Off to Sudan

We are in a cab on the way to Kajansi airfield and our flight into Sudan. Kampala was fun - it is starting to feel very familiar! The next MAF flight is full so Susan is not getting to come. Next mission, Susan! I still don't know if we will have internet in Lui. Please keep us in your prayers. PS n.b. It is impossible to buy a decent water bottle in Kampala and competely impossible to buy any water bottle at all (empty I mean) in the Amsterdam airport. This is not a good thing to forget on a Sudan mission.
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A Day in Kampala

Today started early with a text message from Susan saying she had missed her flight and couldn't get to Kampala in time for tomorrow's flight to Lui. We were hoping she could come tonight or tomorrow and make the Thursday flight, but it's full. So now I'm not sure what's happening except that Jim, Mary, and I are going on to Lui.

Jim has gone to a hospital here to meet a doctor friend with experience he thinks will help him in Lui. He and the cab are coming back for Mary and me, then we'll all be off to the ATM and shopping center. We have to be at Kajansi airfield at 7 tomorrow morning. If you don't see more blog posts, it will mean the Internet isn't working there after all.
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Jim and Mary in Schipol

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And we're off

Jim, Mary, and I are sitting in Amsterdam strategizing how we can discuss certain aspects of contemporary culture with the pastors in Lui.

So far the flights have been relatively uneventful, but we had a little excitement on the last flight when the flight attendants said something like the famous "Is there a doctor in the house?" Jim went to help out and spent a few minutes assessing the situation. The passenger in distress turned out to be fine, thank goodness, and the whole episode brought some interest to the long boring middle part of the flight. That got us into a fun conversation with the man in front of us, which helped us articulate what we're doing on this trip. An unexpected nice launch for the mission!
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Lui's New Website

I'm working on Lui's new website created by Chris in the Diocese of Bradford in England. I hope to sit with Bishop Bullen, Vasco, and Gordon next week and really decide what should go there, and actually work on it with them, with the idea of turning it over to them when they are comfortable with it.

For now I am just trying to put something there to see if I can. The photo-adding feature only allows me to put in a URL for a photo, so I am really writing this post for the purpose of adding the photos I want on that website. I'll post the URL for the website here when I find out if I can actually make something happen.

Great thanks (as Keith Olbermann likes to say) to Chris for building Lui a website!

p.s. Here's the website: www.lui.anglican.org. I was able to add text but the photos didn't upload. I'll figure it out...

The Upcoming Mission -- After May

If you are thinking about applying to go to Lui, you might like advance notice that the next mission will probably be the last week of November (yes, Thanksgiving) and the first week of December, pending approval by Bishop Bullen. One aim of the trip will be to carry out an art project that has long been a dream of Anne Kelsey. More to come on all that, but keep it in mind!

Countdown

Four months down, five days to go: The current mission team leaves for Lui next Saturday. Well, sort of. Jim, Mary, and I are flying out of Lambert St. Louis Saturday. There is a diocesan send-off at 12:15 in the airport chapel -- come if you can and want to. Susan is leaving from New York Sunday night. We'll all rendezvous in Kampala and then fly into Mundri, the closest airstrip to Lui, on Tuesday, May 19th.

Getting a mission together is quite a project. The logistical stuff is overwhelming -- plane tickets for 4 on a number of commercial flights and then the MAF flight into Sudan. Uganda and Sudan visas for 4. Lodgings in Kampala. Transportation in and out of Entebbe airport. Making sure everyone gets their antimalarial meds and has all their shots. Asking the diocesan office to wire money here and there for this and that.

Then there are the negotiations with our Moru friends. Where will we go, what will we do, how much will it cost? This trip -- as far as we know right now -- we will be putting on three conferences of two days each: one on contemporary society (with an HIV/AIDS component) for pastors, another with similar content for youth, and one on adult education for teachers of adults. In between conferences, we (or at least I) will travel to Kediba to see the new grinding mill funded by a grant from the United Thank Offering (Thank you, UTO!) and the three new wells that Sumadhura is -- I hope -- just finishing up. And we will go to church. I'm excited to realize we'll be there for Pentecost.

I do plan to blog from Lui if in fact the VSAT system we have contracted for is installed this week, and I believe that Mary will be blogging from Lui Notes. If you want shorter bits of news and updates, you can follow me on Twitter; I will try to remember to include the hash tag #lui in my tweets. Please pray for our team and for our hosts!