April 24, 2006
Easter greetings from sunny Khartoum. We pray that each of you
were able to experience the truth of our risen Lord this Easter
season and every day.
Our time in Sudan continues to be an experience of learning and
growth. Recently, we attended the retreat in Kenya for all PC(USA)
mission personnel serving in central and West Africa. The main
speaker was an African theologian, the Reverend Dr. Kwame Bediako,
from the “Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission
and Culture.” In one of his lectures, he said that Western
missionaries to Africa needed to pay more attention to what God
is giving us through African Christians, and we should take that
back to our Churches in the West to help revitalize them. We have
agreed with this idea for a long time now—that we have received
more from our time in mission than we can ever imagine to have
given to those we came to work with. All in all, the retreat supplied
us with some much-needed rest and food for thought.
Upon our return to Khartoum, this sense of rest was tried and
tested. It didn’t take long for Barry to question why we
were here in the first place. On arriving at the airport, we were
greeted by the friend who came to pick us up with the news that
our car was not working. Now, just before leaving for Nairobi
we had had the car serviced and repaired, and we wondered what
could go wrong with a car during two weeks when no one uses it.
Nevertheless, we agreed to let our friend take the car to the
garage in the morning, and our colleague Sue Ellen Hall offered
to let us borrow her car to get home.
When we got home, we found a major leak in one of the pipes that
run under our hoosh or garden. This leak had also been repaired
just before we left, but once again it looked like “Old
Faithful,” spouting water in the middle of the hoosh. The
leak was so bad we had no water pressure in the house at all,
so we spent a waterless night. The next day, Barry accidentally
caught the front bumper of Sue Ellen’s on a gate and ripped
part of the bumper off her car.
Things continued along the same lines for the next few days—the
coolers and the toilet were both leaking, so we had to shut the
water off. These had all been repaired numerous times, and it
took several attempts to get them fixed this time. Fixing some
of them is still a work in progress.
The problem, we decided, was that we were dealing with cheap,
faulty materials and not the best technical people doing the repairs,
(as Barry tried to do a lot of the jobs himself). But eventually,
after getting experienced help, most of the items did get fixed.
There even was some good in the bad, as the birds, goats, and
stray dogs certainly enjoyed drinking from our leaks. Also, the
rainbows and glitter from the water spray were rather pretty,
if you took the time to appreciate them.
Barry has been catching up on disturbing news regarding a new
leadership crisis in the Presbyterian Church of Sudan (PCOS).
The issues are similar to a crisis they had seven years ago that
had supposedly been resolved. Barry is also trying to work with
the Sudan Evangelical Presbyterian Church (SPEC) to find ways
to cover some projects that were under-funded and therefore causing
difficulties with implementation. On a more personal level, he
is trying to find the necessary funds for the Extra Commitment
Opportunity that covers the expenses for all the traveling and
support he gives to the partner Churches. |
