials. But we know what the kingdom of heaven carries because we have been there. We have seen the realm of miracles and encountering Jesus in a tangible way. We carry this reality and as we remember it, our minds can shift from one realm to the other. We can step into the better reality. Yep, it’s pretty deep stuff huh?

This week I will be on the hunt for two goats and two sheep. Well, not literally on the hunt. We will buy them in the market of course. We have a female sheep and its baby and now we need a daddy to make more babies. Then, we are graduating the Revival School next Friday and so we will feast on BBQ goat and sheep (not the new daddy sheep of course)! Here in Yei, not many people roast goat and so I am also going to buy some heavy gage wire screen to make a BBQ rack and we will put some bricks to lay it on and some coal underneath and, whala, BBQ! Everyone is so excited for the soon coming meat because it is a rarity for us.

Also, I will be traveling down the road to Morobo, close to the Congo border. Michele, the director of Iris Sudan, and I are tagging along with one of our pastors from the Church of God to do a weekend evangelism visit. We will be doing open air church preaching under mango trees where there is no church. Although the village is not an unreached village, they are in need of the Lord and a church, and so we go. Very exciting. We will be camping in a tent and no showers and eating village food and such. Life is never boring. It is what we decide to make of it yes? Although I often dream of AC and running water and real furniture and paved roads…… Ah, but the Lord is taking me down the unpaved road for now and so I follow Him.

Until next week, bless you!

Children of The Light; Rescued From The LRA

2011-04-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

Another crazy busy wonderful week has gone by and slipped into eternity. The week began with the arrival of three absolutely beautiful teenagers from one family. They really are absolutely beautiful. One boy and two girls. They were brought by the UN because their parents were killed by the LRA. Yes, the LRA is still very, very active in these parts, just 10 miles down the road. In just one week these three are smiling and fitting right in with our children, becoming family. Three others had to leave to go back to their family. They hadn’t lived at home in three years and were so sad to go. There were tears and heartbreak because they love their family here so much.

Another girl managed to escape from the LRA and the UN found her wandering in the jungle, emaciated with slashing wounds all up and down her arms. Her hands do not work and she scoops her food with paralyzed hands. The night she arrived, we bathed her and she was so exhausted that she laid down on the mat and just stared the saddest stare. It pulled at my heart. Only one girl could speak her language, she herself being rescued last year from the horrible clutches of the LRA.

We gathered around her and we laid our hands all over her in a gentle and loving manner and we prayed and sang over her for the next hour. As we prayed her eyes began to close in peace, as if she had finally found rest. We found out that she had to watch her own brother as he was macheted to death and she remained tied to a tree like an animal, raped over and over again. Her eyes tell a thousand nightmares. But we here at Iris know the end from the beginning. We watch children being transformed daily by the love of the Father. There are no rape counselors here. God’s presence truly is in this place. This girl too will be transformed. She will know the love of the Father. Nothing can stop this kind of love.

The Lord continues to speak to me about His grace. He calls us to be carriers of His grace. If we are called to be a light in a dark place, only His grace can carry us there. We cannot go without this. It was by His grace that we were saved and shown new life. It was His wonderful grace that caused His light to then shine in us. We didn’t have to do a thing to receive this grace, this light. We just open ourselves up and He pours in.

It is like a flashlight. There is the bulb and the casing that houses that which belongs inside. A flashlight cannot work without the battery. Alone it is useless. Alone it is a weak shell with nothing but guts inside. God’s grace is the battery that powers us to go where He is calling us. His grace is what powers our light to shine. Jesus told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My POWER is made perfect in weakness.” His grace powers our little lights, our weak shells.

A flashlight does not strive to receive the battery. A flashlight does not work itself up to receive the battery. A flashlight is opened up, exposing the inside, and it just receives the battery. It is only then that it can work. It just receives and the light is clicked on with such little effort and the darkness is ablaze with light! Let the grace of the Lord be hidden in you and you in Him. Rest and open your weak casing and allow Him to power you. His grace abounds if we let Him! It is all sufficient!

This week a special friend came to visit us and stayed for a week. Papa Roland Baker, founder and director of Iris Ministries. He is such a fun man and so full of the Holy Spirit. He lives in the realm of joy. He wakes up happy and goes through his day happy. He knows that our God is a happy God. His two rules for being a missionary are to follow Jesus and have fun! That simple! Even when chaos abounds all round, have fun. Yes, have fun. Get excited when chaos and persecution comes. It is an opportunity to present God. If we aren’t happy Christians then who wants to be one? Even in terrible situations, even when we are sad for a person’s situation, we can still carry a small bit of love and joy to impart. A real smile changes so many things.

This girl who was terribly abused by the LRA, every time I go to her dorm I take her hand and greet her and I smile. I notice that she is starting to smile a little because she is surrounded by love and joy, true joy, which can only be found in knowing the love and peace of Jesus.

There are three babies here, all about 10 months old. I love and hold and play with them all. One of them is so attached to me that even if I just walk by she starts crying because she wants me. She spoke her first word this week. She said, “Kaulina”! She said my name! I never once taught her to say it. The mamas would say my name as I came by and she just picked it up and found a way to call out to me so that I would stop for her, the one. Now, every time she sees me, “Kaulina”. So cool!

Over the last two weeks, many villagers have been burning their fields and getting them ready for planting. I watch the fires and I think about how in the western world, people fear fire because it is not normal to see fields on fire. When fires are seen in the west, the fire department is called, people run to save their possessions, even their very lives. Here, we find fire comforting. We see it as the way to burn off the dead things in a field and with it, bringing new life.

I see how God uses fire to teach us that we must let the fire of His love burn off the dead things in our lives. Instead of trying to save our possessions and our lives, we need to let Him burn in us to kill that which does not bring new life. Last night as I walked the bush path back to our compound at midnight after prayer, I watched this perfect fire in a straight line going up this hill and I was in awe. I lead a Friday night prayer movement here called the Friday Night Furnace. For four hours this fire burned, the entire time of our prayer meeting. It was a controlled burn, boundaries were set, and only those things that were meant to be burned were burned. Everything else was intact and safe.

As I watched the perfect line of fire going up a hill and the top a burning furnace, I saw the fire by night and the cloud by day of God. I saw how He led the Israelites around in the desert, burning off the things of their hearts that were dead. It was a controlled burn. God wants to burn in us, to be a fire controlled by Him, if we would trust Him to consume those dead things and bring new life there. He wants to take us up the holy hill and step into the furnace with Him. Ask for the fire and see what he will do. Let Him set the boundaries and take us up the mountain and watch new life come into those places that we allow Him to burn.

On Thursday we all piled into the giant tipper truck and we went to the dam near our village. People gather there to wash clothes, wash cars, wash themselves, water cattle. We went at 5:00 pm and pulled right up, young boys running out of the water to see what this was. We decided to preach a message of salvation and love and grace and mercy from the deck of the truck and then baptize those who wanted new life. We baptized in a muddy, murky cove in the small spring fed lake. And after we were finished a couple of us dove in and splashed around with the boys and they were so thrilled that these kawajas would jump in the river and swim with them! Such fun! Follow Jesus and have fun! Haha!!

Yesterday I was riding the motorcycle back from town and as I passed a lady on the path, she waved her big machete at me and greeted me with a smile. I laugh at how normal it is to walk along carrying a “panga” here and that there is no fear in me. I walk many places by myself now and am at ease here. Last night I walked by myself in the dark about 1/4th of a mile with no flashlight down the path that goes along the outside of our compound to our church and I was totally peaceful. What freedom.

Last night was the third Friday Night Furnace and the children are asking me early in the day now if we are having it. These children love to pray and worship and they love the Presence of God. The first two nights I felt like I was pushing a dump truck uphill trying to get the people to pray for the things that God put on my spirit. It was hard ground to plow. Well, the third night was breakthrough! I couldn’t get the people to stop praying. I would wait to find a place to shift into the next thing and they just kept crying out, never running out of things to say about our great God. I have noticed a huge change in me. I go for three to four hours, even unto almost losing my voice, never running out of prayer, and probably 98% of it not being in tongues.

God says to open our mouth and He will fill it. In my quiet times with God, I listen more than I talk. He has much to tell me. But when I go to the “Furnace” on Friday nights, there is such a shift, like a real fire burning in me to intercede. Last night there was a shift in us all. It was electrifying. At the end of the night we prayed Isaiah 58, where the true fast that God calls us to is to break the yokes and chains of injustice. I saw a picture of Paul and Silas worshipping God at midnight and the prison doors blowing open. We began to beat the drums, the ancient drums of Africa, and we began to dance and sing with such abandon that we felt the chains falling off of those who have been bound.

We called out the names of all those whom we know to be diagnosed by doctors as critically sick, names from every tribe represented, names from my people in the US, names from the UK and we danced and beat the drums and sang until the captives were set free. One of our boys was in such extreme pain that he was sobbing and doubled over. He never cries and is one of our strongest and happiest boys. This was so not like him. We put him in the middle of the church and laid hands on him and sang over him and within 5 minutes he was set free and walking and dancing!!!! God threw open the doors and set the captives free. All weekend he has been running and playing and working pain free, where the few days before the prayer he was hurting.

The small children, eight nine ten years old, they too pray and dance and sing and believe. They beg me to let them come and join in on Fridays. I cannot say no. The children know the power of God. They believe and they move in His grace. They know that they can lay hands on the sick and that they will recover. They see it all the time. The Lord has been speaking to me so much lately about the term, “children’s equipping center”. We need to empower our children and equip them by encouraging them join us in all that we do in the kingdom of God. We can’t sugar coat it and keep it “sweet” for them. Encourage them to do the real work of the kingdom. They have authority to trample scorpions and cast out demons too, Amen? They are never too young to learn about all things kingdom.

Last night, Saturday night, myself and another missionary from UK, a man, we met with the teenagers and talked about marriage and how to love and respect each other. The culture here says that a woman must submit to a man, even if she is sick and dying, she must still cook and clean and carry water. That’s the culture. We talked about Jesus washing the feet of His bride and how Him being God of the universe did not stop Him from serving His bride. At first the boys said, “This can never happen in our society, we would be mocked.” We then told them that if they didn’t love their wives as God loves the church, then they would not be honoring Him at all. And so the boys are open now at least to changing the way they think about women. Still a lot of work to be done but we have opened the door for progress. At least the children here love each other and serve each other and so they are really a giant step ahead of most in this culture.

Today is Sunday and we went to the Police Training Camp and conducted Sunday morning service with them. Then a man came forward and asked us to pray for him because he felt that he had been marked by Satan to be killed. The man showed us the sole of his foot and there was a number three marked there. It was the strangest thing. We then prayed and got him delivered from demons and we looked at his foot and the marking was completely gone! It was totally amazing! We kept our eyes open and so he didn’t reach down and wipe it away. We learned later that this is not a new thing here in Sudan, the markings. Others say they have seen it before on people.

So, after this miracle of being set free we all walked down to the “baptism” lake and we baptized those who wanted to be baptized, about 16 men I think. Also, two of our very own girls made the decision to be baptized and so it was a special day for us. Then some of us dove in and swan around for a few minutes. Felt so good! Of course about 20 naked little boys jumped in with us and proceeded to have a splash each other party. They loved it! I love the freedom here, simply love it.

There is a small girl at our children’s center whom we rescued from being literally almost dead. She was living in filth and trash and her own feces while her mother was constantly so inebriated that she couldn’t remember to feed her little two year old or bathe her. This little girl has been through some abuse I think because she doesn’t let people hold her and she doesn’t make any eye contact. She is very withdrawn and plays alone much of the time and never really smiles. She is a very sad looking little girl. She arrived just days before I did at the end of January.

Well, she is starting to play with a select few and she adores three of our older boys. She is still reluctant to interact with females. Yesterday she was lying on the ground crying and I had a cookie in my hand for her. She has started taking things from me but still not letting me touch her. She took the cookie from me yesterday and then I just reached down gently and scooped her up and held her close to my body. She didn’t resist and actually leaned into me! We sat this way for a very long time. She was taken away for a quick bathe and came right back to my lap.

Later in the day I saw her playing with two little ones and I went over to where she was and just sat and watched them play. I then played cat and mouse type peek a boo and she actually smiled for the first time ever at me! Then this morning I went right up to her and bent down and picked her up and carried her around and she never resisted and even snuggled comfortably there in my arms. Now, when she cries I can pick her up and she clings to me and stops crying immediately. This is kingdom of heaven love and reality here in this place. His love is softening the rough edges of her childhood, brief as it has been. I love seeing these little ones transformed before our very eyes by the love of God.

My day ended with a one hour walk to a one hour Bible Study fellowship with other NGO’s and then a one hour walk home again. Never thought I would walk so far just to go to a home group meeting J! Oh, and yes I am still battling giant 1 ½ foot lizards in the latrine, chasing mice out of the latrine, battling cockroaches in the latrine and always the big fat juicy flies! And then there are the two frogs and two lizards who live in my outdoor shower. And of course the giant ants that I have to tap dance around every night as I brush my teeth and wash my hands and face.

I did learn about a tree that is growing right outside my front door that I can eat the leaves from. It is called a meringa tree and is loaded with amazing stuff for my immune system and digestive and such. I just go up to it and pull off a bunch of leaves and shove them in my mouth and chew and they taste like salad. I feel like a giraffe though……. Sometimes I can’t even believe the things that I do here…..

Thanksgiving, Grace, Weddings and Sugar Cane

2011-04-04T23:30:00.001-07:00

On Monday I woke up and I felt so amazingly good. All of the sickness of the last four days was completely gone and I was able to eat this day. I was so full of thanksgiving to God. I put on my headphones and iPod and went out into a field and I literally danced for at least a half hour unto the Lord. I sang and I danced in the early morning dawn and had a view of the surrounding hillsides where the land is still green and dotted with small huts and early morning cookfires, whisps of smoke climbing into the early morning sky. I was filled with such joy to be alive and to be in a place of perfect peace and wonder. Oh the freedom of dancing unashamed before the Lord in an open field, surrounded by maize corn and potatoes and teak trees and palm trees and the rich earthy smell which we were created from before the very breath of God awakened our souls to life abundantly.

Later, as I walked back from town, there were three boys up ahead of me, just walking along and talking. I watched them as they walked, their clothes ragged and dirty, feet bare as the sun shone down in its intensity. These boys were happy and had not a care in the world. They were carrying sticks and their handmade cars, made of castoff tin and old rubber flip flops shaped into wheels. They were laughing and so engrossed in the joy of boyhood in a place where they are free to run the trails of the bush and climb mango trees and dive into small ponds and lie in the afternoon shade and watch the clouds drift lazily by in the hot Sudan sky. They are not poor. They are rich in life, knowing the pleasures of the innocence of boyhood and all that God has created for them. Makes me smile.

The spirit of thanksgiving has come upon me this week. I am so thankful for my 4” foam mattress and my bughut to sleep in at night where I lay my head in peace every single night; clothes on my body and a few extra; not living in a tent but having a real room; a computer and internet access (50 yrs ago missionaries had none); the grace given to me by God that should all things fail here I can always go home; perfect health; teaching me Your ways God; the sun on my face; simple food each day to nourish me; clean water (in a bottle); water period; my bamboo and grass outdoor shower and cool evening showers there; batteries for my flashlight; flashlights; Starbucks instant coffee; hugs from kids; the smile in my heart; a plastic chair to sit on; clothes line for my clothes; malaria pills; seeing the Southern Cross in the predawn sky each morning to remind me of His love for all mankind; CocaCola; the boys who carry my water up the hill for me; the support and love of my family and friends, both here in Sudan and in America and other parts of the world! Wow, I have so much to be thankful for!

