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           22 Novembre 2006 8:23pm                                                   

Big Hebrew test tomorrow morning, so all I have time to post is an email I got today in my student inbox:

From: Jane Kibeka
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 2:32 PM
To: !All Students; !All Staff
Subject:
Hello,
 
One of our heifers has calved. We have additional milk in the farm.
 
If you need additional milk or would like to be included in our supply list, then kindly respond by e-mail.
 
Jane.

           21 Novembre 2006 10:11pm                                                   

We flew a DC-3 out of Wilson airport. After a stop at Lokichogio for fuel, the sixty year old plane was barreling down a gravel runway outside of Kurmuk, a small village in rural Sudan. The area is owned by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the main opposition group to the Government of Sudan (GoS). The area we traveled to had been won by the SPLA through years of fighting against the GoS. Recent war was evident. A burned out tank sat on the main road while any area near the city without a footpath was dangerous because of land mines.

We spent about a day in Kurmuk, getting our "visas" stamped and our papers in order. The next day we left early in the morning to travel two hours by jeep to a region called Mayak southwest of Kurmuk, and it is there we stayed for five or six days. Hundreds of people had their health ailments treated while the few Christian pastors in the area were talked to one on one through gospel essentials. Yesterday two 4X4s came and picked us up (though one lost its rear axle) and drove us back to Kurmuk where a smaller plane brought the group home to Nairobi.

Its an understatement to describe how much my eyes have been opened in the past week, how more real the condition of the world was revealed, and how much more I understand what people are doing about it. The pictures will be up tomorrow, after I get some sleep and get this whole thing to sink in. I'm just overwhelmed right now in gratitude to God for the safety, new friendships, and overall experience.

           13 Novembre 2006 5:08pm                                                   

The sustaining presence and cradling of God I am feeling here is unbelievable. To go without these things, this ineffable notion of sustainment, well I don't think I would make it. Some nights I'm so overwhelmed by the haphazard sense of it all, why God would bring me (really bring) to such a foreign place. I have faith that its part of something more, and its beautiful. But its so difficult to watch myself lose pieces of myself as I am pressed and pulled here to survive, to look to people never looked to before for friendship. To befriend the alien as the alien. To be forced to see the best in people or crash and burn. Its actually quite extraordinary most days. Some days it is the opposite.

God opened up a way for me to travel to Sudan, and I leave tomorrow at 6am. A pit stop at Lokichogio and then its off to the north north part of the country, helping a traveling troupe of physicians and talking through some of the issues that the Christian pastors are facing there, a religous minority in a sea of Islam. Pray that things are safe, that I grow and am made wholer, that I don't step on a land mine. Pray that the trip is effective in its mission of restoration, though I'll probably end up being changed more than I'll change beings.

           8 Novembre 2006 9:06pm                                                   

Shucks. I really wanted that mourning dove season...

Joseph and I were driving down Ngong road, between the Junction and Karen tonight. As we were entering the forest in between, I pointed at a patch of pavement and told him how I had gotten a flat tire there once with some friends. "You got a flat in the bush," he asked alarmingly?
"No," I said. "I got it on that patch of pavement outside the bush."
"Oh," he said, relaxing. "If you ever get a flat in the bush, here, between Junction and Karen, you just leave."
"What. I just leave the car?"
"You leave the car," he said, "and you run very fast to a petrol station."
"I'll try to remember that," I responded.

           7 Novembre 2006 10:26pm                                                   

We were driving back in the dark from the store, Ndume driving Rudu's half broken diesel Peugeot. "Kupende akupendaye," Ndume explained, "is a popular Kenyan expression that means 'love is only for those who love you'." Interesting that people have clung to this idea, that loving our friends alone is something of survival, when Jesus told humanity to do the opposite, making the unloving those we love the most. The preciousness of the lost. But I wonder how that looks to somebody here, to a person trying to survive in a society where getting taken advantage of is normal. Does the lover of the unloved even sound doable?

And then Jesus is quoted as saying we should not worry, and this has always been to me that I shouldn't sweat college or be anxious about life. But then I think of this verse against the testimony of my friend here, who pays his tuition with a business he started through collecting used charcoal out of the slum gutters. The whole time he was supporting his 23 brothers and sisters (from four moms). Tell him not to worry? It seems it was only through intense worry and toil that he was able to leave that awful slum and be in my Hebrew class today.

Its obvious I have a lot to learn here, a lot of innocence to lose. I want these verses to be holy and wise, and I have faith they are, but the cover has to be scraped away to see what is underneath. As holy as it is, as wonderful, its pretty painful.

           4 Novembre 2006 7:43pm                                                   

           2 Novembre 2006 10:11pm                                                   

Its amazing how much of life just passes us by. How many Saved by the Bell episodes did I watch that I have forgotten? How many books have I read like this? How many rides to school have I stared blankly at the passing pavement, tired and passive? These were with people I love too. I would give almost anything for a half an hour car ride with Ethan right now, and back then they were ordinary and stupid.

One ride was not ordinary, and it happened one winter when I was about fourteen. My dad was driving me to school in the 1979 AMC Jeep, with its single center-mounted radio speaker. The presets worked by pressing the FM or AM black plastic button hard enough that it moved the needle to the preset position (usually The Bear or public radio news). Anyways, this particular morning I was complaining how I was going to be late for Mrs. Novak's English class. It was winter and we were driving around Lake Cadillac to get to the middle school.

"How much time do we have till school starts," my father asked with this weird gleam in his eye. I told him some short amount of time, and he responds with "Well, we better take a short cut." At this point, he pulled the wheel to the right and the car went onto the ice. There we were, plowing across Lake Cadillac at an outrageous speed. I didn't know if I should scream for terror or thrill. I thought for sure we were going to fall through the ice. But instead, five minutes later, he brought that old jeep up a boat ramp next to the school. I got to English on time that day. But more importantly, the day had just begun and I was feeling good to be alive.