Cueibet Sudan trip: Day Seven - 7th Feb., 2010

Sunday morning held a special surprise for us at the guesthouse. Someone brought some fish for sale and so we added pan fried fish to our breakfast menu. We also discovered that going over the logs the day before had resulted in a flat tire on the Land-cruiser. After Balaah and a co-worker had changed that one with a tire from the other base Land-cruiser, we took off for church.Once again, we met up with the rowdy youth, but Balaah was finished playing around. We didn't eve slow down and hit the first log at about 50 kph. Because we had already passed another place where they had blocked the road the day before and had already opened it, we thought that was it... One Km down the road, however, we saw that they had blocked the road once again... As we came closer to the logs, we noticed something very strange. The youth were hurrying to open the road. They moved the log from one side and then quickly opened the other side. We were half wondering if Balaah's boldness of the day before had intimidated them, when we saw the reason for their quick change of heart. From the other direction there was a police vehicle approaching. That brought a burst of laughter from us all as we reached the roadblock just before the police and continued without incident... Wheew, what a drama!

We reached the church compound and found them already in session, praising God in great joy and anticipation of their guests... New Sudan Lighthouse church meets under the trees where they have constructed a make shift brush arbor for the platform (they bring plastic each Sunday to cover the arbor). They also constructed some benches from tree limbs for the congregation to sit upon.

It is hard to explain in writing the joy we felt in our hearts to worship together with this congregation of one year. There were about 20 adults and 50 or more kids in attendance. They have modeled their church after ours in Nairobi. They even name their kids church program "Kids House". You could hear them speaking in their Dinka language and every once in a while they would use a borrowed word like "Kids House"... It was great to be with such joyful people who live in the midst of such a hurting rough community. You could tell the people really love and respect our missionary, Silas, as one of their own. As is the custom in many parts of Africa, if you are a missionary how happens to be at church, you are asked to preach. Both John and I declined, but were given time to say something. We got a good amount of video footage and pictures of the congregation and hope to have it made into an update for our next Missions Sunday.

As the service drew to a close, someone brought a child to be prayed for. The child had had boiling water spilled on him and was in great pain. In those areas there is very few medical treatment options. We prayed for the child. The child stopped crying... After the service many people came to greet me. She was among them and I did not recognize her and I patted the baby on the bottom in greeting. The baby cried.. I felt so bad...

The service being over, our attention turned to getting back to Abiriu to have lunch with Silas and Samuel and then get to Rumbek before dark. We discovered that Samuel's wife and their daughter, Grace, had not attended and were told that in the morning, after Samuel and Silas had come to the church on Samuel's motorcycle, they send another brother to go get Samuel's wife and kid. The motorcycle broke down and so the young man had walked all the way back (7.5kms) to the church and arrived as we were finishing. So, we all went out to the road to get a matatu (minivan) back to Silas's house. We decided since one did not appear at once, we would start walking and catch it when it passed by. Not one ever came and we ended up walking in the 100+ heat for the 7.5 kms back to Silas's place. We ran out of water on the way and were quite dehydrated when we arrived. We immediately got water and sodas at a kiosk in the village before proceeding to Silas's house. By then it was almost 3pm and the afternoon was moving along.. We got out the peanuts we had stored in Silas's house earlier in the week and ate an impromptu lunch. Then we headed for the bus stop and waiting for a matatu.

After about 45 minutes a matatu arrived and although fully packed out to my assessment, Silas, John and I were squeezed in by the grace of God and inhaling at the right time. About an hour later (5pm) we arrived in Rumbek and made our way to the Nationdit Bus office where we met up with Janet. She had borrowed money and had gotten her pass renewed earlier on Sunday. We exchanged our last Dollars, bought three bus tickets to Juba for the following morning and started making calls looking for a place to eat and then rest. We ended up eating at the same Ugandan restaurant we had eaten breakfast at on Wednesday morning. Beans and Chapos never tasted so good... Then we got a place to stay that is in the same compound as a Kenyan missionary (Rev. Benjamin Makanda) that Silas stays with when he comes to Rumbek. It was upon seeing the state of dis-repair of that guesthouse we realized the blessing of staying at Diakonie in Cueibet. The room that John and I slept in was filthy, although we had been told that it had recently been cleaned. Nothing worked because the generator had not been started yet. We used one of our bed sheets as a makeshift curtain for a bit of privacy. When the generator came on, the tanks began to fill and after a while water began filling the toilet we had used which had not been flushed yet. After a while longer, we were able to shower. We were almost out of water, so our host, Rev. Makanda, went out on his motorcycle after dark and got us some water. Thanks to God for His people... Although we were hot and sweating profusely even after showering, we finally succumbed to exhaustion and slept hard.