My weeks have settled into a pattern now. On Monday and Tuesday afternoons I am teaching the Bible School. On Wednesday afternoon we prep for outreach with prayer and worship as a team. Then on Thursday afternoons we go to the hospital. This is where I lead the teams. We have two other teams who go to the police training camp, when they allow us, and another goes to the prison on Saturday mornings. My teams at the hospital are so zealous that they have asked to stay longer each week and so we do. I love their zeal for the sick and dying, to see them come to the saving grace of Jesus Christ and to see them rise up and walk, delivered from the hands of disease and pestilence. Each week brings new miracles, the biggest one being new lives in the kingdom of God.

God has been whispering into my ear about His grace. It is so wonderful. We witness to many Muslims here and they are coming to the knowledge that their religion is all about trying to please their God, about the law of doing the rituals of making themselves clean physically to be allowed to go before their God five times a day. Before they are allowed into their mosques they have to wash their feet and hands, snort water up their noise and expel it, clean their ears and swish water in their mouths so many times. All this to make themselves clean enough to go into a building to bow to a God whom they can’t even feel or hear from. It’s all about doing everything right and in the correct quantity.

We tell them that Jesus says come the way you are. Come with your dirty feet and hands and hearts. Come and I will make you clean. Let me do this for you. It’s called grace. Even in ministry, we sometimes feel that we have to be doing certain things or we have to be doing something in order to please God or “get us” in right standing with Him.

I have worked with some extreme Martha’s and some extreme Mary’s here on the mission field. God says to be a little of both. But in all that we do, we have to always realize that it is His grace that helps us to stay in His rest. Even when we are praying and interceding, if we have to “work ourselves up” then it isn’t about grace anymore. If we have to strive to enter in, then it isn’t about grace anymore. Everything God does is about grace.

When I pray for people, I just enter in to the rest FIRST, then I flow from His grace. I don’t worry about if that person will manifest their healing. I don’t worry that a person might reject Christ. I don’t worry about matching testimony stories when we return. I don’t even worry about having any to tell. I just know that I went where God said to go and He is happy with me. There is sometimes a sense of competition on any mission field. Who will have the biggest miracle, the craziest story, the most amazing deliverance. I used to go out into the mission field and work until I was exhausted, giving all that I had, so that I could feel like I gave my best to bring God glory.

Here in the place where I have matured to, I walk in the providence of God’s amazing grace. It was His grace that saved a wretch like me long ago. I didn’t do anything to earn it. He just gave….. I can’t earn healings or miracles or testimonies. I go and He gives. Oh the amazing grace of God is the biggest and best gift He ever gave. He gave Jesus, full of grace and glory, for us to be hidden in. If we just hide IN Christ, His grace overflows into all that we are. I love His grace. It is all sufficient for me. I need no more, just His grace. I would rather do nothing but adore Him than to strive to implore Him.

And so I encourage all that have been weary in this dry and thirsty land, partake of His wonderful warm grace. Drink from His cup of grace and be at peace. Walk down the gentle road of His grace and find comfort. Lie by the stream of His grace and find rest. Just let His grace rest on you and you will be filled again with His everlasting peace.

Friday night I led the Friday Night Furnace Prayer as usual. We start at 8:00 p.m. and pray all the way until midnight. The Lord gives me the scripture to focus on during the week and then we pray for our families, our nations, our churches, ourselves. I always end with John 17 where Jesus prays that we would be one, as He and the Father are one, so that the world will know that He was sent by His Father. If we aren’t in unity as the church, who will believe that Jesus came? Who will want to be His follower if the representation of the church shows a house divided? And so we earnestly pray for unity all across the world, one in Christ Jesus.

The youth always come to this event each Friday night. This time the smaller children, middle school age, came and worshipped with the banners and sang and prayed and there was such a spirit of joy and celebration in that place. We have no electricity and so we hang kerosene lanterns in the rafters and we can barely see each other. It is the coolest place to ask for the fire of God to come. We end with celebration and singing and then we blow out the lanterns, roll up the grass mats, close the doors and start our journey home. We always look forward to the next week as we are walking along the trail in the moonlight, heading back to our compound after midnight, the stars exploding in all their brilliance. No one can sleep because we are so excited.

Saturday I took our 14 older girls, teenagers, and we walked the hour to town, to partake of a perfect lunch. I took them to our “nicest” hotel and we sat inside at cute round tables with tablecloths. We ordered mango juice and then had fried chicken and French fries and coleslaw with cold CocaCola. Then we finished it off with a cold bottle of water. Anything cold here is a cause for celebration. There was a TV on and so they were just engrossed in that too. They did not want to leave because the atmosphere was so wonderful and relaxing. Can you imagine having lunch for the first time with no screaming and fighting children around? Being served and not having to serve? Having mango juice and CocaCola, at the same meal? Small things like this are such an amazing treat here. It cost me plenty but it was so worth it to see the joy on their faces.

On our return trip we stopped and bought ten stalks of sugar cane for the other children. Kids came running as we entered camp. They didn’t expect any today as the day was already growing late and then here we come, a vision out of the sun scorched dust, 15 beautiful young women (yep I was one of them hehe) coming up out of the desert carrying sweet sugar cane! These small things that warm our hearts. Be Thou my vision precious Savior. Be Thou, Thy love, my vision. Your precious love, my vision……

This morning I awoke from a dream where I was preparing for “my” wedding feast. I was calling the caterers and wine merchants and making reservations for the banquet hall. I never saw a husband in my dream or felt like I was engaged to one but I knew it was my wedding. I only had two days to make ready and I wasn’t even the least bit stressed. I knew it would all come together. Even on the phone, the caterer was telling me that it was such short notice. I told him I knew and that it was okay. We would make it in time, no worry. By the way, I did order BBQ for the food. I thought that was funny because I never would have in real life! Then I awoke from the dream and it was 5:00 a.m., my normal wake up time. And so, as I was walking to the latrine, thinking on these things, I saw a shooting star go across the northern sky, from left to right.

I then felt like I heard the Lord say to me, “Prepare yourselves, prepare the banquet table, your Groom is coming soon. In the heavens you will see the signs. Look up and see that My coming is soon. Make ready!” I was so excited and full of hope and expectation in that moment. I just knew that our Groom is coming soon. Prepare the feast, order the wine, make ready! He is coming! He really, really is! My pastor always says this and I really believe it. Then later, another missionary said that she had almost the same dream a month ago. I wonder how many others have had this type of dream? Hmmmmm……

More Outreach Everywhere We Go!

2011-04-04T23:27:00.001-07:00

Ana hibu ita! Ana Jibu “Good News”. Ana tali Jesu Taki! Guess what? My Arabic is picking up. I said, I love you! I bring Good News. I come in Jesus Name! This has been a crazy week in the spirit realm, and in the natural realm. We have all been experiencing a large amount of opposition this week and we know that the devil is not happy about what we are doing here.

Our Bible School students are growing so fast in the Holy Spirit and they believe everything they are taught and they do it! When we go on outreaches, we don’t leave until people are saved, people are healed and people hand over their little witchcraft charms. We went to the hospital on Thursday and there was a ton to be done there.

Before we could even get in the first dorm area, we heard this blood curdling screaming. We said, “Let’s go! They are calling us!” We came upon this little girl, about 10 years old, who was screaming and all tensed up and her eyes were not focusing here on this earth. We found that a crazy in the head SPLA soldier had gone on a rampage in a nearby town and had sent 5 people to the hospital. He took his gun bayonet and literally stabbed this girl in the back of her head while she was carrying a small baby! It went into her brain.

We began to pray for her and pray and pray. We kept speaking peace over her. The entire time we were praying, she didn’t scream once. She even closed her eyes as if in peace. We found that the mother had a witchcraft charm on and we asked her to give it up. She did after we told her that her child would be healed when she trusted God and not the devil. Then the girl started to scream again and our awesome Sudanese pastor got right up to her face and quietly started talking to her, calling her by name, and this girl who was stabbed in the brain began to respond to him. She began to repeat the sinner’s prayer and to repeat a prayer to stop the tormenting of the devil and her memories. It was amazing.

The baby was in the next bed and had her eyelids cut and they were so swollen she didn’t look like she had eyes back there. Another baby was also stabbed and a man was shot. We prayed for them all. Then in the baby house, our team prayed for a little boy who had fallen from a tall mango tree. His legs were crippled under and he was in so much pain that he couldn’t straighten them at all. Our team prayed and prayed and soon, the impossible happened, he straightened his legs. The team prayed some more and soon, another impossibility, he took a few faltering steps and then soon he was strutting around like nobody’s business! Oh God, yay God, you always get the victory God!!!

This was Thursday afternoon. Friday morning in the wee hours, I started my soon continuous journey to the latrine. I was so sick on Friday and Saturday that all I could do was run back and forth and sleep in between. Whatever goes in comes right back out. I have been on a liquid diet since Thursday and still, it all comes out. It is Sunday morning and not much change. I did manage to keep down a few bites of food but am still losing it all out the other way. So I live on 7up and water and a banana twice a day. Don’t you know that the devil was ticked off! I was the team leader and he decided to take a swipe at me I guess. Oh well, too bad he is so sad!

So this morning I had church with my Cornerstone Church family by way of a CD that I bought a couple of years ago. It is the choir and all their wonderful best songs. One of them has become my theme song today. My good friend Tim, singing with all of his heart, and the choir backing him up, “Give God the glory and He will give you the victory! Satan the blood of Jesus is against you and I will give God all of my praise!” Been singing it all day long. Makes me smile. Every trip to the latrine (about 5 an hour) I claim my victory! Even though I am miserable in my body, I am strong in my spirit. I have to be or the devil wins.

This morning, even though I was weak and still not doing great I went with our team to the Police Training Camp because today was the day they would be baptized, hundreds of men. We arrived and the camp was empty except for a small group of sick men. We decided to have church until the main group returned, thinking they were on their morning run. After almost two hours there, and more healings by the way, we realized that the main contingent wasn’t coming. We learned that the director, who is a Christian, was reassigned somewhere else and the new director is a Muslim. So, he decided that the men didn’t need to be there on Sunday morning I guess.

We heard this testimony from one of the sick guys, a devout Christian, and were amazed. He said that the week before we made our first visit to the camp, there was a man in the camp who was demon possessed and was shaking and screaming and frothing and stuff. They gathered the few around who would pray and rebuked the demons and the man was set free and received salvation. This small band of brothers began to pray together for God to invade the camp and His Presence be known there. A week later we show up, handing out over 400 Bibles and preaching a message of salvation. Don ‘t you know that God hears the prayers of the faithful!

The next week I came and so many answered the call to follow Jesus in holiness and righteousness. This man said that he was so encouraged that he vowed to make the Bible his number one gun and the governments gun his second choice. There were guys getting healed today right there in front of us. One guy said that he couldn’t even walk hardly because he hurt his back and when he was prayed for by the Bible School brothers, he had full movement. We give God the glory. He gave the victory! The blood of Jesus is against the devil!

So we left there before the main group ever returned and we just pray for this door to remain open to us and for the new director to receive Jesus as the guest of honor.

On some brighter notes, we somehow got a sheep here at Iris while I was home for Christmas. Well, a little baby popped out on Valentines Day and the kids had already named him before I even knew what had happened. They named our love baby (Valentines Day is about love right?), they named him David! Hah, a little sheep after God’s own heart! How amazingly prophetic is that! Very cool. So, now we have Isaac and David running around and another baby goat on the way. We had no idea that they were pregnant. Supernatural increase I say!!

Earlier in the week I was walking home and I stopped and bought 5 bags of peanuts. I usually only buy one and had no clue why I bought so many. As I am walking home, you guessed it, I am handing out peanuts to all the kids along the way. I finally get to our path and there is this old lady who lives on the corner by our church. She has a son, I am assuming, who never smiles and never says hello. He looks about in his 30s. I always wave to her or say a greeting when I go for my runs.

So I am walking by and I wave and as I continue on I hear God tell me to turn back and give her a whole bag of peanuts. I’m like, You’re kidding right? What would she want my peanuts for? This is crazy. But I do it. As I come upon her, I see that she is sitting there shucking a huge batch of peanuts! I almost laugh. I bend at the waist and offer her the bag in my right hand while holding my right forearm as a sign of respect. She smiles and thanks me with a big grin.

Later that day I learn that when you give someone peanuts in Sudan, it is a sign of intimate friendship being born or continued! So, I was showing all these along the path that I am your friend. It especially meant a lot with the old lady because she is always alone and her son seems so unhappy and angry. I pray that I can sit with her and somehow communicate my new friendship. God is so cool isn’t He?

Also earlier this week I found myself telling God that I would love to hear Him laugh and that the first thing I wanted to hear when I get to heaven is His amazing laugh. I want to hear the sound of my happy God. As I am teaching the Bible School about the prophetic, we then get to actually practice it. So I give them the assignment and after they listen for a word of encouragement for their partner, I ask if any want to share what God said to them. Here in the Sudanese culture ALL want to share, seriously. So they all did. We had such a great time and laughed with so much joy because they really were very good and so original, it could only be God. Then I heard in the midst of it all, “Carolyn, this is what my laugh sounds like. I dwell in each of you and you are what my laugh sounds like.” I love it!

And so I have just ended my week of warfare and infirmity and teaching and reaching, by sitting with the mamas and older girls and showing them how to use an American potato peeler. The look of pure joy and wonder alit on their faces. They now have both of my peelers. A very small price to pay for such huge smiles and looks of wonder. They peeled, I cracked nuts as they had a huge industrial pot full that needed cracking, and a small girl of 10 roasted coffee beans over the fire and then commenced to grind them on a big flat rock with a smaller rock to crush them. It was such a peaceful scene, even though I had made oh about 8 trips to the latrine. I tried to eat a little lunch today. Ma quez! Not good! I still very much enjoyed sitting with these older girls and the mamas. It’s the best place to be in South Sudan, on that porch!

It is now Monday morning and I am sitting at the internet café ready to send my email but I just have to testify first. Last night as I sat in my room reading about Jesus death on the cross and His resurrection and the power that He left for us, I was holding my large bottle of water. I was so thirsty but didn’t want to drink more than a sip or I would be running to the latrine again. I looked at my water and I said, “God, You made this water. You made it to do my body good and not harm. I am going to drink this water and believe this of you and it will no longer run right through me but it will nourish me.”

I took a drink and waited. I took another drink. I drank deeply then. And do you know that since that declaration I have not gone to the latrine once? Not once since last night at 9:00 when I said that declaration. Hallelujah, praise the Lord! I got up this morning and I stood on my porch and I said loud, “Hallelujah!” and the mamas were so happy! God is truly a great and merciful God and He cares for us.

I love you and I bless you and I thank you for your prayers. They always avail much, I just know it! I believe it.

Police Camps, Prisons and Hospitals: Reaching Out To The Poor In Spirit

2011-04-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

Talk about a busy week! For the last two years I have been in the pasture of the Lord, partaking of His abundance and enjoying even the wilderness a bit. Basically, my ministry has been one on one with a few adventures preaching to churches here and there. I have been mostly eating a diet of humble pie, being more in the background and not on the stage so to speak. I have very much enjoyed this place and have even said, “You know what God, even if I never preach or teach again in a public setting, I am happy to just sit with the one, because it is where I am needed most.”

I have been under the leadership of people way younger than myself and some with a lot less experience, but I know it is where God placed me. I have been learning to lead from behind, and not from the front, as my military background has taught me. Basically I have been learning how to shepherd. Imagine that! Makes me laugh because God is really very funny. I was just saying this week to a fellow missionary, I most want to hear God laugh when I get to heaven and see Him face to face. I want to hear His laugh because He is such a happy God. He sure gets a kick out of me (lol)!

So, I am finding myself on the front lines again doing ministry in a different way. We are hosting a Bible school for area pastors, even coming from as far north as Darfur! So, now I have friends in Darfur. Hmmmm, God at work again. So, I have been helping to teach some of the classes. We have total freedom and get to teach what the Lord is putting on our hearts to teach and so this is very awesome. We are finding that the things each of us are teaching are lining right up with each other because we are following Holy Spirit’s leading. Isn’t that something (haha)!

