It's Tuesday!!!

"Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another." -Eph 4:25

That verse is PACKED with what the LORD sent us out to do today!  What a blessing today was on so very many levels.  We had our regular Sudanese breakfast of Mundri bread and scrambled (or fried, whichever you want to label them) eggs and then we packed up in the truck and headed out for the village of Buagyi (pronounced /bua gi/).  This trip was just a bit shorter than yesterday's, so today it only took us about 2 hours and 15 minutes to get there.  What a relief, a total of about 30 minutes knocked off the journey.  Although, some of the guys got a little creative and John and Eric were able to use some diapers (made by ladies in John's church) as cushions until it was time to get out of the car.  I think that today was a 10-15 diaper day.  VERY INVENTIVE!

Now, to get to why this is the verse that I felt most appropriate for today....this is exactly what we did today!  We proclaimed truth, God's truth about Him to the people of the village of Buagyi.  And, what a privilege that was.  

"Isaac drives the vehicle," "the white man brings the fire" (meaning that the white man brings good, Biblical teaching), and the one that we made up, "Archbishop of the world sings many, many songs" were the most sang songs of the day.  I'm not sure that Archbishop liked our song saying that he sings many songs, but we tried anyway.  On the ride, I received another name...."Dancing Lois,"  but someone tried to call me Louis....I draw the line with my new names right there!  I'm a girl, so let's just stick with the girl names, k?  

Bethany and I continued our regular schedule of teaching the gospel and oral hydration solution in the morning.  However, since Archbishop of the world was our interpreter, we started with a song that repeated "Jesus is #1, Jesus is #1" with various hand motions.  This was great to liven the ladies up to be ready to engage in our presentation.  They loved the pictures and stories that we shared with them and because over 1/2 of these ladies had Bibles, we were able to look up the individual scriptures of the salvation story and read them in English and then have a lady from the church read the same verse from the Moru Bible.  WHAT A TREAT!!  This really seemed to bring the message more to life for these ladies.

These are the ladies that came out for our teaching today

We wanted the ladies to see what the solution tasted like (and wanted to make sure not to waste any), so Archbishop tried it first, then the other ladies tried it too!

After Bethany and I finished our work with the ladies, we were able to sit around and talk with Archbishop of the whole world.  At one point, I asked, "what's that noise" and he replies (in true Vijay fashion - for those of you who know Vijay) "fire.  It's time for fire."  OH, OK, I didn't realize that there was "time" for fire, but apparently it was around 3:00 in the afternoon.  We also learned that Archbishop was 1 of 6 children, the only to survive.  His mom passed away when he was around 8 and he was sent to live with an uncle who only wanted him to watch the sorghum.  However, Archbishop wanted to attend primary school, so he snuck away to go to classes, but his uncle found out.  Shortly after his uncle found out, the war started and they then had to live in the bush for about the next 10 years.

Always time for a photo-op!  I will say one thing, I'm glad I didn't have a full-length mirror there because I probably wouldn't have work THAT!  Um....stylin' is all I have to say......simply stylin'

I snuck in the bag to snag a picture of everyone after the men's teaching was finished 

After we returned to the compound, we could hear the sound of the children playing at/near the compound and I couldn't help but think.......a child's sweet laughter sounds the same in South Sudan as it does in Alabama and in India.  It's one of the sweetest sounds on earth to hear!!  Regardless of the circumstances, a lot of other temporal concerns seem to just melt away when you hear such a sweet sound.

At our nightly debriefing and devotional time, Daniel shared some with us regarding unity in the body of Christ.  This simply propelled our conversation to "how can we best be unified with our South Sudanese brothers and sisters?"  We discussed the information that we obtained from our assessments and realized that what is most needed for these people is Biblical training.  Pastors are included in this need, by the way.  They need a hunger for the Word of God and they need to be able to understand it.  They are aware that the Spirit interprets the scriptures for them, however they did not show us any evidence of where to find a story in the Bible about sin/corruption, redemption, changing after the new birth, etc....  Jeffries was very open and honest with us about his needs and he expressed a desire to provide training to the pastors specifically of each village and  to help them implement "Sunday School"  so that they will have an organized fashion where they can learn more of God and His relationship with man.  He also asked that we pray for him and we ask that everyone reading this message will pray for Jeffries and his team and the work that they are doing to diligently work to make the gospel known amongst the people of South Sudan.

The things I'm so overwhelmed by today are the love that Jeffries has for his people and how that overflows in all that he says and does and is his motivation.  He was so open and honest with us about this heavy burden on his heart that anyone could see how deep and great his desire is for his people to know the Word of the one, true God.  He is not distracted at all by the fact that they are seemingly very works-based right now, but knows that they need proper Biblical training in order to see the right view of God.  He told us that we are probably the first people to visit these villages with teaching as most previous trips have focused on basic life-sustaining efforts like providing clean water and basic triage and medical care......how can that not overwhelm someone?  The gospel, with scripture, is probably being heard for the first time in each of these villages.  WOW!!!!!  So, at the end of yesterday, we were so hard on our South Sudanese brothers and sisters who believe in a works-based salvation (or really, God PLUS <anything else>); today , we walk away very burdened knowing the amount of training that is needed.

My struggles today are that of westerners being westerners - thinking that we have all of the right answers to make things more efficient, cheaper, "better" than the way that the natives do it.  This was evident today when we asked one of the ladies to take a picture of us with Archbishop and a couple other ladies and she simply couldn't do it.  I had to get everyone together, show her exactly where to hold the camera and when to press the button to make sure that we were all in the picture.  You know what?  She had ever had to do it!  I wonder how often we go into places with great intentions of making fast changes and then are hit square in the face with the reality that this is going to be received well for just 1 moment.....while we are there, but is not sustainable.  And, it also serves to separate us from the people that we are trying so desperately to reach.  I think that this is something that we need to always consider before ever taking anything into another context to teach.