Photos from Lui Day at the AFRECS Booth

Here are the promised photos of Lui Day at the AFRECS booth at General Convention 2009. First, a view of the whole booth on our day. Every day the bulletin board featured a big poster and story cards about the day's featured relationship. The smaller poster about Marc Nikkel, on the left side of the board, stayed up every day.


Up close, the bulletin board with the Missouri/Lui poster and, in front hanging diagonally, our story cards.



Here's the story card close up:

And a closeup of the poster:



Connie Fegley kindly took my picture on Lui Day so you'd all know I didn't really spend all my time at the beach. (And Connie, who coordinated all the work that went into creating the booth and staffed it every day, was the source of endless valuable information and note-comparing, and introduced me to several other people with lots to share about Sudan.)

Two Quick Things

First, just a reminder that applications for the November trip to Lui are due soon. We will leave the Sunday after diocesan convention, be gone for Thanksgiving, and return the first weekend in December. To apply, please fill out an application (available as a doc file or pdf), have a reference fill out the recommendation, andsubmit them by August 24, 2009. Announcement of the team for the next mission trip will be by September 4, 2009.

Second, here's something cool: Beth in the Missouri diocesan office has posted the 2009 calendar of Sudanese bishops on the Internet. You can find it at

http://media.diocesemo.org.s3.amazonaws.com/lui/EpiscopalBishopsSudan.pdf

or as a jpg picture:

http://media.diocesemo.org.s3.amazonaws.com/lui/09EpiscopalBishopsSudan.jpg

The mission team received these calendars in the office of ECS in Kampala. The story we heard then was that the province had to publish the calendar because there were rogue bishops going around pretending to be ECS bishops, and the churches needed to be able to recognize the real bishops. Hmmmm, right?

Lui-Missouri Day at General Convention

Sandy Coburn spent lots of time helping the AFRECS board member in charge of the booth at General Convention put together a display on Lui to be shown on our official day at the AFRECS booth, and the Companion Diocese Committee helped pay the graphic artist who actually created the panels for the whole booth as well as each diocesan partnership. I will post better photos after convention ends; I didn't bring the cable for my camera and right now am having to rely on my phone for uploadable (crummy) photos.

The display was very nice; besides this big poster, we had six story cards, on which half the page was a photo and half was its story. I spent the day "staffing" the booth, but exactly nobody actually came up to us to talk about Lui or explore the idea of companion relationships. We were selling crafts for the Mothers' Union in Kajo Keji, and I believe we sold a total of one bag and seven cards. Still, working the booth was fun and a very good opportunity to chat with others involved in Sudan relationships. If nothing else, the time here at GC with the AFRECS people has given me a sense that we are not alone in our struggle to develop a relationship with our Moru brothers and sisters. Everyone is walking a fine line between building relationships and turning into an NGO.

What we actually did at the booth today was work on a letter to President Obama that we hope the bishops will all sign. Its purpose is to encourage him to do everything he can to oversee and safeguard the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Advocacy was the number one priority of Archbishop Daniel when we asked him what he needs from us. He stressed it again and again. Tonight quite a few of us, including AFRECS and TEC leadership, are going to dinner to talk about advocating for Sudan. The other Sudan-related thing I did today was talk with Craig Coburn, the executive director of Five Talents, about microlending in Sudan. Craig is a wellspring of useful information and well up on what it's like to work in Sudan.

On a less global but equally pressing note, I had email this morning from Stephen Dokolo telling me that the crops in Lui are failing because they have had so little rain. He is fearful of famine and asks the prayers of the Diocese of Missouri for their crops and their weather. Please pray for our Moru brothers and sisters, that their crops may thrive and their food supply be secure. And please pray for peace in Sudan, the just and complete carrying out of the CPA, and wise and prudent governance by both the Juba and the Khartoum governments.

Mama Deborah speaks

Here is Deborah Atem Mading talking with the bishops' partners and spouses. Her message to us is that prayers for peace in Sudan and advocacy with the US government for enforcement of the CPA are the most important things we can do. And she says sending people to teach in our companion diocese is more important than giving money, but money is also very good.
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More Sudan at General Convention

Today was a good Sudan day at General Convention. I got up to the news that there would be a legislative hearing on a Sudan resolution before the world mission committee, so I cut my trip to the gym short to be there. I thought the comments were on target and insightful, and I stayed for the discussion of a few other topics.