I have also been leading the youth group on Wednesday nights where we are going through the Book of Galatians. This week we watched a movie called, “Faith Like Potatoes” and it is a true story about how one man came to his faith and how God did an amazing miracle. The kids loved it and are expecting great things in their own lives!

Also this week, I took a team of four Sudanese ladies and four Sudanese men, all Bible school students, and we went to the hospital for our outreach. The hospital here is a very, very sad place. Some go there just to wait our the tumor or cancer until they die. We saw two people with tumors so huge that it seriously looked as if they were nine months pregnant, no exaggeration. Talk about feeling the pressure of praying the right thing! Well, we don’t feel pressure because we just do what God has asked us to do and believe that He has the rest in hand. We have prayed for two hours before going and have fasted and have done what we know to do and just have to believe God to do His part.

Quite a few received salvation. In the children’s dormitory, we just started singing and soon the entire ward of mamas were singing with us, worshipping God in that place! We gave a very short encouraging message and prayed for the children. The mamas were so thankful and were lifted in their spirits. It is so awesome to do outreach here because you are allowed to follow Holy Spirit and are allowed to preach to an entire ward if you want and everyone wants prayer. They’re not crazy, they know God is God and only He can do a miracle. It’s just awesome, the faith of these people. It makes outreach so easy and enjoyable. We didn’t see any visible healings but God will care for them. We are going every week and so I just have to believe that this week we will hear the testimonies.

We also did an outreach to the police training camp up the road from us. There are close to 500 men there and 80% raised their hands to receive Jesus as their Savior! We were only there a short time as it was an outreach. The director liked what we were doing so much that he asked us to come back to preach on Sunday. Well, yours truly (me) got voted on to preach. Talk about major nervous! And so I got to preach the first ever Sunday sermon at the police training camp in South Sudan! Haha! Yay God!!!

The message was a call to follow Jesus, not just receive Him as Savior, but now follow Him. They loved it because I talked about my military background and how theirs sets them up to be in God’s army. At the end, I stood at attention and said in my best drill command voice, “OOH-RAH Yeshua!”. They asked what it meant and I told them that it was what the US Marines say when they are in unity about a thing. They asked if I would say it again so that they could say it back. How cool to hear 500 Sudanese men yelling OOH-RAH Yeshua!! Haha!! Yay God again!

I have been showing the children, all ages, and the mamas, Cecille B. DeMilles Ten Commandments movie which was made in the 1950’s. The one with Charleton Heston. I showed it in three parts because it is very long. They simply loved this movie. They clapped when the Israelites walked out of Egypt. They clapped and cheered when God parted the sea. They praised God as they walked back to their dorms for the night. It never ceases to amaze me how much they love God. They don’t have much influence from the world and so their love is so pure and devoted. It always makes me smile.

Late this afternoon, two of our girls decided to run away, for different problems, not related to each other. And they went separate ways. This never happens, especially two unrelated cases within the same hour. Then one of our babies had to go to the children’s clinic over night. And another baby just came back after spending a week there. We have been doing daily ministry and we have daily been destroying the works of the devil and so I think it is warfare. The devil usually attacks when he feels threatened. And so we are just going to worship God more and bring more of His Presence on our compound. Take that you devil!

Last Friday night was our first meeting for the Friday Night Furnace. God put this on my heart to do when I was at International House of Prayer in December. We meet from 8:00 pm to midnight and we pray and worship and declare things for this nation and the church and families. I hung solar powered lights up in the rafters of the church and had my speakers with iPod playing soaking and worship music and had scripture on big sheets of paper taped to the wall and we have flags that we use for worship and had grass mats all over the floor. This was the first time anyone here has ever done this type of intercession. I felt like I was plowing hard ground all night to get people to pray out loud and dance and not just sit there and observe,

I was told the next day that the youth said it was fantastic and could we do this every week! I am thrilled and am going to now raise up a youth team to lead some nights and so they are learning the “harp and bowl” type of worship and intercession that IHOP does. My strength is renewed again as I rested a bit yesterday and I am excited to see what this new week brings.

And in the midst of all of this I have been working on getting my book in the correct format for final submission so that the editing phase can begins. I have submitted it today! And so it should take about seven months before it hits the streets. I am so praying that it goes quickly, only so that I can come home when it is WARM for the book signing sessions!!! I do not like the cold. It is now in the 115’s during the day and gets down to 70 at night and even that 45 degree drop has me wearing a sweater in the mornings. I laugh now because I used to love 70 degrees!

January 2011 In Ethiopia!

2011-04-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

Wow, where do I begin? I left San Antonio with a heavy heart as I said goodbye to family and friends on Monday. I definitely want to be in Africa and I surely looked forward to returning, but it is still sad saying goodbye right? I arrived in Houston for a five hour layover and so I ate lunch and checked email and creid just a little between bites and then and just sort of wandered about, as one does in airports, trying to pass the time. About twenty minutes before it was time to board my plane for the other side of the ocean I decided to do a last minute email check.

There it was, “We have decided to finance the publishing of your book. You have an incredible story and we can’t wait to get it to the masses!” Thank you everyone who wouldn’t let up pestering me to write a book.

I want you to know that when God says to do a thing, we should do it and let Him take care of the details. I submitted my book to one publisher and it is a Christian organization, and God took care of the details! Unless the publisher changes it (which I don’t think they will) my book will be called, “FOLLOW ME, Knowing His Peace in The Hardest of Places”. I will also soon have my very own website which they are creating as part of the deal. This year has only just begun and it is taking off like a rocket.

I have been praying and meditating every single day on Psalm 23. The Lord has been speaking to me about, how through the years, so many have thought of this Psalm as the “funeral prayer”. He has been showing me that it is so full of life and that it covers our every need. The last line tells us that His goodness and mercy shall follow us around all of the days of our lives. His favor chases me down and overtakes me. Every day I say that God’s favor follows me around. Just today, in the dirt streets of Addis Ababa, as I was walking, I found money lying on the road right in front of me! That DOES NOT happen here!!! There are more poor and destitute people here than anywhere in the world and I find money lying in the street!

Of course, I am not keeping the money. There are so many places to sow it right here in Ethiopia. I am staying with a wonderful family who, like me, gave up everything to give themselves to the poor. They have three children who love Jesus and love those who need love. This family stops for the one every day. I am watching it in action. God’s faithfulness is so astounding. If we could hear every story ever written about this, the ocean would not be deep enough to contain it.

Just in my first day here, I met a teenage street girl with a newborn whom this family has sort of adopted and found a place for her to live and makes sure her rent is paid. She is off the streets. I met some precious Somali brothers who are right now being persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ. This family has stopped for these ones and brings them together in their home to give them a safe place to fellowship and to be encouraged in their faith. There is a street lady who literally sleeps in the ditch at night and because this family loves her everyday and helps her a little bit financially, she is smiling and allowing her heart to soften toward mankind, all because they are stopping for this one.

That was yesterday. Today we went to visit an orphanage and I was so overwhelmed the entire time I was there. It was very clean and the children were clean and looked healthy and such. But I have never seen so many small babies in one place ever. I couldn’t believe how many babies were left orphans. I am estimating that there were about 40 infants under the age of three and only five mamas or so to care for them all! This is only one of many orphanages in Addis Ababa. We drove past another place called the Mother Teresa House (I think) where the sign out front said, “Home for the sick, dying and destitute”. We came back for a visit the next day and there were probably about 400-600 people staying there. They have another place in the city where 500 AIDS babies live!

There are so many homeless women here and the ONLY way they can survive is to sell their bodies for food. Ethiopia is one of the leading nations for homelessness and AIDS victims. I call them victims because many are teenage girls who have no alternative. And so, the orphanages are overrun with children. There is so much need here that one would easily be overwhelmed as to where to even start.

Today, at the orphanage, I walked into the first room and there were I think five cribs, each with two babies, all under four months old, and another couple of beds with a few more small babies. One baby I know could not have weighed 4 pounds and looked like a teeny skeleton. It took every ounce of will power for me not to cry, seriously. She couldn’t even make a noise to cry because her voice was so weak and frail. The next room had wall to wall babies with barely enough room to walk by the cribs in the aisles.

Again, they all looked well fed but they also looked so sad. There just aren’t enough mamas to love on each of them like they need. My heart felt so heavy inside and I almost couldn’t move because so many NEEDED to be held and soothed. I just stood there dumbfounded, seriously. Rachel says that when the babies first arrive, some are cheery and bubbly but after a few months it seems as if they lose all hope and just sit there listless because they know their cries will not avail much.

I would look at all these babies crying and sitting there looking defeated and thinking how they cry and wail and soon it becomes a whimper because no one comes and then they just sit there with no emotion because they already know that there isn’t going to be a quick answer to their deepest need to be held and cuddled and loved. When you pick them up they cling and lay their heads on your shoulder to get what they can as soon as they are in your arms, knowing that soon it will end and it could be a long day or night until the next holding and cuddling. No one can imagine the emptiness they must feel. I was so undone as we drove away. I could not speak for want of weeping.

And so I had to remember today to just do what I could for the short time I was there. I would look for the most desperate eyes and hold that one tightly for a good ten minutes or so while patting the back of one or two others here and there and giving them eye contact and a human voice to go with it. I couldn’t even talk when we drove away because I had to fight back the tears at the injustice of it all. It is very, very hard to walk away from this, very hard.

Another day we went walking around the neighborhood and there are hundreds of Orthodox Churches in Ethiopia. They are very, very religious and have religious articles for sale everywhere. Ethiopia is known for the Queen of Sheba and it is believed here that when she went to visit Solomon, she got pregnant by him and so carries the line of David. There are also hundreds of Mosques competing with the Christian church. Many times when the call for prayers plays over the loudspeakers throughout the city, the Orthodox church will also play their stuff. It is a city vibrant with people from every culture and traffic and life. Definitely different from quiet Sudan.

So as we were walking we went onto the grounds of one of the big Orthodox churches and there was a small village high up on the edge of a stone quarry. We went up there to say hello to the people and they were so extremely poor. Their clothes were ragged and dirty and they lived in tin shacks. They were so excited that we would come up and shake their hands and say hello. It was really humbling. As we were walking home, we saw a lady on street with stumps for her hands and feet. We stopped to give her money and were just going to leave when both Rachel and I felt pulled to go back to her. The Holy Spirit moved each of us because we didn’t say a word or even look at each other, we were just there.

We bent down and held her and prayed a short prayer and said the name of Jesus many times and the lady had tears in her eyes. So did we. I wondered when was the last time anyone even touched her because she was so moved that we would hold her and touch her with love. This was probably one of my most moving experiences in Addis Ababa. It was a powerful moment with Jesus.

We also went on Saturday to a street boys church service. The boys basically live on the streets and have been brought together over the last few years by an American couple who minister to them every week. We were blessed to come and join them and after the message and shared testimonies, we were able to pray a father’s blessing over these young boys. They were so sweet and involved in what was going on. They weren’t promised food or bibles or anything. They were just offered lots of hugs and love and encouragement and this is what keeps them coming. It was another amazing day on the streets of Addis Ababa!

So, the two things that the Lord really spoke to me this short five days in Ethiopia is one, “the worst poverty is to know the poverty of not being loved” and “Jesus is calling. This is your calling. Love. Everyone is called. We decide whether to answer or ignore the call.” Every day God gives us endless opportunity to bring people out of the poverty of lost love into the abundance of His love. We have it to offer but if we don’t give it away freely, poverty continues on and on. Freely you have received, freely give.

Less Is really More

2010-12-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

We enjoyed the last few days of a beautifully full and oh so bright moon this week. I awoke once in the night and thought that it was already morning because the moon was so bright! Everyone loves it because we walk everywhere without flashlights and can see where we are going.

Every evening I sit with the children outside as we eat our dinner, usually rice and beans. We have no dining tables and so we sit on mats or in plastic chairs or along the built in concrete benches, which are a part of the outside of every house in most of Africa. We were discussing the differences between Africa and the West concerning dinnertime. They were literally amazed, shocked, when I told them that many, many Americans eat alone. It is unheard of here in Africa. People just do not eat alone. Even if you are a widow and have no one, you eat with your neighbor each night, sharing in the making and partaking of the meal.

We sit under the stars here and we laugh and listen and share. The older ones will sit out by the fire every single night just telling stories, some true and some not. It is almost a contest to see who can make the best story. And once a good story is told, they never tire of hearing it, sometimes even embellishing it as they retell. If you are a missionary and want to reach the African people, storytelling is the way to go.

The nights here are so amazingly peaceful. We really are in the bush and so we don’t hear city noises or even neighbors. It is wonderfully alive here with the night insects singing their cadence. Every single night we have a myriad of fireflies, lightening bugs as some know them. They are so plentiful that sometimes we mistake them for falling stars as they blend into the night sky. They also alight onto trees and bushes and blink their little lights reminding one of a Christmas tree. I never tire of these Sudan nights so alive with activity yet so peaceful. Way off in the distance, to the southeast, every single night we watch the night sky display a lightening storm over the Congo. It rains there every night. We are very close to the Congo border.

I spent Wednesday morning sitting in a field of maize corn and ground nuts with the mama’s and three little babies. They had harvested piles and piles of ground nuts and so we sat in the shade of a palm tree and pulled the peanut shells from the plants, tossing them into basins to dry in the sun. We talked and ate and picked and it was so peaceful. The earth smelled sweet and clean, the dirt rich and dark, the plants a vibrant green, and life was just so simple. Even one of the babies was sucking on peanut shells, rich African dirt drooling from her sweet lips, not a care in the world. I wish I could capture these moments for you in such a way that you would see and smell the African bush in all it’s life giving presence.

Thursday I drove a pastor and one of our mamas down the Kaya Road towards the Uganda border, about 20 miles out. The Uganda border is forty six miles out so we were still quite a ways from it when we stopped in the village of Jambu. The village only had about eight very small buildings and women were coming down the road from both directions, basins and bags and piles of fruit and vegetables atop their heads, their hips swaying in time with their colorful skirts, their black skin shining brightly in the morning sun. There were small rows of women sitting on the ground with their items before them, laid out in a pleasing manner. We bought huge bunches of bananas and maize corn and pineapple and peas and bamboo chairs. I bought 12 large pieces of corn in the husk, two very large cucumbers (bigger than my hand seriously), and a pineapple all for 5 pounds ($1.72). I bought a beautiful bamboo stool for 2 pounds (.68 cents)! I love these small bush markets. They are amazing and so are the people. So friendly.

This week the Lord has been speaking to me about peace. Not that I have lost mine by any means. I just so happen to be slowly digesting the book of Luke and came across Luke 10:5:

“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you.”

I am still holding the Friday night youth group and we talked about this peace as we finished our stuffy of the book of Philippians. It says to be anxious for nothing……and His (Jesus) peace will guard you.

If the Prince of Peace dwells in us then we carry peace. Sometimes we forget that there is an unlimited storehouse full of peace within us and all we have to do is touch our hearts and say, “Peace to this house.” We are the house of God, His very dwelling place. We are peace carriers. So now, the youth of Iris, those who remember, when they enter their dorms, they say, “Peace to this house.” We touch each other on the shoulder and say, “Peace to this house.”

I have some friends who are Episcopalian and in their church service they say, “Peace be with you.” It really is a big deal when you impart peace. You impart the Prince of Peace Himself.

Blessing Our Enemies

2010-12-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

So my Monday morning began with the usual early morning walk down to the kitchen shelter to heat my water over the glowing coals of an early morning fire. I hug and chat with the ladies and love on a few toddlers as I wait. All of a sudden one of the mamas brings the tub of onions out of the storeroom and there is a juicy rat running around in it. She just reaches in and grabs it by the tail and throws it hard on the ground and the rat lies there twitching. She picks it up again and slams it down again and he twitches a little more and goes on to meet his Maker. And that was that for the kitchen rat!

