Home Safely

Ready?
Originally uploaded by Boyznberry.

Praise God we're home safely! I'll write in more detail tomorrow, but here are some highlights of our journey:

Seeing God answer our prayers to heal Abiye. On Thursday, this young lady had NO pulse, NO blood pressure, and her extremities were like ice. The medical staff gave each other one of those looks that speak more than you'd like to hear. One said, "There's nothing more we can do for her. Let's just make sure she's comfortable..." We went and prayed for God to save her so her cattle camp (see below) can know GOD! Today, she walked. She'll be going home tomorrow!

Spending several hours in a cattle camp. The Sudanese did NOT want us to spend the night since it would've been too dangerous, but we were able to stay from the time the cows came home till almost 11pm, observing life... The camp we visited has about 10,000 cows and 600 people. Some of the people have tarps set up as tents. (I'll post photos tomorrow.) One tarp becomes home to FORTY people when it rains! When it's not raining, the children sleep in the cow ash (ash from cow dung having been burned). They even brush their teeth with the cow ash!

Watching the Dinka worship God!

None of the team got sick. There were fewer mosquitoes than we were told due to the rains being late, but we had a lot of flies (including humongous tsetse flies--ouch!) The ELI staff worked like crazy to complete a little shower room and outhouse, so we didn't have to dig holes... They brought some water from the community wells so we could take simple bucket showers at the end of the day to clean up. It was VERY, VERY hot (the thermometer we had couldn't read above 120F, and it read 120 on several days).

It rained only two days, yesterday being the worst. I'll tell more about that later. We ate rice and beans most meals. There was also sheep and goat.

The medical team saw more than 1,000 patients, mostly for worm and malaria treatment. There were two cases of cholera. Many came to have teeth extracted.

The 2 pastors on the team were able to do a seminar for pastors and community leaders which was well received. I was able to record teachings and preaching as well as worship songs.

Click on the photo to see some pictures from the journey. I'll be uploading more tomorrow.

Adele