This afternoon, Rob Radtke, the president of Episcopal Relief & Development, spent an hour in our hospitality room with the spouses of bishops explaining what exactly ERD does and how they do it. I learned some useful stuff that will help us advocate for Lui more effectively. Coming soon, ERD will be putting some how-to info out on relief and development that should help us think about mission partnerships.

I spent most of the rest of the day waiting for Archbishop Daniel and Mama Deborah to arrive. That took me to the AFRECS booth, where I meet more cool new Sudan-connected people every day, and to the World Mission reception, where I met the Sudan chief for ERD. Our honored guests finally arrived around 7, and I got to be part of the group that took them up to their room. It's nice to have them here!

Saturday the bishops' spouses are having a conversation about Sudan relationships in our hospitality room.

I guess I put the photo in for juxtaposition against my usual Lui photos.

Church Here and There

Here is my view of the opening eucharist at the 2009 general convention of TEC. I am forcing myself to take pictures here because I do it in Sudan. It feels intrusive here. I wonder what cultural disconnect makes it possible for me to take photos in church in Lui.

PB Katherine preached about being given a new heart, per Ezekiel, and the working together of the body, with a focus on the church of the Phillipines.
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Lui, California, and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church

I don't usually write in this blog when I'm not in Sudan or announcing a trip or something like that. Which reminds me that I might not have properly announced the next mission to Lui. We are going back the week of Thanksgiving and the week following, leaving St. Louis Sunday, November 22, and returning Saturday, December 5th, if not Friday the 4th. We'll be in Lui 11/24-12/3. The main "conference" this trip will be an art project with Lunjini School -- more to come about that later. We will also spend some time with clergy, discussing topics to be determined. There are still perhaps a couple of openings on the team; the application is available on the website of the Diocese of Missouri, the Lui page.

Right now I'm at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Plenty of people with more information and insight than I have are writing about that, but I can't resist writing about Sudan from this perspective. First, I should say that I am excited about all the opportunities at GC to share stories with others who've traveled to Sudan. Today I sat at the AFRECS booth with Connie Fegley from the Diocese of Bethlehem, which is in a very productive relationship with Kajo-Keji, and it was just nice to find that we share a lot of experience and perspective on Southern Sudan. I'm looking forward to talking with several other people with lots of Sudan experience, reporting to ECW about their grant to the Mothers' Union in Lui, hearing from ERD about their work in Africa with the other bishops' spouses, and networking with spouses whose dioceses have Sudan connections. If Archbishop Daniel and Mama Deborah get their travel documents straightened out in time, I also look forward to seeing them and spending time with Deborah during the spouse activities.

What really makes me think about Sudan, though, is Southern California. I never expected to like it here, but it is beautiful, and the climate is unbelievable. I am now unsure why the entire population of the US doesn't just move out here. Aside from the climate, which is fortunately quite different, the geography of this place reminds me a lot of Sudan in the dry season. Like Southern Sudan, California is a curious mix of desert and tropics, with palm trees, evergreens, and deciduous trees and lots of tropical flowers. Like Southern Sudan, the soil is amazingly fertile. They are beautiful in so many of the same ways, and yet they seem worlds apart. Walking around "Downtown Disney" tonight, I was watching the happy couples and families and thinking about the corresponding people walking around downtown Lui. I'm not sure which to say is like a parody of the other. And watching the nightly Disney fireworks, I couldn't help thinking what that much fire in the sky and booming and banging would mean in Sudan. I am baffled by the distance between our cultures and the seemingly unbreachable divide: How did we become like this, people who would build a Disneyworld and flock to it? Why do they suffer from malaria and TB and nodding disease and sleeping sickness and river blindness and malnutrition, and -- for the most part -- we don't?

The other thing about GC that reminds me of Sudan is seeing old friends. Stepping onto the elevator in the Hilton and seeing a friend from seminary or a diocese we used to live in is pretty much like stepping off the plane in Mundri and finding Vasco waiting for me.