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Deb, Dan, and I had a long but uneventful trip from Kampala to St. Louis. Our whole team of missioners has now returned. On the last plane today, from Detroit to St. Louis, I sat in about the same position as I'd sat Tuesday on the MAF plane, and found myself thinking about the parallels. Both trips crossed fertile farmland, different though the two lands are, and both followed -- part of the way -- the continent's most famous river. That got me thinking about how recent, in the great scheme of things, the American Civil War was, and correspondingly how quickly Southern Sudan could develop and change.

Yesterday (Wednesday, 7 January) we had fun checking out Ugandan shopping with Stephen. Later his wife, Lillian, and son, David, joined us for Indian food and kept us company till time to check in at Entebbe. It was wonderful to see Stephen happily reunited with his family. While we were at the MAF guesthouse with them, another old friend from Lui turned up as a guest -- check out his photo. We were excited to learn that Ramsey has a new baby, and he told us about breaking with Moru tradition to be present at the birth!

Once again thanks to everyone who sustained us during our trip. I'm going to be adding photos to my blog over the next few days, so check back if you want visuals.

Back in Kampala

We had an uneventful trip to Kampala today. MAF's plane (pilot Laura again :) arrived only 5 minutes after the promised time, and I was able to reach Sheila, the guesthouse manager, from my Sudanese cell phone as soon as we got to the Mundri airport. (For some reason the satellite phone was unwilling to call Ugandan numbers; I finally had to reach the MAF office to confirm our flight via their satellite phone.) Sheila arranged for our ride from Entebbe to the MAF guesthouse, and Lawrence, our driver, was right on time too, and charged us what Sheila had told me he'd charge. I spent the whole ride reading and writing email because for some reason T-Mobile decided to support BlackBerry email on MTN in Kampala between the time we left for Lui and today (yay!). So we have showered and dined like royalty and are sitting out on the porch in the cool Ugandan breeze. Stephen met us at the airport and asked lots of questions about all the changes in Lui. He's going to join us for an expedition in downtown Kampala tomorrow, and his wife and son will come visit us tomorrow afternoon, then they'll all see us off to the airport. We leave at 11 p.m. Wednesday Uganda time, which is 2 p.m. at home, and arrive home about 5 p.m. Thursday. I'll post one more time just to say we're safely back in St. Louis.

Last Day in Lui

Today we are all packing and having debriefing meetings and last-minute computer trainings and such. We feel good closure: My list of things to do and find out is mostly checked off. Deb has gotten to see her old friends and revisit lots of experiences and issues, and Dan has collected stories and observations for many sermons to come. Our time here has been marked by joy, but we're coming back with lots to chew over and discuss with our parish and diocesan communities.

Yesterday, while I was hanging out by myself, I wrote a long reflection on the tension between a feeling I call "alone on the planet" and a strong sense of connection to and communion with other people. I will spare you the whole long thing, but I do want to say that nowhere do I feel them simultaneously like I do in Lui. Alone-on-the-planet is richly available on a dune in the Sahara or the streets of Chicago, and communion is best at home, but only here in Lui have I experienced them both at once. God is present in both feelings -- more directly in the former and through other people in the latter -- but the constant presence of both feelings here has brought me to recall the name of the film about the Lost Boys of Sudan, God Grew Tired of Us, and say no, God never grows tired of us, and if there's anywhere we can realize it, that place is Southern Sudan.

That's it from me till we're back in Uganda, where we will be staying at the MAF guesthouse and expect to have Internet access. Part of the sense of communion I mentioned is my awareness of the connection with both my Moru friends and my friends back home at the same time, and this seems like a good time to say thank you to everyone who has been reading my blog and holding all eight of our team of missioners in your hearts and prayers. The feeling of your support is almost palpable, and it has carried us. Please don't drop us now! We expect to be home Thursday night, 8 January.

Sunday in the Compound with Nobody

Today I stayed home alone. Deb and Dan went to Lozoh without me because Deb pointed out that I'd have a respiratory system full of mud if I inhaled a road full of dust on top of my cold. So I slept and read and hung out all by myself. I told Ada I didn't need lunch so she could get her time off and instead had some nice almonds and apricots that Tammy kindly left me (thanks, Tammy!). I should have started counting motorcycles and semis when I saw the first ones; it was a very trafficky day out on the road.

Deb and Dan seem to have had a wonderful trip to Lozoh, and they are safely back. I'll let them tell their stories -- check tomorrow on Lui Notes (www.luinotes.blogger.com, I think).

Lazy Saturday

Not that I'm counting, but we have three more days here.

Yesterday I had a meeting with Bishop Bullen to discuss building parish-to-parish relationships and the possibility of some kind of connection between Missouri clergy families and Lui clergy families. Somehow that led him to ask me how people become gay. We had what I thought was a very good conversation. We also discussed the possibility of applying for a CPC Miles of Pennies grant for Lunjini School, and he definitely wants to do that. Eventually the conversation went down the road of all his hopes and dreams for Lui, which are, right now, symbolized by two big piles of rocks out in front of our compound intended for the diocesan office building, to which he dedicated the St. Stephen's Day and (I think) New Year's Day offerings.