For a week now two of the other missionaries have smelled a dead smell in our office area, which is also where we live, me in my tent and the other in a room. We looked and looked and couldn’t find it. I haven’t been able to smell because of the cold I was fighting. Tuesday morning I smelled it, even in my tent. I am meticulous about keeping my tent closed so I knew there was nothing inside. So, I pulled everything out of my tent and lifted it up and there lies a dead juicy rat! Ugh! So I had to scrub my tent and let it air out. It was all perfect timing though.

That very day, I moved into a room for the first time since March! I am NOT living in a tent for the first time in almost nine months! I have been enjoying amazing times with God this week and enjoying not having to squat all the time or sit on the floor or stoop over and zipping and unzipping tents constantly. And having privacy is a major deal. I am loving life so much right now. I have a room with a table and two beds and a propane lantern and not a flashlight for the first time in nine months! I feel like I have so much right now. I can’t begin to explain how much of an improvement this is. I have passed this test of humbling myself and leaning on His grace and He has exalted me! Praise Him!

And talking about having so much now, one of the other missionaries said something that got me to thinking. The people of Mozambique, which is where I was before I came to Sudan, they never knew that they were poor until the white man came. I look at the children here at this Center and I can see this to be true. These children have just a few pair of clothes. Their play clothes are full of tears and rips and holes, yet they are so happy each day in their play. They have only two small tablets of paper for school and have to copy, literally word for word, pages of text out of books because they don’t have money to buy books.

Their toys are pieces of tin and metal and plastic that they shape into cars, dirt that they make clay animals and houses from, small pieces of string and rope tied together to form one jump rope, and hard round fruit, which they use as teensy soccer balls and other things like this. They have one uniform for school and they all wash their own clothes by hand, even the six and seven year olds, both boys and girls. There aren’t even clothes lines and so most people lay all their clothes out on the grass to dry in the sun or draped over the bamboo or grass hedge fence. Their ironing is done with coal irons. And every day, morning and night, they haul water for cooking and bathing. Each day they harvest vegetables and cut them up and lay them in the sun to dry so that we will have vegetables in the upcoming dry season. And this is all a good life when they have all these things. They are rich and they are very content.

I have myriads of clothes and things, but I purposely bring only as little as I can in country so as not to appear rich by their standards. I literally wear the same things every week, week in and week out. I’ve been using the same towel and set of sheets since I arrived in Africa in May of 2009. One towel, one set of sheets. There are many mindsets about how we are to “look” when we serve in a third world country. I don’t think it matters so much what we have, as much as how we use what we have to reach others.

People with money and influence help to advance the Kingdom of God, so rich is good. But if one is going to physically serve the poor, like Paul, they must be as a slave to all to reach all. Jesus said it Himself in Mark 10:44. If I wear my fine clothes and carry around all my electronics, the people will only see these things and will miss the message I try to bring. Jesus also told the disciples that when they go into the towns and villages, “Don’t take anything with you….” He knew what He was talking about. He wanted people to see the message of the gospel, not titles and denominations and expense accounts and electronics and the latest comfort gadgets and things. Gold and silver I do not have but what I do have I give to you, Jesus Christ. And the lame man in Acts rose up and he walked.

I only have two more weeks in country to remain virus free, parasite free, and healthy. I am trying to use wisdom but sometimes the kids, and even myself, get the best of me (lol). I share my food many times, from my very spoon, and my water, from my very bottle. I put healing salve in many eyes, and I hold many dirty and potty soiled children each day without prejudice. I also wash my hands many times a day so I just pray for God’s mercy if I forget. My clothes by day’s end usually have someone’s pee or snot or eye crap on them. I never thought I would see myself in this way and not be disgusted by it all. God’s grace is the most amazing gift. He truly does give us sufficient grace for everything we put HIS hands to.

Saturday a small village at the border, Gol Macher, was bombed by the Northern Army of Sudan. Eight SPLA soldiers were killed. Thus it begins. The North claims it was a mistake, that they were chasing rebels in Darfur. The South says, “Liar!” Sunday we prayed for Sudan by spreading a map out on the table and putting tea candles all over map, in areas near and dear to our hearts. We literally cried as we prayed, some of us, because we love these people. We feel their pain and their weariness. I no longer look at the South and the North as “you guys” but I look at the South as “we”. We are all wrapped up in this and it is a part of us who are here.

This is only an hour’s drive from Akuem and so it is very near to my heart. My friend, Pastor Deng, who visited last week, brought my greetings to his congregation last Sunday and he told them that when I return to Akuem,, he will build me a tukel on the church compound, a place to live. That is the love they have. They don’t have money, but they give so much of themselves, their time and their love. They never run out of time for people. People are their priority always. I still have so much to learn from them, so much.

Here in Yei, there is a new Training Camp for the SPLA right down the road from us, about 1.5 miles, across from the UN compound, under the guise of police training. The Commanders are wearing the blue camo uniform of the police but all around know that this is not police training. There are about 400 men living and being trained in an intense military fashion day in and day out. This is not police training. It is SPLA training. We asked one of our staff workers if he was offered unity with the North or war, what would he chose. He said war. And he is a very peaceful man. He said that they are tired of living under the oppression of the North and unless they are willing to count the cost, they will never be free. And so January looms ever nearer and the life of this country hangs in the balance.

In the book of Luke Jesus Himself tells us to turn the other cheek and bless our enemies and if they take our cloak then we are to offer our tunic….. Verse 30 really struck a chord in me this week because it was presented to me and I didn’t do it.

Luke 6:30 Give to EVERYONE who asks you and if ANYONE TAKES what belongs to you, DO NOT demand it back.

When I was in the market last week and that man demanded my four puny pieces of corn, I insisted that I would call the police. Jesus says to give it to him. This paragraph is strictly about our enemies . If this happens again will I give it to him with the love of Jesus? These are the things that don’t make any sense to us yet Jesus says to do it.

Verse 35 says that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Are we? Mercy at all costs…. This is the upside down Kingdom of God. We sure spend a lot of time in the RIGHT side up, insisting on our rights. I am praying that I will see these two men again and this time I will offer my corn, searching them out. I want to live love upside down. Faith without deeds is dead. I want to understand God’s kindness to the wicked and ungrateful. I want to know this kind of mercy that moves Him, that stirs His heart.

Seeds and Soil

2010-11-15T00:15:00.000-08:00

I finally accomplished a great milestone in my career as a Sudanese woman! I can now balance a tray of dishes and pots on my head while walking across the compound, no hands! All were impressed. They say I can never leave now! Haha!

So I learned this week that I cannot continue to walk through the river crossings here when I have mosquito bites or any cuts on my ankles or feet. Am now on the receiving end of another infection, swollen foot, red and inflamed and three not very pretty wounds, kind of like what you would see in a medical journal. Antibiotics are fast becoming my one a day vitamin. My immune system is pretty much shot until I get back to civilization and vitamins and such. When I return to Sudan after my next R&R I will have a better plan for my health care and bring enough vitamins to last.

This week we brought Hannah the goat into our family and now we are complete. We shall now wait and see if Abraham is able to do what he needs to so little Isaac can be born in May. Goats stay in mama’s tummy for six months I am told, so…..

Also, I learned to build a bathing shelter. The entire thing cost 63 Sudanese pounds to build, which is about $22 USD. We didn’t have to buy posts as we just chopped down some trees and made our own! Ten posts in all. Then we bought some bamboo and bundles of grass and some rope and nails and 50 bricks for the floor and away we went. So, now I am bathing under the blue African sky by morning and the starry hosts by night. I set my jerry can of water in the sun all day and now get a warm splash in the evening. Wonderful! Nothing better than an outdoor shower.

While we were in the market buying the bamboo I also bought some maize corn for myself. I was carrying four ears of corn in my left hand and from behind a deranged man grabbed them to steal them but I was able to hold onto them. Him and his friend were obviously street dwellers and deranged from years of drinking. He acted like he was going to grab them again and I stood my ground and pointed my finger at them and said, “LA!” very firmly. This is Arabic for “NO!” I said, “I will get the police” and the one got in my face and said he was SPLA and for me to go ahead and get the police. All the people around me were laughing. This is the Sudanese way. I don’t understand it but they laugh at confrontation and when people get injured by falling or tripping or something.

I ended up just walking away because it is pointless to argue with these type people. I came back the same way about ten minutes later and these same two guys had two bags of food and carrying cassava root in their arms. I pointed out to Edward, the Iris kid who was with me, how they did in fact have money to buy things. He said no they badger and threaten the ladies in the market and they have to give them food or risk getting beaten. And people just turn the other way. I HATE CORRUPTION!

Monday as we were praying for the children and the staff, the Lord put on my heart to find a way to bless our mamas. They are always here, sleeping and waking, and never seem to take time for themselves, or it is rare. The same with our cooks. So, we decided to cook dinner for them and serve them. We set up a nice picnic style table in the cool of the evening, with silverware and tablecloth, which they aren’t used to. We made a fresh fruit salad and an avocado tomato salad and pasta with a vegetable sauce and fresh sliced oranges and chipate and cookies and juice. We kept their plates and cups full, we brought around the pitcher of water to wash their hands before and after dinner, we prayed over each one and just loved them. It was so nice. I told them about Mother’s Day and they were amazed that people would do this. This was their Mother’s Day. What a great testimony of Jesus’ love for them.

This week’s person of the week is the most humble and gentle man I have ever known. He is our very own Pastor Edi, who is a counselor here at the Children’s Center. He walks with a limp, which might be from childhood polio (not sure). He is married and they just had their fifth child. His brother was killed by an antinov bomb during the war five years ago and the brother’s wife married another man and left the kids. So Edi took in his brother’s three small children, bringing his to eight. Ten years ago he started a small church in his community. He had to pay over a thousand dollars for the land, which is a huge amount, especially during the height of the civil war here. Pastor Edi doesn’t have this kind of money. He is a very simple man living in a simple two room house. He also built a primary school.

It has now grown so much that they are building a much bigger church and adding to the school. He said all the money came from his congregation and nowhere else. He told them that their children would go to this school and this was their church. He just kept encouraging them to open their meager pockets and give what they could over the years, building it brick by brick. I believe that Edi’s humble heart and impeccable integrity is why his people trust him. This is so rare in the big churches here. He never exalts himself or takes the seat of honor. He humbles himself and serves where he is needed. He is amazing and I just wanted you to know about him.

And now for some agriculture news. When we pick sorghum or simsim or okra or things with seeds, the mamas lay out large mats and spread all these things out to dry in the sun. Everyday I see this in front of their houses. After they have dried, they put them in these scooplike baskets and then they shake and toss to separate the seed from the husks. They can then use the seeds to plant or eat.

1 Corinthians 15:35-55 We are told that our bodies are perishable and our spirits are imperishable. Watching the mamas separating the husks from the seeds reminds me of how we must separate the husk (chaff) from the seed before we can plant the seed by burying it in the ground. The seed is basically put to death by drying in the sun. In the same way, we must separate our flesh from our spirit, the perishable from the imperishable, in order to walk in Kingdom reality. In order to produce fruit, we have to get rid of the flesh or chaff in our lives so that good seed remains, and even that must be put to death and buried in order to be resurrected in new life in the spirit.

I just really love how Jesus illustrated so many of His teachings using farming and nature. Living in a third world country, it is so easy to see what He was talking about and how relative it is. It is so basic yet so profound. That’s Jesus.

Saturday we were going to go into town early to do some things and we were told that Martial Law basically was in place until noon. The SPLA was marching through town and having a demonstration and so no market shops were allowed to be opened and anyone caught moving on the streets would be arrested. This is such a crazy place! Then this morning, one of our older boys told me that their final exams which were to take place in December are happening THIS MORNING! That’s the way things are here. They do what they want when they want. This Referendum for secession makes me nervous because then the people in charge really will be in charge! Today is also the first day of voter registration. Let’s hope shops and businesses are open.

That’s all for this week. God’s blessings on you and your households and may you know His presence with you this week!

Plants and Things

2010-11-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

Every day I am learning more Arabic so that I can communicate with the little ones and the mamas. Only the teenagers know English well enough to have a conversation with me and so I am learning small phrases to speak to the little ones. Today I learned the best one, “Anna hibu ita” which is “I love you”. The kids love it. Also I am always telling the babies, “Tali inna, casa lu ee den” which is, “Come here and wash your hands”! It is slow going but the children don’t seem to be in a hurry so neither am I.

This week I am also learning how to care for the agriculture. We have so much growing here on our compound. Even the young children have their own plots that they care for, all strictly voluntary. I am learning which plants produce what and how to harvest them. Yesterday I helped one of the mamas weed her plot, both of us bent over and just chatting away about families and such. She was almost uncomfortable that I was helping her. She kept worrying about my hands and I told her that I was enjoying this and that they were always waiting on us, like cooking for us and sweeping our areas and just always concerned for our well being. And I just want to do my share and help them back. She really liked that.

Then I moved over to the next plot and helped a group of children pick greens. They were pinching the leaves off only and so I went to pinch a leaf and one of the girls said, “You pick like this” in her Sudanese accent and showed me the proper way to pinch at the stem. And so I picked a bunch with them and when I ate my lunch today, I was thinking how I had helped pick them. Pretty cool.

Last week a couple who are here from Australia bought a Singer sewing machine for the girls to learn to sew. Her and I went into town early this morning to pick up my friend who is from Uganda and has a sewing business. She helped us by showing us all about the machine and then we filled up some jerry cans with water and drove her back. She said they have to go a long way to get water and so it was a blessing just to fill up some water for her. Such a simple thing but such a great blessing. I really love how people here care about each other and will go out of their way, even for a stranger, if they are in need.

My friend, Pastor William Deng, from Akuem came to see me today and I was so happy. He was only here for four days and stays on the other side of Yei when he is visiting. He took a motorcycle taxi here and his comment when he arrived, “I didn’t know you were in the bush!” We both laughed. After our visit I took him back to his place at the SPC compound and it really was far away. It took 30 minutes just one way. This honored me so much that he would go through that trouble just to come and say hello. That is how it is here. We had a wonderful visit and there are so many doors opened to me in Akuem through his church. He says everyone is asking when will I return. They still talk about me a lot and miss me. Very cool!

On Sundays, the other missionaries and I go into town to a Bible study with other missionaries here in Yei. It is amazing how we represent many countries like, Australia, UK, America, Germany, Netherlands and Ireland just to name a few. And we are of different faiths such as, Episcopal, Pentecost, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic and Charismatic. We really care for each other and we all discuss the Bible each week and we pray together with the same heart for Sudan and each other. It is truly a picture of the end time church, where we lay down our denominations and we just come together to worship our One God. Each week a different person leads the study and worship. We pray for the church all over the world to have this same fellowship and love for each other.

Also on Sundays we do our shopping for essentials. Here is a sampling of the price for things here.

For about .34 cents you can get 15 small bananas OR four small tomatoes OR four small onions OR a pack of cigarettes OR five bread rolls.

For $1.78 you can get a can of tuna OR a can of corn OR a can of peaches OR almost anything in a can.

For $5.10 you can get one basic can of Pringles potato chips OR a box of cereal OR a jar of peanut butter.

For $13.60 you can get a case of 24 sodas or pay .69 cents apiece.

For $10.20 you can get a very nice skirt or a pair of shoes.

For $119.00 you can get a Singer sewing machine (non electric of course) and stand.

For .69 cents you can get a nice butcher knife.

Prices here are so inconsistent and just don’t make sense.

This week I just lived my everyday life of loving children, stopping for the one a whole lot, teaching the Youth Group on Friday nights, walking with the boys on Saturday mornings to buy sugar cane and coming back to chop it all up and enjoy watching the children devour it and me too! And sometimes on Sunday, like this Sunday, I preach the message in church. And I started running again. I also take the young children for walks a lot around the outside of the compound. I also helped two of our staff ladies get all the children to try on their new Christmas clothes and shoes to make sure all get a new set that fits. That was a major fiasco. The little ones were sorely testing me with their mischief. We were exhausted when all was done!

