End of Week 1

Today we have been in Lui for a week. We celebrated by buying cold soda at the market. (Jim even had a Ugandan beer! But don't worry, we did check and double-check with Stephen that it was OK for a church person from the US to do that.) We also bought some condoms because some of the pastors admitted to never having seen one. We bought enough for them to take away and pass their new learning on. We also discovered birth control pills at the pharmacy in the market.

I guess that leads me to a more organized report on the pastors' conference so far. As with the youth, we started by asking them what pressing topics they wanted to discuss (right after establishing our "credentials" for doing a pastors' conference at all...). We had established the contemporary-society context of the conference, but some of them had trouble moving off internal church issues like pastors not getting paid, churches needing permanent roofs, and such like. Still, we ended up with a broader list, and we made a good start today. Several of their concerns revolved around their young people (18-25), so we started there. Mary reported to the pastors on the youth conference, and that gave us a chance to group the pastors by archdeaconry (all but Lakamadi are here) to discuss how they can support their youth. We are trying to encourage them to work with who and what they have instead of focusing on the young people who don't come to church and the money they don't have to buy what they want. In the process, we have had some very frank conversations about getting money from abroad and the strings that can be attached -- I am trying to be useful by being honest since I can't be useful by being rich.

After lunch, Jim came to talk with the pastors about their public health opportunities and especially HIV/AIDS. He did a very nice job of articulating the tension between what we preach (faithfulness) and what we know is happening and how we can address it (unprotected nonmonogamous sex). The pastors have been pretty forthcoming with questions and comments throughout the day, and I look forward to talking with them about internal church issues, church and state, and money/stewardship tomorrow. The high point of tomorrow, though, is going to be Condoms 101 :)

We explored the idea of going to Juba on Friday because Jim would really like to see the hospital there. But we jointly decided that it's not worth what it would cost: $350 to hire a car to take us there and back in one day, or $15 each way on the matatu with a $140-each hotel bill because we can't take a matatu there and back in one day.

Lunch today was just bread and chicken.

I hope that -- despite the grim lunch report -- some of you reading my blog are thinking about coming to Lui on the next trip. Applications should be available as soon as I get back with the go-ahead from Bishop Bullen.

A few random things to close:

Do you all think that putting in a ceiling between the metal roof and the room would make the cathedral cooler? That's what the people here want to do, but we are a little skeptical and would like some expert advice. (Somebody call Rick Kuhn and ask him, and post a comment?)

We are trying to offer informational help. If anyone knows about organizations offering scholarships for college or even secondary school in developing countries, please let me know. Also if anyone knows about other development grant opps, I would like to pass the info on here. Jim, Mary, and I have committed lots of our future time to googling on Lui's behalf.

Finally, would the college chaplaincies be interested in having sister relationships with the Lui youth? I think the youth here are interested.