The other thing I did yesterday was -- with enormous difficulty -- download AVG and clean off both computers in the office here. Virus checking is never very exciting at home, but when 20 threats, a combination of viruses and trojan horses, popped up in the AVG window as it scanned, I found the process lots more fun. And now I am so famous for virus extermination that Peter, the hospital administrator, just came over and asked me to clean off the hospital's laptop too. After all Robert and Joe did to fix technology here, I was worried about collecting any street cred at all in this department, but AVG has kindly rescued me.

We have had doughnuts and coffee for breakfast every day since the rest of the team left, but lunch and dinner have been less exciting. We have also stopped doing our own laundry as that seemed to be offending our caretakers. Yesterday Ada did the last of mine; as long as I stay away from things like spaghetti sauce, I have exactly enough clean clothes to get home. (Which, in case you can't tell, I am ready to do.)

Just Another Day

So what nobody told us yesterday is that the Baptists were slated to come today and teach "Discipleship" in Lui. We were not invited. The men are in the cathedral and the women are under the mango tree. The women are learning praise songs in English. That's all I know about that.

Since the rest of our team left, Deb, Dan, and I have faced a larger number of individual requests for various types of school funding. Between that and the mirror of the Baptists from Birmingham, I am struggling a bit with how I feel about our role here.

At the same time, we are now having the leisure to sit in the compound with whoever wanders in, and yesterday we experienced a first: Betty, one of the teachers the diocese of MO sponsors at Lunjini, sat with us and asked lots of questions about life in the US. Mostly she was interested in our food and how it gets to us; the conversation started with a question about whether we grow something or another -- coffee, maybe. In the end, she asked for some health information and advice, as well. It was one of the best conversations I've had here. We are also getting deeper and more subtle information about things in Lui. Yesterday Vasco explained a lot to us about the prospects of Lui Hospital and the apparent conflict between what the church wants and what the state wants. That was helpful. So on balance I think it's good that the three of us are still here.

I'm grateful to have Deb and Dan here to process it all with; we are working hard to recognize the cultural mandate or sense of desperation behind the requests and to give the moments of sharing their due weight. I guess the via media was never easy -- for us equilibrium exists only as moments of balance between two extremes.

Through the Looking Glass

Today has been surreal.

New Year's Day is a big deal here. The Moru Christians "renew their names" and write them in God's book (figuratively, as far as I can tell) each year on this day. So we went off to Moru church expecting something about that. We sat down in the south transept even though we always get sent to sit in the front by the altar, not wanting to be the ones sent down lower in the gospel story about who sits at the head of the table. Lucky we did -- a while after the service should have started, six other Americans were ushered in and up front. We were offered plastic chairs at the front of the transept, but we held our position on a concrete bench. That wasn't the surreal part.

What was surreal was sitting out in the congregation of Fraser Cathedral watching six Americans play the roles we usually play. They greeted us in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for starters. They went on in a way we wouldn't, each bringing us "a message of encouragement" by reading scripture to us and giving little mini sermons about giving our lives to Christ. Deb and Dan and I wondered if we sound anything like they did when we're up front. Turns out they're from a Baptist church in Birmingham. They send a team to the Lui-Mundri area twice a year. They are digging wells. (One of the team has an organization called Never Thirst.) They just finished one at Wito, between Bwagyi and Mideh (not sure which archdeaconry, but you can be sure I'm going to find out). They come to check out wells and bring a team to teach the gospel, or something, when they come. The women had been teaching Moru women and the men Moru men something they called Discipleship. Ever hear of that??? They said the Moru had not. Turns out they have some kind of written series they're using and hoping for an each one, teach one continuation after they go home. (Their total time here? One week.)

If that's not enough, get this: The person who brought them to Lui was Jeffreys, the former diocesan secretary of Lui Diocese. We had heard he'd gone to law school, then we heard he was working for ITAM (It Took a Miracle, which maybe has been dismantled now), but now he's working for this Sudan Christian Strategic Advocacy group. We had a chance to eat lunch with them, chat, and exchange contact info so we can coordinate our well-digging efforts. (We thought we'd leave the Discipleship part to them since we personally find ourselves learning something about discipleship from our Moru friends.) Tomorrow they are visiting Lui hospital, and Deb, Dan, and I all plan to go along. Maybe we can encourage them to help the hospital.

By the way, Deb preached a knock-'em-dead sermon at the English service this morning, weaving together a number of scriptures that connect Holy Name with their name renewal thing.

Yesterday I didn't blog. We've been having trouble with the Internet, but I think Dan and I have isolated the problem now. The most important thing we did yesterday was clean out our blue box, the repository of stuff we might need from trip to trip that is stored in the guest compound here. We threw away what was expired and gave most of the medical stuff, which has never been used, as far as we know, to the hospital, which is desperate for supplies. Because of the tape we found, a woman with a 5-day-old baby was able to have the bandage over her severe burns changed. Deb told a poignant story of this woman lying in the hospital suffering with her tiny baby nestled beside her.

The three of us have made the segue from team of 8 to team of 3 well and are continuing the team's traditions. Happy new year -- if we didn't phone you, know that we thought of you all and wanted to call you "from the future" when it was 2009 here and still only 2008 there.

Lu karu ami.