On a daily basis, my breakfast consists of hot tea with real fresh lemongrass and sugar or coffee or sometimes both, and either a bread roll or mondazi (a type of fried doughnut ball) or a huge piece of sweet potato or a huge piece of cassava root (my extreme favorite). For lunch and dinner we will have rice or posho (bland doughy maize) with beans or cabbage or greens or a chunk of fish (head and guts and all) and on Sunday we get two bite sized pieces of meat in a sauce. Definitely no fat in this diet so we can eat a lot and still be skinny. I supplement my dinner with avocado and tomato and onions sometimes. And I will on occasion have either tuna fish or PBJ sandwiches.

What do my days look like as a routine? Every morning I am awakened by the rooster crowing and children singing worship at 630 sharp. I take a jug of water to wash my face, standing on our porch, and I brush my teeth there also. I don’t have a house so no sink or bathroom for me. Then I walk down to the kitchen, which is more like a lean to with a huge clay oven of sorts. We can’t bake in it because it is more like a giant counter with two holes for a fire where we set big industrial pots for cooking. This is where I get my hot water for coffee. I usually stop all along the way to talk with and hug many children. Then I spend some time in the Bible and such.

Every morning I carry a large jerry can of water up to where my tent is so I can have water to wash my hands and face throughout the day. It is very heavy and a long haul so I have a strong back and arms. Twice a week I hand wash all my laundry, including sheets and blankets (those not so often). Then I do whatever the Lord finds for me to do during the day, which is mostly interacting with the ladies or children or working on some project. On Mondays I spend a few hours at the internet café. Then each day I carry my basin and towel and soap and shampoo and clean clothes and I take my evening bucket bath in one of the girl’s dorms where they have a room for this.

And that’s my life here in the bush, living with 102 children, and 8 mamas and 4 other missionaries.

My Word for this week:

Mark 9:35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.

Jesus SAT DOWN. He demonstrated that He never Lords it over us. He takes the low position and becomes one with us. He demonstrates by His love for us that He really does serve us, although He is God, He will do anything in Jesus name according to the will of the Father. His desire is for us. He sits down and asks us to take the low position with Him. Sit with the one today, somewhere, just sit with the lowly one. Sometimes I don’t say a word, I just sit with a child and hold them. They are so comforted by this alone. Just sitting down.

Small Hands Big God

2010-11-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

Our goat project is coming along famously! I am sending a separate Update Part II to go along with this so you can see our goats and kids. The first picture is of Sarah sticking her tongue out as three of our babies who are trying to feed her cornhusks, which she actually likes. Rebecca is there in the background, the cream colored one. Abraham is the cutest and friendliest and he is in the next picture. I am also sending as Part III a letter from the President of South Sudan to the people after his visit to Washington DC last month. It will give you insight to the upcoming Referendum and what he expects to happen. A very interesting read for those who like to follow the politics of a country.

The goats love the children and are very content with their new home and I am almost sad because they are so content that they never make a noise. They don’t “baaaaa” or anything. It’s a good thing but I like them to talk once in awhile. I think this says a lot for the Presence of the Lord being here that all who enter in find rest. Makes me smile because it is really so true.

This week has been a time of rest for me so I haven’t been doing conferences or outside ministry. I still spend a lot of time with the children of course. I spend my mornings with the toddlers, bringing treats of peanut butter and bananas or apple slices ($1.72 for three little apples!), balloons or candy, or my special porridge with sugar and honey. They adore me and I adore them. In the afternoons I take them for walks along with my fellow missionary friends.

I have taken them walking by myself, which is a huge fiasco. I get a group of 20-30, including toddlers, and sometimes they fight and cry and refuse to walk and I am usually carrying one strapped to my back and trying to coax another to walk. I have even carried two at one time for a very long way. I am usually exhausted by the time we return and I wonder every single time why I still do it! This week I took them to a small stream and they were ecstatic. The water is clear and cool and wonderful on these very hot afternoons. It is now turning into a regular part of out journey.

I am meeting on Friday nights with the youth for Bible study and worship and just more intimate times than the normal church setting. They very much enjoy coming. The children amaze me with their fortitude. Some of the older children are going to school seven days a week because of early testing. The school will not be meeting in January because of the referendum and so the teachers are cramming all the teaching into this last month. It is very, very hard on the kids and they are exhausted. Imagine going to school for six weeks straight, no day off, not even Sunday. It is really happening here, no kidding. And then they sit around by lanterns at night studying. And on top of all this they still do their chores of hand washing and ironing clothes (with coal irons), cleaning dishes or helping with the cooking. They truly amaze me! American kids, be so blessed and thank God for how good you have it.

This week as I was doing laundry one morning, little Abba, she is about three, came up and wanted to help me and so I let her reach in the bucket and swish things around while I did the scrubbing. Before long I had two more hands in the bucket and then two more and soon, there were literally seven toddlers all vying for a piece of clothing to wash. It turned into a mess and I even had to rewash a couple of things and we were all wet and sudsy when we were finished. And if there is a toddler near the bore hole when I am pumping water, they want to help and so it takes a very long time to let them pump, but I do because they feel so big. And I could just see God our Father with us, we putting in our little hands to help Him and making more of a mess than help, but He is just so happy to have our little hands in there with His. God is never too busy or too hurried to get a job done for us to lend our small hands to help.

In my updates I rarely ever mention the LRA anymore but they are still a very real and close threat to us here in Sudan. Just this last week there was an attack in Yambio, to the west of us, and nine people were slaughtered. The governments of Sudan, Uganda and Congo are still working together to try and stop these rebels but it is such a slow process.

I have also been very humbled these last weeks through my being sick. I have always prided myself, and given thanks to God, that I am such a healthy and fit person, strong and young in body and heart. I rarely get sick and it is usually short lived. Those who really know me, they know this is true about me.

I have been here in Yei for almost 50 days now and have been sick for much of it. These last few days are the first time in a long time that I have felt good, really good. Just in these last two weeks I have been fighting a staff infection in my nose, a chronic congested chest and an ear infection (the second one of both of these in these past weeks). I have completed a stiff round of antibiotics this time and have been fasting (I did hear God on this) and praying and I am listening to the Psalms on my iPod, even during the watches of the night. And I have never once entertained a plan B such as, “If this doesn’t get better then I will………”. Seriously, I refuse that plan. I just kept reminding God that He promised me good health and that I was chosen by Him to be here in Sudan at this time and so it is not in His plans for me to go to some other country to see a doctor. His grace is sufficient for me!

There is a great missionary named David Hogan who has recovered from seven incurable diseases and his wife three, he has been shot and been beaten and left for dead three times. They are in the deep jungles of Mexico witnessing to drug lords and such. There is Roland Baker who had such a severe case of brain malaria that he almost died and was left with total amnesia for months, and is now recovered. His wife Heidi was so sick quite a few years ago that she had to travel to the US and was seriously thinking about quitting when God gave her an amazing vision. And now she has hundreds of churches in Mozambique and thousands upon thousands have been saved. These people have been an inspiration for me also as I have been listening to testimonies on my iPod this week. I never forget all those who have gone before me and so I continue to set my face like flint and I continue to trust God. I shall not waver in this. My job is to trust God and His plans for me, and every single one is good.

I commented earlier how I have been very humbled by all of this. I am constantly reminded of my total dependence on God. I realize that there is such grace for those of us who are in hard places such as we here in Sudan. It is up to us to take the hand of grace that is offered by God and lean into Him. I have a new found compassion for those who suffer with long-term illnesses. And I have learned even more how to walk in a quiet strength knowing that Jesus is always with me as I continually call upon His name. There is no other name by which one can be saved. There is no other name. Doctor So and So cannot save me. Only Jesus Christ. I am so grateful that He is so faithful. And I am so grateful that people like you pray for me. I thank my God for your prayers and I pray that He blesses your families with perfect health and with the abundance of heaven to meet and exceed your every need!

The place that I go to once a week to get on the internet is a 40 minute brisk walk through fields of maize, okra, sweet potato, tomato, papaya trees, and pumpkin. There are cute mud houses with grass roofs along the way, small market stalls and two small creek crossings. All along the way, small children sing out, “How are you?” and they literally run out to shake my hand. I mean, toddlers are running and offering their hand to me to shake. I so totally love that. Everyone greets you as you pass with a smile. It is such a friendly place to live. This morning I took the usual ten boys to the market to buy sugar cane, which I do every Saturday morning, and I let them do the buying as I visit the ladies in the market. So I just sat down on a bench in the shade next to some market ladies and reached over and took up a baby that one was holding.

They think it is the coolest thing to have you hold their children. Most times the children are fearing us and won’t come. This baby was reaching for me before I even took him. I just sat and enjoyed their company and the shade on a Saturday morning in this very small market. It would be like going to a food court in America and just sitting down at someone’s table and talking to them like you have known them. Of course, in America, this would never happen, but here it is so normal. I love that too. I asked the lady what her baby’s name was and she said she didn’t know. She said it was not hers and she pointed to a lady four stalls away. This is how it is in Africa. It is just so natural to help others, to hold their babies, to share a meal with a stranger, to be invited in to their circle. The most used word here is “fudel” which means “welcome”. Ahhhh I wish the entire world were this way. What a grand place it would be. Welcome!

Saturday night was glow bracelet night again and the children never get tired of being excited by this. They run around in the dark and throw them in the air and sing and dance and just have a blast. I always wait until the weekend after a full moon when it is darkest so that there is a plethora of multicolored lights in the center of the compound. We started our day sitting on hand woven mats in the early morning listening to Uganda children’s worship music on my iPod speakers, singing loudly in sweet crystal voices. These children are always singing about God. It’s awesome.

If you ever wanted to see the redeeming work of our amazing God, you just have to look at the lives of these children. We have a beautiful sweet girl who is fifteen I believe, who was rescued from the brothels of Juba. Looking at her now, she has such an innocence and purity in her spirit. Her smile lights her whole face and she loves the Lord so much and is so kind hearted and precious, always helping others with patience. You would never in a million years know that she was a prostitute in a brothel. Her Father God has redeemed and restored her innocence and purity so completely. Only God can do that. I love this kid so much. She inspires me!

We have another young man who was tossed out by his parent because they were Muslim and he wanted to follow Jesus. They just threw him out like the morning trash. He now leads our Sunday School class, teaching the little ones about the love of Jesus. He has an amazing way with children. The hardest cases, where the child cannot be calmed by anyone, this young man’s gentleness calms these children. He has such a wonderful gift and such an amazing father heart. God redeemed what the devil tried to steal and destroy.

Every day I watch these precious ones in the eyes of God and I am changed in my heart by their examples of forgiveness and kindness and perseverance under such trials in their young lives. Watching them inspires one to never give up on themselves or another.

Today, Monday, is my internet day and I always walk the 3.5 miles to and from. When I arrived this morning I found a sign stating they were closed in the mornings for training. And so I had to turn around and walk right back. And three hours later, here I am again. So, it was a 14 mile walk today just to use the internet. Welcome to my world. Keeps me in shape huh?

So this has been my week. I end it on a thankful note. Like Paul, I feel so blessed to be called and chosen by the Lord to be in Sudan for such a time as this. I am so amazed when I look to the heavens on a cloudless night and the sky is like velvet, scattered with thousands of tiny diamonds glittering in this great expanse. The night bugs singing such a wonderful melody and the light bugs flitting here and there, dancing under the hand of the Great Orchestrator of life, God Himself. No matter how hard life is here, I will always give thanks to the Lord because He is ever present. I love my life, I love my Jesus, and I love my family (you)! I feel so much better in my health! Still messing with chest congestion but I feel great! Bless you Jesus for Your hand upon me and bless you family for your remembrance of me.

Sugar Cane and Fire

2010-11-15T00:11:00.000-08:00

I just looked back on my calendar and counted back through the last two years and I have realized that I have come to the end of my 75^th week in Africa! Wow! Time really does pass quickly, yet it also feels like I have spent years here. My spiritual growth has progressed farther than I could imagine and yet I look down that road and see that I have a very long way to go. And so, I am just enjoying the journey, even in the desert places.

It has been raining so very much in this last week. The sky just opens up and the heavens pour down in buckets. Everything is lush and green and we are seeing many, many harvests of fruits and vegetables in this part of Sudan. On Sunday I chopped up ten sugar canes for the kids again and have decided this will be a weekly treat. They love it and it is actually an inexpensive treat for them. They love walking to the market with me to get it. They love watching me machete it and help to put it in the basin (125 pieces) and carry it to the bore hole for rinsing. And then it’s SUGAR TIME!!!! So good!

This week we drove down the Kaya Road toward the Uganda border to go goat hunting. Well, we didn’t actually go hunting, more like shopping. There is a market that supposedly sells them cheaper and healthier than the Yei town market and so we went. We drove along a beautiful mountain range and arrived in the village of Mugwo. It is a very small town with just a few shops and such and there is a place in back under the mango trees where all the bush people come to bring their produce and livestock. We arrived too late because of heavy rains and so we only found one goat who was worthy of buying. We bought her and named her Sarah, as she will be the mother of many!

She is such a sweet goat, very gentle and even allowing the children to come up to her and pet her. That is unusual. She really likes her new place here at Iris. Then we went the next day her in Yei and actually found a great billy goat and bought him. We named him Abraham. You guessed it, the father of many! Again, he is very gentle and the children were able to touch him. So, we are still on the lookout for two more girls and the rest will be up to them.

Last night, Friday night, I began the Iris Friday Night Youth Group. We will meet every Friday night and have a Bible study and worship and fellowship, modeled somewhat after the American Wednesday night groups. We are studying the book of Philippians and it will be somewhat slow going because we still need to interpret everything from English to Arabic. The young people enjoyed it and look forward to each week of having this time together.

This week we also did another three day FIRE conference where we teach about the Father and Mother heart of God, talk about generational sin and curses, intimacy with God, laying down our lives and following Jesus and lots more. Many captives were set free and there were many testimonies of how God moved in their hearts. One lady even stood and confessed that twice she seriously considered hanging herself in her despair but she stayed the hand of the enemy. This is huge breakthrough for an African to admit to suicide because it is not a recognized part of their culture. They just don’t kill themselves. She testified that because of this conference she has felt such freedom in her heart and release from the things that have been pulling her down. It was a powerful three days and the Lord changed many lives.

I am still battling sickness and have been attacked by yet another illness this week. I believe this is a backlash attack by the devil because of the things that were destroyed in people’s lives at this conference and because of the extreme strangeness of the manifestation of this latest attack on my body. I am also reminded of all those who have chronic illnesses and how strong they remain in the battle and also of those who have been on the mission field and have been through these same trials, and so I press on in the hope and strength of the Lord. There is no medical facility here, which is trustworthy, and so my hope really has to be in the Lord. I press on, setting my face like flint, keeping my gaze on the One who adores and cares for us.

Abraham and Sarah

2010-11-15T00:09:00.000-08:00

This week started off with the goat project. The Lord has encouraged me to start a goat herd for the kids here at the Children’s Center. I thought, well, I’ll just go and purchase a few goats and that will be that. Wrong! I am told that we definitely need a shelter for them as we are in the rainy season and we can’t just leave them tied up under a mango tree hoping they will stay dry. And so began the goat “project”. I am having fun because I am learning a lot about the whole goat process.

The shelter is made of sturdy poles, which are basically trees that have been chopped down about 5-6 inches in diameter. I had to get twenty of those for the framing. Then I had to purchase bamboo for the walls and ten bundles of grass for the roof and nails and rope to tie the grass in sections for the roofing. And lastly, labor. So, now this goat project has doubled in cost. The shelter plus labor is a whopping $190 USD. BUT, the shelter is really a good sized one and very tall (don’t know why because goats are short). Mama Udita and I are jokingly saying to each other, “This is my house!” I told her that the goats can live in my tent and I will take the goat house because it is so nice. We both had a good laugh.

