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The Missouri contingent arrived home yesterday afternoon, and we have heard that Anne and Warren are safely home too. I just learned that their posts home are available online, and I wanted to call attention to the relevant website in Blackmore Vale -- well worth reading!

Exit

The mission team is back in Kampala. We arrived last night and had a wonderful dinner of lasagna and cake and ice cream. Today we went to the crafts mall by the national theater. Anne and Warren have just left for the airport; the Missouri contingent will leave at 6.30 tonight for a 10.55 flight from Entebbe. I'm sitting at the Missionary Aviation Guesthouse looking out over the hills of Kampala listening to a muezzin calling people to noon prayers. It is cool and thundering and has been raining. Uganda is so different from Southern Sudan and yet so nearby and so much the same peoples. In our debriefing last night we really tried to sort out our experiences and the way forward in this work. Whatever it is, we are all deeply grateful to have the people of Blackmore Vale in it with us.
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Last Post from Lui

Here's the group eating breakfast, then a shot of Warren between Robin Denney (left) and Jennifer Ernst,who came yesterday to visit us. Robin is the TEC ag missionary, and Jennifer is the TEC/ECS partnerships coordinator. They'd been in Rumbek for the standing committee meeting. Below, Sam and Marc. They and Robin have been talking ag, presiding over a long but fruitful meeting of themselves, the Lui diocesan leadership, and Wayne, Warren, and me today. They have wonderful, doable ideas that don't involve raising funds for a tractor -- more about all that from home. Then Sam, Marc, Robin, and Jennifer took off for Mundri and a chat with the World Harvest Mission ag folks, while the rest of us stayed in Lui. Vasco, Stephen, Gordon, Warren, Bishop Bullen, Wayne, and I sat for a long time discussing diocesan priorities and fundraising. This morning Susan and Ev presented school supply funds (we bought and distributed all we could!) and our art project supplies to Lunjini's headmaster. We have the final tea party and goodbye at 5 pm, then we pack and go tomorrow -- MAF flight at noon. More from Uganda, perhaps.

Two Things That Make Me Happy

This is Evelyn in her element. One person -- Ismail -- asked to come and read with her. But when he came for the lesson, he brought two friends. Then two more showed up. I have never seen anyone happier in Lui than Evelyn teaching reading to adults. She did this yesterday and has another lesson scheduled for this afternoon.









Today we visited the Mothers' Union poultry farm project, which was funded by a Women to Women grant of the Episcopal Church Women of TEC. When we were here in December, the chicks were new. In May, they were struggling to survive. Now they are thriving and laying eggs, 10 or 20 a day, which the MU sell for 1/2 a Sudanese pound each. They are not yet making a profit, and in fact their income doesn't completely pay for chicken feed and the stipend to those who care for the chickens, but the cheap source of protein is wonderful for families with children.



None of the chickens are featherless as they were back in May. The MU continue to sell some off as meat to fund the feed of the layers.

We also visited the MU sewing room today, and it is thriving, with many more garments for sale -- and made with more finesse -- than we saw in May. They also have baskets and bows (the shooting kind) for sale.

More news -- the cathedral here has scraped together its funds and purchased its own grinding mill to raise money. And Bishop Bullen told Deb, who had the nerve to ask, God bless her, that his baby is due within a couple of weeks. He has asked us all to tea at his compound this afternoon.

A bit of a virus or something is making the rounds among us -- not pleasant (chills, fever and digestive upset) while one is sick but not long running so far. Please keep the mission team and our health and safety in your prayers.

Sunday (and Monday) in the park with George?

Yesterday I met Bishop Bullen's new wife. Her name is Lorna (not the Lorna we know, Jim and Mary!) She's perhaps 5 months pregnant. She still lives with her mother in her uncle's compound because Bishop Bullen hasn't finished paying the bride price.

After that I got to visit the beautiful home of Commissioner Bullen in Mundri. His compound is behind a wall, like the nice homes in Nairobi and Kampala -- and Cairo for that matter -- and what looks like a tukul houses a beautiful living room with tiled floors, painted walls, and comfortable Western furniture. Bishop Bismarck stopped by there to say hello to us too.

Before that, Marc, Susan, and I went to church at Lui Parish. They are my old friends there now, and it was like a homecoming for me. They send greetings to everyone in Missouri, especially Emily and Jim at St. Tim's and the rest of the congregation of course. Marc preached an excellent sermon on Advent hope, and Susan laid hands, along with the Moru priests, on a woman suffering from dermagraphia, which means that a number had appeared on her skin to indicate rather literally that her number was up; only healing in the church could save her life. Susan also presented a parish nursing kit to Repent, the pastor, who is also a nurse at the hospital. Stephen Small, the priest at one of Lui Parish's satellites, gave me a map of Lui Parish with all the churches and preaching stations listed. I'm looking forward to scanning it and hoping it can go on the St. Tim's website or at least on a bulletin board there.

