Sights of Sudan...

Since school has let out for a couple of weeks, life has slowed down considerably here in Ikotos. Last week, Meghan and I had a visit from our short term coordinator from Kampala. We got to show her the beautiful sites around Ikotos, a visit to the empty school, and a quick tour of the ever so abundant market (where you can buy onions, garlic, salt, a kind of bullion cube, some biscuit cookies, and currently peanuts...not much else!). We also tried to show her how hard life is in rural Sudan by taking her to the bore hole for water (and making her pump for it!), and showing her our outdoor bathhouse and latrine. But of course we had to take her to the best resturant in town where you can get tasty beans with fresh bread made that day. (The only other option on the meau is some tough, grissly, fatty meat...I strongly recommend the beans over the meat even though for the Sudanese consider the meat a speciality.)

After relaxing in Ikotos for a couple days, we all then flew to Torit (a town about 50 km away) for the AIM Sudan retreat. Not only was it great to get some fresh fruits and vegetables, but we also had the pleasure of taking a shower with running water!

At the retreat we had sessions talking about the AIM mission statement for Southern Sudan. That is, we aim to know Christ and help lead others into a vibrant relationship with Him by modeling this in our own lives. Different missionaries took turns talking in each session and afterwards we spent sometime in small groups praying. This was a good time to meet all the missionaries AIM has in Sudan. Not only are there abundant short termers but there is also a pretty large TIMO group (which is an AIM short-term group that comes out for two years and often times the group members end up staying permenantely in the people group they came to). But Sudan is not an easy country to minister in, so there really aren't too many long term missionaries. However, I was surprised by how many Germans were serving with AIM, so I scraped alittle rust off of by German speaking!

Although it was nice to have food, fun, and fellowship, Torit is over run by flies and mosquitos and is hotter than Ikotos so after all is said and done, I am happy I am living in Ikotos! (Literally, the flies were like one of the Ten Plagues!) The rest of the month I am just sitting tight until school starts again in May.

Prayer Requests
1. Pray for the "canceled census" as it resumed this week and workers are traveling to various villages to count the people. Pray that the late census time will not push back the start of school too much.
2. Pray for Jordan and Andrea Scotland who are long-term missionaries in Ikotos, but are traveling back to Canada this week for the birth of their second baby.
3. Pray for Meghan and I as we will be the only two ''Khawajas" left in Ikotos.
4. Pray for me as I am taking the initiative to continue building on some relationships through all the time I have now to visit people since school is not in session.