I am involved in a conference this weekend and so I will make the actual goat purchase I think on Wednesday. I am going to start with three or four females and one studly male, if you know what I mean. We want lots of “kids”! The kids, children that is, are very excited and many want to be involved in the shepherding of the goats. So, stay tuned, don’t turn that dial!

This week we also headed way out into the bush to do another Fire Conference. Wednesday we took off and headed down the Maridi Road and it took us one and a half hours to go nine miles! At that point we ended up in a culvert, precariously tipping on three wheels. We tried to put the land rover in reverse and the brakes wouldn’t hold as it is a very old land rover. At that point the truck just gently slid into the tall elephant grass and not a single thing was damaged. It was totally God keeping His hand upon us. So, we started walking back as we had no phone signal that far out. We left two of our guys with the vehicle and just started walking. What else can you do right?

Eventually, the four of us were able to take motorcycle taxi’s back into town, known as boda boda’s here. I had to share with our friend Pastor Eddie and the driver so there were three of us on my boda boda on these horrible roads! I cannot begin to describe the extreme conditions of the roads here. Remember that none are paved and there are trenches and holes riddling the road the entire way. Needless to say, I was praying in the spirit all the way. As we entered town, here came our big Lorry truck to the rescue! Yay Peter! I opted to make the long drive back out with them and it was easy as pie for Peter to pull us out and we were all headed back to town.

Well, we prayed throughout the day and had all agreed that we were still going to do the conference, riding out to the bush church on boda boda’s for the next three days. The things we do to get the gospel to the people. It’s a wild ride sometimes! So we asked God to make it clear to us if He did not want us to go at this time. We were willing to take the risk of going into the bush with no personal vehicles and no phone reception and had already arranged the motorcycle transport.

We arose the next morning early and the sky was dark and angry looking and the wind was blowing and rain was definitely coming. So, you guessed it, we didn’t go. Today is Sunday and it has been raining non-stop, serious, since late yesterday. The roads are impassable even from our compound out here in the country.

Love is…standing by the smelly latrines in the evening with my flashlight so the kids can see what they are doing. I think some have flashlights but they race over without them or don’t get batteries or something and so I just stand there pointing it at the outside wall so it reflects into the latrines and that way I can’t see them but they can see. All the while I am fighting the gag reflex and reminding them to wash their hands!! Ahhhh the things we do for love. I just had to throw that in there.

Saturday, another missionary and I took twenty of our kids, aged ten to seventeen, and we walked to town, which I think is about four or five miles on trails and paths winding through the Yei countryside, to go to a youth gathering. This week has been Evangelism Week in South Sudan and so all the churches do various things to witness and share the gospel throughout the week. During the week, you will see various groups just randomly marching down the streets and singing praise to our God. I really like Evangelism Week. After the youth gathering, we headed back to our compound and we stopped to buy fresh doughnut balls on the side of the road to eat as we walked and sang. And we also made a sugar cane stop and carried five tall canes back for after church this morning! Mmmmmm, the flavor of Africa.

Last night as we sat together and ate our dinner, we were laughing about the types of dinners we create here. There are five of us missionaries and four of us have small propane stoves (I live in a tent so I don’t). Almost every night we have beans and rice or beans and posho, which is a doughy bland tasting staple that you dip into your beans. I can’t eat the beans because they mess with my insides providing enough fuel to drive a car if you get my “drift”. So, I try and supplement and find myself eating the strangest combinations of food. One night I had a can of cold peas and a can of tuna for dinner. Last night I had a cold can of corn and some ramen noodles that another lady cooked. Another night I took an avocado and three tomatoes and an onion and had guacamole for dinner.

I have been here four weeks now and I am learning the hard way how to stay healthy. I have had two chest colds, an ear infection, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have had a good solid visit to the latrine. I am not complaining mind you, not at all. I am learning though that because I kiss the children on their cheeks that this is probably how I keep getting infected with this stuff. And so I just have to hug them fiercely and tickle them and try my hardest not to kiss their sweet little faces. On the bright side I think I must be building up a great immune system with all this!

Earlier this week we heard an explosion just at the top of our compound. We later found out that there are still active mines from the war buried in random places. It was not on our compound but just outside. The mining team has been back through this area and is currently demining the place and so we really have to beware and stay on the trails and paths.

So the Referendum is less than 90 days away and already (of course) Bashir (president) is causing trouble. Abyei is where Sudan’s oil fields are and it is located at the top of the Southern border, just about two hours from Akuem which is where I was with Samaritan’s Purse, and feel called back to. Bashir doesn’t want to lose these oil fields and so he is trying everything to get that county to vote separately to stay in the north. He wants to move the border. He is saying that there is a nomadic tribe from the north who should be allowed to vote in Abyei as they travel there three months out of the year. So, he is trying to find ways to sway the vote in his favor, which are not on the up and up. These next few months are going to be crucial times for Sudan and many are praying. Friday night some of us got together here on our compound and we prayed for this nation and we wept for this nation and we cried out for God to hear us and heal this land and save His people. His ear is not dull and His arm is not short and so we have to believe He will do it.

Each day we end our day with taking the children for a walk around the outside of the compound. The compound is very, very large and so it is a good long walk. Usually about twenty or so go with us, mostly the toddlers and younger children. There is one little girl, Boke (pronounced boquet) who sits for most of the day just watching the world go by. Although she will smile if you tickle her or play with her, for the most part she just sits with a blank stare watching the world from her little front porch perch. She is the only one I will carry on our walks because she is a tiny frail little bird. She has the most beautiful shiny black face with huge eyes and a tiny frail body. She is going to be so beautiful when she matures into womanhood.

She is able to walk nicely but she doesn’t walk very far, just around her little house area. I have tried to get her to walk on our walks but she refuses, sitting down on the path and crying and carrying on. And so I carry her. When I carry her, I put her on my back and tie her in a wrap like the Sudanese ladies do when they carry their babes in a pouch on their backs all day. As soon as she gets in there, this look of pure contentment and happiness comes over her little face. She smiles and smiles and loves that place. Although she gets heavy toward the end and my shoulder goes a little numb, it is worth the look she wears to carry her, knowing that this small place in time every day is such a contented place for her to rest.

I think God likes it when we are this way with Him. When our Father walks with us throughout the day, there are times where we just don’t want to walk anymore, we want to lay against His back and be contended there as He carries us. I love that picture, me strapped to His back in a pouch as He carries me along the path, even for a small piece of time, so I can rest a bit. I love our Papa God because He loves to carry us. He is the Shepherd who carries His sheep when they need rest.

Congo Road

2010-10-11T00:22:00.000-07:00

Umboti! Bonjour!

This is how the Congolese say hello. The Congolese speak mostly French and Lingali. This has been a very cool week getting to know the Congolese people. As we left Yei on Tuesday morning in UN vehicles and headed down the Congo Road, our destination was a place called Lasu, actually the Lasu Refugee Camp, which is only six miles from the Congo borderlands. The road was a beautifully rich red clay, wet from many rains, against a backdrop of rich greens and browns, and framed by a virtual jungle. In most places, the road was only wide enough for our vehicles. There were deep ruts filled with wheel deep waters from constant fresh rain. We bumped and slid and struggled for an hour and a half just to go twenty two miles.

I was just in awe of the landscape the entire way. The closer we got to Congo, the thicker the vegetation. There were literally hundreds of teak trees all along the way, the leaves big enough to use as umbrellas, seriously. Tall elephant grass and climbing vines engulfed the thick mango trees, banana trees, papaya trees, bamboo and many other beautiful trees and all varieties of vegetation. Every so often there would be a small trail shooting off from the road and disappearing into this thick jungle, causing me to wonder who lived back there. I saw mushrooms bigger than dinner plates, no exaggeration here! I have pictures of this. I couldn’t drink in enough of this lush country for the three days we traversed this road.

The purpose of our visit this week at the refugee camp was to help the, UN Refugee Council (UNHCR), conduct an assessment of existing conditions at the camp. The camp was started in February of 2009 when the first refugees fled the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the LRA attacked their villages and killed their husbands and families. Many fled here in terror and grief with just the clothes on their backs, running through the night through thick jungle to escape. As I talked with and met the women and young girls, I could see such sadness and pain in their eyes and faces and I had such compassion for their plight. The LRA is still very active in the DRC even now. There is so much in the demonic realm that Joseph Koney, the leader, has been impossible to capture. He practices all sorts of black magic and witchcraft.

I know that some who receive my updates are unfamiliar with the realm of spirits and witchcraft and demons, and some even unbelieving. I want to tell you that it is a very real threat here in Africa. Even the very young children here fear this realm because they have seen the spirits and the apparitions and physical manifestations of demons because of the prevalence of witchcraft. The Bible says that Satan is the ruler of this realm and so he uses demons to carry out his dirty work. It is very real.

There are approximately 7,000 refugees there. The people have a fierce and tough look about them, as if they have suffered much hardship. They are a hearty and healthy looking people, very dark skinned and big boned. Unlike other African country’s peoples, there are different looks to the Congolese. Some are light skinned with small frames and lighter hair color, while others are dark and fierce looking. My experience with the Sudanese, Kenyan, Ugandan and Mozambican cultures are that each group has a definite look, such as bone structure, coloring, facial features and such. There is some variation with the Congolese and so it is interesting to see this beautiful mix of people in one culture.

I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the settlement is. I have read many books about refugee camps and all have been tarp and tin building camps where there is poor sanitation and malnutrition and disease. This camp, the Lasu Refugee Camp, is beautiful. The people have nice permanent brick and clay huts. They have two large schools, two medical clinics, sixteen bore holes, over fifty latrines, all of these being permanent structures. There is also much land that the government has given the people to use for agriculture and firewood collection. I was very impressed with the cleanliness and order of the camp. There were no visibly sick children or malnourished people. Most children were chubby and healthy and all wore clothes, non going without pants, as is the Sudanese culture for toddlers.

This week I talked with a group of about fifty women, a group of over 100 young girls and a small group of teenaged girls, through an interpreter of course. There are so many who have been separated from their extended families, some even from their husbands and mothers and fathers. In this culture, the men get all jobs unless a woman was allowed to go to college for nursing or some higher education or gets permission from her husband to work, if a job even comes available. It is a very male dominant society, as is all of Africa that I have encountered thus far. So, here in the camp, the people are given a food ration and a couple of pots, a bucket, a couple of mats for the floor to sleep on, and just some basic things. Anything after this, the people need to earn money to buy. So, these women struggle to find ways to replace rags they are wearing or put shoes on their feet or buy soap for bathing and laundry.

Every family has its own problems and so without an extended family, these people are on their own when faced with problems. This is a culture where families only thrive when all live in community either on the same compound or at least close by. So, it is very sad for these displaced refugees to not have this support for each other. Family violence is always present as it is a norm in this society for men to beat their wives regularly. They are taught this as small boys. It is very sad to know that this is a constant variable here among all other problems they have to face. You would think that the suicide rate and depression would be extremely high, yet, it is almost non-existent. These women are tough and they learn how to overcome all odds and they maintain their joy. Boy could we learn a lot from them. Today, the teenage girls were telling me that sexual abuse is rampant, along with prostitution. They are saddened because in Congo this is not a part of their culture. So, we are hoping that because of our assessment, this will be investigated and a change will come.

This morning, I am sit here on the floor of my tent, in a dress, trying to get ready for the day, I want to tell you about doubt. I am almost ashamed but I have to be real about the things we face in this third world mission field. We as Christians are supposed to have this incredible faith right? Especially those of us on the third world mission field. Well, every once in awhile the devil sprinkles doubt on our dreams in the dark of night and we find ourselves wondering what we are doing here. I have talked with even the most seasoned of mission veterans and we all go through it, even periodically, almost like a steady jab from the enemy, even when we seem to be in a glorious place doing glorious things, doing what we know the Lord has called us to do. Even Elijah experienced this. He just destroyed 300 Baal prophets and saw God’s fire come down and consume a water soaked bonfire pit! Yet he ran to the mountain, asking God to let him die.

Last night I awoke at 1:00 a.m. and had to leave my tent and walk across the compound, trying to beat the coming rain, and use the latrine. While staring at a large spider on the wall at eye level and trying to hurry my business along before all these large roaches clamored back up the latrine hole I pondered my life. I had just dreamt of home and being with all my friends. I came back to my tent and lay down to wonder, “What am I really doing here? Is this worth it? I could be doing my old job which I loved, still ministering to kids and making really good money, sleeping in a comfortable bed and feel the carpet under my feet as I walk three steps to the bathroom where I can sit without fear of all variations of critters attacking me. I could be in the USA talking to my friends and doing things with them.”

I have dreams at night where I am in that place, doing my old job, being with friends, and sometimes I awake to question my calling. I only make it to the internet place about once a week and I only have a short time to do what I need to get done because it usually rains and I am on a motorcycle with my computer and can’t get it wet, or I have a ministry appointment to keep. I rarely hear from home anymore and I feel as if that life is passing on and I won’t know people anymore, like they are growing up and moving on without me. And so all of this combined can make one listen to the devil’s sprinkling of doubt.

I can’t even see two months down the road about what God wants me to do next and here I sit in a tent in a third world country. I have ideas but no form yet. I have dreams but no substance yet. And I start to doubt whether God wants to use me here. I know where my heart wants to go but I don’t want to go alone and so I begin to wonder if I am really hearing God for my next assignment. Sounds crazy but it is true. We all go through it. It is a common occurrence on the mission field, no matter where you are.

And so I did what I always do when I face doubt, I worshipped. “And I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned, in awe of the One who gave it all. And I’ll stand, my soul Lord to You surrendered. All I am is Yours. I offer this heart O God completely to You.”

There are many times where we cannot see the road ahead of us and that is where God wants our complete trust in His ability, His vision, His plan, His provision, and especially His timing. Elijah didn’t have all his friends with him and he had to wait until God told him to go. He must have looked back to his plowing days and yearned for them, for his nice little house. I am reminded of the scripture, “And Jesus said, No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” To stay “fit”, in shape, we have to stay in the game, stay focused, keep our hands on the plow and our focus on the furrows we are aiming for. Elijah didn’t have this huge ministry where he was planted in one place preaching and teaching and living on a secure compound. He lived by a creek. He lived in a cave. He did whatever God called him to do in any specific place at any given time. He had no user’s manual. He only had God.

It is crucial to keep our faith in the present, walking day by day, step by step. If we keep looking back, our fields will have crooked furrows and turn out to be unfinished or out of balance. And so I never let my mind dwell anywhere except where God is taking me. I dwell where He is, where He lives. I might “glance” back but I won’t dwell there.

I am content with the little that I have and I have peace here in my little tent once again. Worship brings me home to the heart of God. I love seeing my laundry hanging on the line in the afternoon sun. I love walking to the kitchen every morning for hot water to make coffee and kissing 20 toddlers on the way and tickling just as many young children as I go along. I love pumping water at the borehole and a two year old comes and wants to help. I let them, even though it will take five times as long to get my water. I love going for walks in the community with twenty children in tow, three on each hand at times. I love watching the older children and how they treat others, so respectful and loving. I love walking down a path in a village and at every house, little toddlers come running out to shake my hand and say, “How are you?” in their sweet high voices. I love that the people of Sudan are so happy, all the time, they are so happy. They laugh and smile and greet and never tire of the relationship lifestyle. They simply love people and love being around us.