Warren preached brilliantly at the English service, which was a lot more fun with actual English people there. David and Heather Sharland, the CMS missionaries, are in town and seem happy to have Anne P and Warren with us. Deb, Dan, Anne P, and Sam went to Lozoh Parish for church but ended up at a preaching station with Noel Knight, the priest in charge, who is usually away at school. I'm sure one or all of them will write about their experience. Most of the team went to the Moru service at the cathedral, where Wayne preached and our people were blown away by the music. Dan observed at our team planning day that Moru theology is actually contained in their music, and people seemed to feel after attending church that he was absolutely right.

Today we visited the Mothers' Union teak farm. You can see Mama Jenifa telling us about it in yet another blurry BlackBerry photo. Then here's a photo of teak seeds growing at the top of a tree.

After that, we went to the site of the new diocesan center, where SUDRA had Sumadhura drill a well last May (see earlier blog entries). Wayne blessed the site and sort of laid the cornerstone. The engineer who was coming to do it properly was delayed in Nairobi or Juba, so they'll do it again later, but the symbolic act has occurred. Luckily he had his trusty archdeacon to hold his hat and stick :)

For those of you reading my blog looking for news of friends: Sam is doing great. His master gardener persona is working just as hard as his school administrator self. Deb G is happy to see old friends and very busy with the parish nursing project. Susan is wearing many hats -- as you have probably been able to tell already. Dan is in his element, and Ev is pretty much ready to move here and teach elementary school. Marc has taken tons of photos and video and is spending today with some missioners working on agriculture from World Harvest Mission in Mundri and, we hope, with Robin Denney, the ag missioner on ++Daniel's staff from TEC. Anne K is sorting artworks after a very moving and productive art project. Anne P and Warren are basking in the glory of a management conference well delivered and pitching in everywhere as if they were born to come to Sudan. The team is truly a team, looking out for each other and stepping in where they're needed before even being asked. We've had a few digestive disturbances and some mild respiratory distress; the dust, smoke, and insects seem worse than ever before. But the weather is gorgeous -- as I sit in the diocesan office, a cool breeze is wafting in, and at night we need covers and long sleeves.

We celebrated Advent 1 with a tiny Advent wreath and the collect of the day at compline.

Lu karu ami!

Photos!

To save weight, I didn't bring my camera this trip (also because we have so many people here with cameras!). But I can't resist taking photos, so my BlackBerry and its totally inferior camera have been pressed into action. The good thing is that these are much smaller files, so I don't worry too much about exceeding our data limits with them. Here are photos of Darius (aka Manyigugu) and his tools, a generous gift from some Missouri friends of Lui Diocese last summer, and of the new generator, which the Diocese of Missouri funded in September when the old one broke and was unfixable.


Here is Darius, standing by the office with his tools at his feet. Then some closeups of the tools, which include a socket set, lots of wrenches, a grinding wheel, a filter wrench (well, something for getting a filter off), and a few other things I don't remember. The goal still is to outfit him fully and build him a shop with a very strong lock so he can offer roadside assistance -- and earn money -- here on the "highway" from Juba to Rumbek and on to Khartoum.

If you use precision tools, you might not be surprised that this is $500 worth of tools. I looked at the price tags and was amazed. Of course things are more expensive in Juba than they are at home because it costs so much to import them...






Recognizing how shallow this is of me, I have to say I love the look of the new generator! It is so sleek and high-tech :)

Meanwhile, I will just say that we are having a nice, calm Saturday. The final art project is happening with the Fraser Cathedral Sunday School right now, and the parish nurses are addressing the pastors. I am installing Firefox and AVG on various laptops in the office, and I'm trying to figure out why the diocesan emails won't receive mail. Big day.

Team Spirit

If you're interested in our Sudan work, I hope you are reading LuiNotes, where members of the team are blogging about their special interests. What I want to say today is what a great team we have here. Wayne, Dan, Warren, and Anne P have totally bonded over their conference with the pastors, and "the people in the car" likewise have formed an amazingly well-oiled machine, carrying out the art project, delivery of Emmanuel's school supplies, conversations about farming, and so forth, as well as being each other's caretakers in the water and rest department. What a wonderful group!

The photo is the band of young people who sang to us about HIV/AIDS awareness after the art project and lunch at Lanyi parish. "Lanyi peoples...!" was the caller's refrain, while the chorus carried the message.

I am the extraneous member of the team, existing mainly to count heads and ask our minders to step up the water carrying. Being able to read Arabic has come in handy a couple of times when we wanted to know what was in a jar. I got to talk with Ebol, the Lunjini headmaster, for a while this morning about what will happen to education in Southern Sudan if the referendum goes for separation. He is very optimistic that it will mean improvements, and in general I am hearing optimism about both the elections and the referendum. People seem to think both will go well, and they are registering to vote in droves -- what I learned about that today is that this registration is for the elections in April and also the referendum next year.