And so I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, all the while fixing my gaze on God and trusting His direction for my feet. I hope this encourages many, in that, even in a seemingly perfect and blessed ministry, the enemy will still mess with your mind and try to get you to change it, and you are not alone. Go back to the cross, go back to the cross, and there is where you will find your Peace, where you will always find Jesus, our Prince of Peace. And go find a small child to love. Let the smile of a child melt your heart and chase away all your cares. There is one baby, Patience, who knows my voice now and gets so excited when I come. She smiles real big and reaches her hands and coos and even cries when I hand her back to mama. She is my first stop in the morning.

Yesterday, as I walked home from the UN compound, I stopped and bought three huge sugar cane stalks. They were about eight feet tall. I carried them the mile up the hill, and they were heavy, anticipating the excited faces of the children as I appeared over the horizon, framed by the late afternoon sun. They ran to me and jumped and giggled and we cut the cane and I sat in the dirt with them as we chewed the sweet juice of the sugar and we were so content just being with each other. Then I joined them in a game of Africa’s version of street hockey, They take an old flip flop and cut out a circle and that is the puck. They use sticks for hitting it and off we go. It’s really fun. Today I am picking up a very large order of Chipate, which is like a very thick plate sized flour tortilla that tastes like a pancake, sort of. The children rarely get these and they are a treat. And so we will have them with our dinner.

Last night, I was stung by a black hornet that somehow managed to get in my tent. I was putting things away and reached for a small makeup bag and felt this searing pain and thought I had been stung by a scorpion. So I am on my bed with my flashlight looking all over the floor for whatever stung me. I can’t find it and am praying to God for help when I look at my tent screen and there it sits. I was able to kill it and now my hand is swollen and I have no knuckles and it itches tremendously. I didn’t even get upset or cry. I thanked God for helping me to find the thing and kill it!

And this morning I climbed out of my tent and with awestruck as I looked at the sky! From one end of the Iris compound to the other, was surely the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. It was so huge, two of them, that I could not fit it into my picture frame while taking a picture. I had to take it in three sections, it was that close. Even the children came outside and just stood there gazing at it for at least 15 minutes, just as awestruck as myself. See my Facebook for pics. What an amazing God Who has created us and all the good that is in this world. God surely does love His creation and He reminds us all the time. We just have to stop to take notice.

I’ve been working with the kids on doing dramas for scripture and yesterday’s sermon was on the parable of the ten virgins. I picked 5 boys to be part of the ten. It was hard to explain but they seemed able to get it and they did very well on their skit and the other kids loved it. The children here love skits and it makes things easier to understand when they can get a visual. So, our drama troupe will continue to grow I think.

So this next week I will be working on the goat stocking at Iris. I need to get a small shelter built first so am praying for all that to happen this week and have some goats by the weekend!

Goats and Balloons

2010-10-04T03:59:00.000-07:00

Another week has raced by and seems to have run right past me in its haste. The days go so quickly here with so much activity. This week started with a really bad ear infection for me. For three nights I had very little sleep and much pain. There’s not much I can do as I don’t want any “doctor” here looking into my health because I don’t trust them. So, I have been using bottled water and trying to flush it out with a hypodermic syringe, and taking antibiotics. And foremost, I have been praying a whole lot. It has been seven days and it still remains but not as painful. I have been praying and interceding for a church that we just spent the week ministering to and so I believe this is also a spiritual attack.

There is a team here whom I went with this week and they are teaching the church about the Father’s heart, repentance, generational curses, soul ties, deliverance and hearing God’s voice and intimacy with Him. There is a high degree of religiousness and traditionalism here and not a lot of relationship, true intimacy with God. And so we have been teaching a lot about hearing the Father’s voice and spending time with Him. My job was mostly praying for the different alter calls and anointing the children and praying for them at the end. It was a good conference and we believe that many we set free from things that have held them back from walking in the true freedom of the Lord.

There is so much to be done here in Sudan and so we just take a small chunk at a time and minister where and when we can. Friday night I broke out the glow bracelets for the children and of course there was so much joy as they ran and sang and tossed their glowing circle bracelets in the air and a good time was had by all. Even the old guards and mama’s had bracelets and enjoyed them. Last night, 24 hours later, the bracelets were still soflty glowing and so the children were wearing them again. Earlier this week we watched our weekly movie, on a computer with speakers attached, inside the new dining area. It was the Jesus Movie for children, which is really good. I had a resting on each of my legs and one sitting at my feet against me and so I literally could not move the entire time.

It has been two weeks now that I have been here at the Children’s Center and it has been the difference of night and day compared to where I have been the last year. It is so peaceful waking up to the quiet singing of the children as they go about their chores. I do the same thing every morning. I get up and wash my face and brush my teeth, using a bucket of water around the outside of my tent area. Then I grab my coffee cup and walk down to the kitchen hugging and kissing so many children all along the way. As I wait for the water to boil, I play with the little ones who are nearby. One morning I did not come down for coffee and so the children did not see me until the late afternoon when we came back from ministry. The other missionary here said that the toddlers were asking where was I? They are just the cutest.

Then I go and spend some quiet time with the Lord. It has just been a time of refreshing and rest for me, even with all the activity. I feel like the Lord is going to open my ears even more to hear His heartbeat for His people and that I will receive much revelation while here. I feel like it is a season for the body of Christ to receive the same, refreshing and revelation if we have ears to hear and a heart to understand. Ask Him and He will answer. This is a season where the seeds we have sown will come to a rich harvest and it will produce even more seed than we can sow. It is a season where the plowman will overtake the reaper because there is so much seed. Our God is a generous God and He sows generously right? Let us sow generously back into His harvest field, yes?

I am not bored by any means as there are always children to do things with. One day I blew up 15 balloons and tied elastic string to them with loops on the end. Then I walked out of my tent with all these beautiful balloons and the toddlers went crazy, running and laughing and jumping in their excitement. I danced with them and ran after them and just had fun. There is a small two hour window where the other children are in school and no one is around to interrupt this time with the little ones and so it is very special to them.

Today, myself and another missionary from here, are going to a UN meeting and then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we will be going to the Lasu Congo Refugee camp near the Congo Sudan border to help them do an assessment. There are nearly 7,000 refugees there and almost half of them are children. I am so very excited because this is part of the word the Lord gave me two years ago when I asked Him where He wanted me to go. He said Congo-Sudan. If you look at my blog from two years back, you will see where He called me to this. And at that time when I looked it up on the internet, I found this refugee camp. And now a door is being opened for me to go and see it. I will be listening for God to tell me why. It may be a door opening for Iris to do ministry or a one time visit for me or something else. And so I am keeping my ears and eyes opened as I go and I am very excited to be going.

I just think that God is so amazing. He never forgets a thing and He always makes arrangements for things to happen so perfectly and His timing is so precise. I actually forgot about the Congo until the moment this other missionary mentioned it. God never forgets, even if we do, He never does.

Later this week I am also going to go and buy some goats for the children to raise and care for. First I will give them goat training and tell them that they have to be watered and moved around the compound so that they have good grass and to keep them away from the agriculture. And to also tell them that goats like to play and jump on each other sometimes and it’s okay. I can’t really say they are making babies so it will be a delicate issue (lol). I figure if this doesn’t work out, well we can always have a goat BBQ. Seriously, it will be a great thing for them. Everyday we go for walks and there are some local boys who have goats and they walk them on long ropes and the kids are just fascinated by them. I am excited to see how it all goes.

Again, I have to say that these children just amaze me because of their sweetness and their servant hearts. They are always so helpful and offering to carry things for me and pump water for me and I let them sometimes, but I also help them. I am amazed that the boys hand wash their own laundry and that all the children wash their shoes every morning before school, even the smallest ones. They take great care in tending to the small children at the beginning and end of every day, bathing them, putting lotion on them, getting their plates of food. It is so beautiful to see this. I so wish that children in the west could see this and be a part of it.

There are still the fun parts of rattling the plywood lid on the latrine hole to scare the roaches every time you enter. They all go fleeing and you make quick work of it to finish before they return! Last night I felt something crawl across my foot and it was not small. I learned later that it was one of those big lizards! I really thought it was a snake! And at least every few days I pick up a toddler before realizing I just got poo down my arm or hand – eewwww! And in the mornings you have to be real careful where you walk near the latrines because over 100 children are all trying to make it through at once and it gets crazy and the little ones won’t wait. The mama’s are ever busy using shovels to scoop and clean where these littlest ones left their little presents. This is just part of life here and it all gets worked out in the end (no pun intended).

We just got three little girls from Juba, a larger city 100 miles north of here, the day after I arrived. One is about three years old. They were living on the street, sleeping in a graveyard. Their mother went to prison for a life sentence and so the girls were left on their own. The little one I think has been through a lot of physical abuse. She has so much anger and throws tantrums and needs so much love. And so we hold her a lot and love on her tons. We also love on the other two who have had to be so strong to defend themselves on the streets. Day by day the little one does a little better. All three are fitting in nicely but still tend to stay together and are a little distant at times from the rest of the children. It will just take time and the other children are so wonderful to help them feel loved. Just pray that these three precious girls will be so loved by Jesus and the people here that all past hurts will fade away. They are all so precious in His sight.

The week ahead promises to be filled with adventure and excitement (Congo and goats) and so pray for us to get good and healthy goats and for my ear to be healed and for the three girls to continue to receive the love of Jesus in rich measure and for their hearts to feel His love as they settle in here in this beautiful place called home.

Father's heart

2010-10-04T03:57:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I am still so amazed that I am living in such a primitive land. I ride the motorcycle through small trails of high elephant grass, children running barefoot through these same trails, the grass always wet with the daily rains. There is no easy way to get to our compound. It is really this far out and no real roads out here. I have to pass over two small river crossings. I have yet to see any wildlife here that would cause one to consider they are in Africa, such as lions and monkeys and zebras and such. Here, we have dogs, which all look exactly alike, seriously. They are skinny tan short haired dogs, kinda cute too. Plenty of spiders and flies and frogs and field mice of course, and praise God no snakes yet! This is one part of Africa I can do without.

Things are starting to pick up and get real busy here for me now. You just have to wait and see and be watchful and the needs will be made visible to you, wherever you find yourself in this world. Iris Sudan is a beautiful place to live, where the children can be children, and where the Father’s heart can be seen every day. There are so many children, over one hundred now, and so few of us who minister to them. The center is set up where there are house units and there is a Sudanese mama who lives in each house. So, it is like a family within each house. The children get up early and everyone has chores, from cleaning the latrines, to helping the little ones get bathed and dressed, to sweeping down the dirt walkways. And in the evening, the older girls help to cook and the younger ones help each other and the toddlers to bathe and get everyone bedded down for the night. Everyone helps, boys and girls, all ages. They really do care for each other and no one gets beaten or spanked. All is done from a place of love and caring. The toddlers are still learning how to share, which is normal all over the world.

There is always activity and movement and noise when you are living with this many children and so the first need I am tackling is to find a quiet place for the older children to be with the Lord. Saturday I located a short, yet full sized palm tree with some smaller trees around it buried deep in thick elephant grass, well past my head in height. And so I grabbed a machete and started blazing a trail and clearing the area. I spent all afternoon doing this, patiently cutting away the thicket of seven foot tall elephant grass and have made a nice clearing all around the tree. It is a beautiful garden spot and some of the teenagers have seen it and love it. I went to the market yesterday and bought some large woven mats to lay on the ground and I am going to plant some twelve foot tall sunflowers along the perimeter to make it a beautiful garden. I am still working on widening it this week as I think it will become a much used place.

I have also decided to set aside times for soaking and ministering prayer for the children in this place. They really love this. There are so many here that, having some small set aside times with small groups can really be encouraging for them and help to feed their spirits. I am also starting up a drama troop to perform Biblical dramas every week. They really love telling stories through drama and I have invited the little ones to also be involved. So, I am hoping to start the drama team this week, at least on a small scale, to get them ready for area evangelism. African people love storytelling and so this will be a great way for the children to be a part of some local outreaches when we are able to take them along.

Also here with me are a couple from South Africa via Australia and another lovely lady from Britain. I have known them from the Missions school in Mozambique and so it is so good to minister alongside them as we reach out to this area with the love and heart of God. This week we will be conducting a three day FIRE conference with fifty church leaders. We will be ministering the Father’s heart and healing and deliverance from old bondages and curses so that they can be empowered to reach their congregations. This is the first in four for this area and next week we will be traveling to Juba, a five to six hour drive north. So, many exciting things are happening of which I am so blessed to be a part of.

I have very limited access to internet and so I apologize to those who have emailed me and I have not responded. I bought a modem in Akuem and it worked fine there, yet once I arrived here, I cannot seem to get it to work. And so until I can it to work, I have to travel to a ministry down the road and use their internet. I do have my cell phone and so I can access internet this way but because the buttons are so small it is very time consuming to try and type an email from it. Every once in awhile I will update my Facebook status from it but that’s about it. So, please know that I cherish your emails and I will eventually respond. Again, your seeds of prayer and finances and just being there for me on the other side of the world are so huge. You really are a part of all that I do here and your reward is rich already because of lives being saved and changed daily. Thank you so much for being a part of what God is doing here in Africa!

Back To Yei

2010-10-04T03:54:00.001-07:00

I have found myself in four African countries in the last two weeks and have had to manage the foreign currency exchange data in my head and that can be quite confusing! For some reason I lost access to the calculator on my phone. My last stop before Sudan was Uganda and I have not been in Uganda in a year and in that time, all of their money has changed! Nothing looks the same. I am really amazed that my brain can negotiate between Kenya shillings, Tanzania shillings, Uganda shillings and Sudanese pounds and that I have managed to keep it all straight in that small space called my brain! One of the common denominators that I have found in every country is the presence of the local police force and army, as they are everywhere carrying rifles or even riding their bikes with AK47s slung casually across their backs while pedaling to their post. Only in Africa! It is a very common sight.

While I was in Uganda, I was staying in a hotel where my room literally overlooked the very yard of a local family. Serious, my window looked right down into their yard. I have been watching intermittently how this family interacts (can’t help it really) and it is so amazing. It truly typifies the African family lifestyle. There seems to be three separate doors or apartments (one story) that share the same yard and they all share the same cooking utensils and cook fire and such. There has been one girl who has been doing the dish washing and she is wearing a school uniform so she is a teenager.

School goes until five pm here and then they come home to do their chores. The children in many, many places go all day without a meal until they get home for dinner. There are no cafeterias and snack machines. They are amazing in their energy and zeal to learn. Back to this family…. There are two toddlers just walking around and playing together, one who has been playing with a butcher knife! I am so serious, this is normal here in Africa. There is another lady who has joined the toddlers and seems to be watching over them now. Then there is another lady who appears to be cleaning the rooms or apartments. So, here is this small village or related family within the city, all working together to care for each other. It is what I love about Africa because this is so normal. The family lives together and works together and helps each other and cares for each other so no one has to do anything alone. That I think is how God designed us to be. There is so much peace and togetherness in this setting.

I arrived in Yei (Sudan) on Saturday morning and was greeted by so many children running out to meet me and so excited to see me again. Hugs all around and singing to welcome me. We were so happy to come together again. It really felt like I had never left. I just fit right back in. Mama Udita told me this morning that when they were told I was coming back and to live with them for a good while, they were actually singing and dancing and jumping in their excitement. This made my heart sing with joy because I am so loved by them and I love them so!

So, it is the rainy season here also and the trails are very muddy and slippery. We have no vehicle here (which I can use) that can manage the roads except a motorcycle. Not a dirt bike, but a regular motorcycle. For anyone who rides, you can imagine how hard it is to negotiate just regular trails. Here I have to negotiate small muddy slippery trails and rocky river beds, big rocks, on a motorcycle! So, I set out to town my first day here to buy some bottled water and, yep I got caught in a downpour. I pulled over to the nearest building, which happened to be a small bar. The guys welcomed me to come sit out the rain and offered me a beer, which I declined of course, and had a cola instead and had a very pleasant rest and conversation as I waited for the rain to stop. I continued on and had to stop twice more to escape the rain. I managed to handle the motorcycle well and didn’t fall even once. I am so glad now that I have a vast experience with motorcycles and even in these horrible driving conditions, sliding a lot in the mud, I managed to stay erect praise God!

By the time I arrived back to the base, my backpack was soaking wet and me too. I realized that one of my large bottles of water had been leaking the entire time and so my Sudan driving license and Visa and money, all made of paper, were dripping wet. And so I had all this hanging from clothespins in my tent to dry. Then as I was walking around the compound that first day, I managed to smash my big toe on one of those “invisible” tiny stumps that stick out intermittently on the trails. It was the same toe I broke in mission school a year and a half ago. So now it is bruised and purple and I still get on with things, playing with the children, riding the motorcycle and just doing life here in beautiful southern Sudan.

I have pitched my tent inside an office space and so I am out of the rains. It is sort of like camping inside, like we did when we were kids, putting the tent up in the living room and having a sleep over. I have been sleeping on the floor on a thin foam pad so I awake a teeny bit sore in the morning. So today I purchased a nice teak wood bed for $30 USD. Teak wood and mahogany wood are dirt cheap here. Right now I am sitting on my back porch looking at over 20 teak trees just here. I am glad I thought to purchase a large enough tent to fit an actual bed, although a twin bed. Perfect. I have been living on a diet of posho and beans for dinner every night and posho and fish or cabbage for lunch and once a week a small bit of meat, usually beef. The fish here are dried, guts and eyeballs and all. Then when they cook them, they are in a sauce, which I absolutely love, very salty. I just pluck off the head, as I just can’t bring myself to eat this just yet, and eat the jerky like pieces of fish. For breakfast it is a piece of bread and coffee or tea.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon helping to give haircuts. We use the elementary school safety scissors and cut as close to the scalp as manageable and that is the haircut. It takes awhile to do one kid and yesterday I think I gave at least 8 or 9 haircuts, even to toddlers who just sit quietly. And all the while I have toddlers in my lap or on my legs or petting my arms as I am cutting someone else’s hair. They seem to like the downy hairs on my arms and like to pet me like a puppy. It’s pretty funny. The toddlers here call me Lina as it is easier to say for them. Today, I have three more haircut appointments and probably more as they see me cutting.

Yesterday I learned that all of the city schools were gathered in the town center, called Freedom Square, to pray for the coming referendum. The children here at Iris for the most part are praying for unity and a godly nation to arise. The city I think is praying for separation and having their own state. So, there are different prayers being sent to the throne room of heaven and I pray that God answers according to His will and not the people’s will if it is not lined up with His. I am praying also for unity, for President Bashir’s heart to be turned to Jesus and that all of Sudan would be a godly nation and that the religious spirit would be broken, bringing true freedom to this country.

Since I have been here I have spent every morning with the toddlers and I feel this is one of my ministries here. I play happy kids songs, Christian children from Uganda singing about Jesus and the Kingdom and doing battle on our knees. The children and I dance and sing for a very good hour. Yesterday we then colored and did stickers. Today I made them a pot of oatmeal with lots of sugar and how happy they were with this sticky creation. I know that this hour and a half that I spend alone with just them and no other children brings a calm to them and much joy in their hearts. I think that they need some special undivided attention while the others are at school. We are having fun.

2010-08-23T09:54:00.003-07:00

Me and Luka Ngor Majok after church one Sunday afternoon.
All the children who run with me. Well half of them at least!
Luka Ngor and Pauli Bol being silly today! Cute lil bugs aren't they?
And this is their serious side. Posing with their new clothes.

There Is No Time In Heaven

2010-08-23T09:54:00.002-07:00

This week I decided to run in the mornings so I could have some quiet time with the Lord as I ran. The children aren’t up and out usually at 6:30 a.m. and so my chances are pretty good to get some quiet time. Here in Sudan, the dogs run wild. They are not normally cared for and are skinny and mangy and have their tails tucked almost all the time. They are a very scary looking pack, and they do hang out in huge packs. There is a pack of about 15 that spends their time on the field near our compound. They are spread out all over the field in the early morning and they just lie there and watch. I am out there by myself and am amazed at how safe I feel as I run past them, just trusting in God to keep me hedged in next to Him.

They have never attacked me although they stare at me as I come and go. They snarl at and fight each other but they leave me alone. Back in America, if I even saw one lone dog on a deserted street I would start to worry. I guess I am noticing how different I have become concerning the things that used to worry me. I have learned that it is a lot easier to just trust God, stay in His peace, no matter what, just trust Him.

Another day, I was running with the kids and the bigger boys were saying, “You run slowly”. I told them that I run slowly so that I can go the distance and not get tired. If I run too fast, I will get tired and not make the distance and will have to turn around and go back or stop a lot to regain strength.

Of course, I then thought about our spiritual lives and ministry and such. This is such a good description of Paul telling the church about running the race and endurance and perseverance. So many believers want to rush along and do everything quickly and get to the prize, the end product, the big count. I have learned here in Sudan that God really isn’t in any hurry. His plans will come to pass and He is not caught up in time. We need to keep a steady pace, always looking ahead at the path, and stay in the race, building our endurance as we go, even if nothing appears to be happening. I think that is when many Christians give up on ministry and callings and such, when nothing appears to be happening. Just keep swimming, as Dori would say (Finding Nemo).

Last Sunday, after church, I went to visit and pray with the three boys who were in jail for robbing us. We got to the jail, which I stated was just a thatched grass structure with some leg irons attached to the wooden post in the middle, and the jailor said that the boys had escaped the night before. I asked how that was possible. He said that they broke the locks and fled. It is impossible to escape the sight of the guards unless the guards were asleep or drunk. And so, our boys are gone. My tent mate is still missing a few items and so I don’t know what will come of it all. She isn’t concerned though, as she puts her trust in the Lord and not in things.

A few days ago I did something pretty funny. I gave the ladies in the kitchen and the housekeepers each a cinnamon jawbreaker and I told them to keep it in their mouths. At first their eyes lit up and they gave the thumbs up sign for “good”. Then as it got hotter and hotter, they would pop it out in their hand and look at me in surprise. I showed them mine was still in and told them to keep it in (I am laughing now). They would try and literally drool because it was so hot. They asked what kind of pepper it was. I laughed and introduced them to cinnamon!

There are these lizards here who are very bold. In my office, there is a makeshift shelf (2x8 plank of wood on concrete blocks) which holds our canned food and spices and cleaning supplies. My chair sits right next to it and I was typing on my computer and this lizard just walks right across the food and stops on a bag of pasta and just stares at me. He is about ten inches long, head to tail, and he would cock his little head and just watch me. I even placed a small bag near him and he did not move. Needless to say, I shoo’d him away as his gaze was making me uncomfortable. Just one more of our animal assortment in our every day lives here in Sudan.

This morning I preached at the SPC church in Manyel. It was literally pouring down rain from 4:00 a.m. and still raining at 9:30 when we arrived. People were walking through mud and water up to their shins in order to get to church and it was a fully packed house. And here, where there is water from rain, you find snakes swimming along too! These people do not make weather or snakes an excuse for missing church. They come anyway. I watched as people in rags, literal rags with holes and dirt, some wet, came up to give their offering. Here in Sudan we don’t pass the bag. We come to the alter and we offer our tithe. If we don’t have money then the people bring some of their crop harvest in bags and lay it there at the alter. It is amazing how these who have so little still find something to give the Lord.

No pastor ever stands there and gives a long speech about why they should give. No pastor even makes a big deal out of why people should give. They start their service with worship and lots of it and then prayer and lots of it and then the offering. Then comes the message. I really like the fact that people come up and give their offering. It makes it feel more like an offering and not something you “should” do.

So. Today I was preaching on choosing between life and death and talking about the power of the tongue concerning this. I was talking about how when you doubt or speak negative you side with the devil. I told them about the Israelites who feared the giants and how Joshua and Caleb stood on the promise of God. I was talking about how so many people here say they are always sick and in pain. I wanted to encourage them to not walk by sight but walk by faith in Who our God is and speak life into their situations, the Word of God.

Well right in the middle of this there was a commotion that was disrupting the whole service. I asked what was wrong and the pastor said to keep going, that it was just the devil taking hold of a young lady because she was on the floor having a seizure. They were just going to leave her be and wait for it to pass. All eys were on her and no longer on the Lord.

I walked back to where she was and the pastor and I rebuked the attack of the devil and we shut him down and prayed the peace of the Lord over this girl. I told the congregation to take their eyes off of the girl and what they were seeing and get their eyes on Jesus and what He could do. This young lady was delivered right there in the service and she stood up to glorify the Lord. We gave the devil no place this day. We spoke life into her. God was truly glorified in that place today and what the devil meant to use to disrupt, God showed everyone how the words of life change the situation for His glory. It was so awesome!

After the service, we were taken to a little hut and were served a freshly killed and cooked goat. It was so good with some good home baked bread coming from a handmade brick fired oven. What a wonderful morning we had in fellowship, sharing the Word and breaking bread together, eating with our hands as is the custom, which I love.

Outside of our compound there is an old runway and the kids play on a huge soccer field that they have created there. It is just so amazing to watch them playing in and amongst these huge cows and bulls. The cattle here are just like family. They are so domesticated. They just wander around and chew the grass and are not the least disturbed by humans. I even went up and pet one on the forehead! And it let me. I love these cows, they are so cool. There are also sheep and goat everywhere, along with donkeys. You don’t have to go to the zoo or safari here! They are right outside your front door. Just down the road, there is a pond that is home to a crocodile and there are monkeys in the trees. There is one lone hippo who roams the rivers of Aweil town, whom I have yet to spot. Some of our guys have seen him/her so I know it exists.

And so you have it, just another week of battling rainstorms blowing in my tent at four in the morning, lizards gazing at me, hanging out with cows and kids, and putting the devil in his place. Aaaahhhhh the life of a bush woman! Haha!

Changes

2010-08-23T09:54:00.001-07:00

Many changes have come to our compound in just one week. There are trenches dug everywhere to get ready for the new water system which will take water from the bore hole and send it by pump up to our water tower, in turn sending water to all parts of the base. For now, we have installed a cress tank and rigged up two showers and so the days of the bucket bath are gone for Akuem and don’t you know that we are so thrilled to take real showers!!! Feels so wonderful I tell ya!

There is also power via our inverter to all parts of the base to include security lighting all around. And so now we don’t have to carry flashlights to the latrine. Only problem now is being attacked by every insect as you hurry and do your business in the latrine. For a girl, this is quite a task to keep from being attacked by mosquitoes and all other forms of flying bugs. I am thinking of secretly unscrewing the bulb at night (hehe).

Our office area has received a nice new paint job and our humongous garage for vehicle maintenance is almost done. We have three giant water drilling trucks parked a stones toss from my office door and I now have a money counting machine. All this, and I am leaving in three weeks! Drats!! Hey, better late than never. I am enjoying all while I can. I will be heading back to an even more primitive life than I have experienced in all my time in Africa when I go to Yei Iris in three weeks with no running water, no power at all, no internet, no nada Hey, but I get all the children I want – woohoo!!.

So, on Thursday morning my new tent mate came flying in the office and said, “We’ve been robbed!” “Robbed!”, I said. So, I went to investigate and sure enough, we’d been robbed. My tent is next to the very back fence, only three feet between my back door zipper and the fence. Someone had jumped the fence, broke the back zipper, reached in and drug our luggage out the back zipper while we were all at morning devotions. My entire suitcase was empty, only a white slip remained.

My tent mate lost her camera, two phones, some Sudanese money (yet all 700 USD remained on the bed), and some of her clothes and both of our backpacks. I immediately knew it had to be kids if the USD was left on the bed because they had no clue what it was. I was so amazed at my response to all of it. I had total peace and it didn’t bother me at all that all my clothes were gone. I honestly did not count it as this huge loss. I have learned so much in the last year about not holding on to material things. It’s pointless to allow myself to lose my peace over them. I really did have total peace.

Well, the ladies who work here, they were so angry, even the guys too. So, the ladies all gathered around me and we just prayed right there on my tent porch, all of us in agreement in my language and theirs that everything would be restored. Our compound manager was unaware that we prayed. He was already outside the perimeter fence looking for the culprits who were long gone.

And so we all went back to work, believe it or not, like nothing happened. Meanwhile our base manger went with another local guy to the police and they began questioning the shepherd boy near our compound, the people at the river, and soon they had the robbers, three young boys. This is a small town where everybody knows what’s up. The compound manager came back to get me so I could go to the police station to reclaim my stuff. The first thing he said when I got in the truck was, “You’ve been prayin again haven’t you?”. He knows that when I pray, stuff happens. Yay God!!

We drove up to this grass shack structure where some grown men were shackled to the dirt floor. The next structure had the boys and the head police guy. And there sat all my stuff, every bit of it! Nothing missing, nothing broken! Once we identified our things, I asked if I could talk to the boys and so I talked to them about my young life as a criminal going nowhere and how giving my life to the Lord has changed everything for me. I asked them if I could pray for them and we all bowed our heads and prayed. The devil’s plans were destroyed this day and these young hearts learned about forgiveness.

The boys are still being held and they were beaten for their crime because there is still a phone missing and a camera and the money. The next step will be calling their parents in and going to the person they sold the stuff to and the parents having to buy it back or the boys stay in jail.

Friday I was running down the bush trail I normally run and before I could do anything, a snake slithered right out onto the path directly in front of me and all I could do was jump really high over it and run like crazy. I looked back and he was gone. I think that the devil is just a little ticked off. No problem. My Daddy is bigger and He is always with me. He never forsakes the righteous and never lets our foot slip. I see the Bible come alive out here in this place of “no other options”. It comes alive just like it should.

On July 5^th I traveled back into Sudan with a freshly operated on hand. It was not healing well because of the extreme humidity here because of the constant rain. And, I still do my laundry, although I do wear a Playtex glove (thanks Arlene!) and still have to wash my hands constantly because of the dirty conditions of my job, handshakes, and dirt all around. It ended up getting infected and I took a round of antibiotics and nothing worked. Four nights ago my finger hurts so bad and was so swollen that I couldn’t move it. I just kept praying, falling asleep with the Name of Jesus on my lips, never giving up on God because He doesn’t give up on me, ever!

The next day, all of this brown fluid stuff started oozing out of that little hole in my hand. All day long for three days, there has been a slow oozing and now it is solid clean white and just a tiny bit and my hand is so totally normal, you wouldn’t know I had surgery or an infection. There is the teeniest pinhole and it will be closed tomorrow I am sure. My God does not forsake me. I just keep praying and He just keeps answering. He is amazing, simply amazing.

That was yesterday. Today my finger is back to being swollen and painful. A man shook my hand in church this morning and I almost cried it hurt so much. I came back to the compound and had to do laundry, totally using my hand, and it didn’t hurt for some odd reason, although still swollen. Hmmmmmmmm? “My grace is sufficient for you.” God really does give us grace. One of the ladies told me, “You go to hospital.” I told her, “No I am trusting God, He is healing me.”

I have a young friend in America who said the same thing about a growth on her brain stem. She is trusting God and He is healing her. He really is. That is His nature and I want His nature to be my nature, a nature of faith and believing, no wavering, no doubting, no matter what things look and feel like. And so, even though I don’t welcome the hurt hand, I welcome the challenge of fully trusting God in all things, great and small.

Yesterday I drove into town to do a small amount of business and some of the guys rode along with me. As I drove and they told stories and so thoroughly enjoyed being with each other, laughing and talking and joking, I felt such a peace and joy just being with them. I felt like this is how Jesus felt when He was with His disciples, such sweet fellowship, such peace, such joy. I treasure these moments with my brothers, I surely do. And so ends another week in South Sudan. I am now going to my tent for a well deserved nap, the slight breeze of my fan cooling my skin, and the faint sounds of children’s laughter on the wind.

Love, Kalowina