Update on My Return Home

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It was over a month ago that I wrote asking you to please be in prayer with me, for my dad and family, as I'd just learned that he'd been diagnosed with advanced bone cancer…At the time, I wasn't even sure I'd arrived home in time to see him alive…

Thanks to all of your prayers, I arrived safely in Oakland, California in early November, and will most likely be here until mid-January, 2009. I had been planning to be in Oakland this Christmas anyhow, from Dec. 22nd - Jan. 15th, so that I could be here to celebrate mom's 80th birthday on January 12th. ' Dad's illness just brought me back a little earlier…

Thanks to all of your prayers, dad is making a valiant and most grace-full fight for his life. So far, he's had two "successful" operations to repair his left shoulder and right hip bones that had fractured because they'd become so fragile… And just this past week, he's begun radiation therapy, to last three weeks, till around the 7th of January. His has a large tumor on his spine, and on his hip and shoulder and in his skull…

YET, he keeps insisting he "feels" no cancer in him, and he "feels" no death in himself! His attitude is miraculously upbeat with everyone he meets! It is as if he's becoming a "new man" right before our eyes! Surely, this could only be so because of the work of the Holy Spirit of our Lord Jesus in his heart, amen!

My mom has also not been well (congestive heart failure), and for awhile when dad's condition had seemed to deteriorate, hers had also taken a turn for the worse; indeed, she told us clearly that if he died, she did not want to live, and that she's never wanted to be the one to have bury him…

I cannot thank you sufficiently for praying for us…I know it is because of your prayers that both mom and dad are struggling to live and be here on this side of the river of life, for just little while longer…My prayer requests at this time are as follows:

• A truly lovingly gracious heart towards my parents and family…
• For me to be a true blessing (in words and in deeds, equally) to my sisters as they most stand in need of salvation and in other ways in their troubled lives…
• For the surpassing peace of our dear Lord Jesus to saturate my parent's hearts at this time…
• For dad to have a healing/positive response to the radiation therapy that has begun…
• For all to go smoothly and affordably with the funeral/cemetery arrangements we are seeking to put in place for both mom and dad…
• For my sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews to be at peace and rise to the occasion gracefully, whatever the occasion may be, and may they come wholly to Christ during this time…
• For me, much energy and strength and deeply abounding health to keep up this amazing pace physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually…
• And for wisdom and clear leading regarding my travel plans to return to Nairobi/Southern Sudan in January…

Thank you all so very much for your loving support at this time…

May you each enjoy the deep joy of Immanuel this Christmas, and I pray much more of His presence with you now, and in the coming New Year 2009, amen.

In the Great Love of our Lord Jesus, Ingrid

The Difficulties of This Work

On the left is a picture of the bathroom we use in Ler. It's separate from the tukul hut where I live. And here's a picture of the inside of the bathroom . . .



Today I'll answer another question I'm often asked . . .

What are the difficulties involved in your work?

Ah, where do I begin? Please don't think I'm getting negative, but I want to give you a realistic picture of what's it's like to work here.

I think the most pressing difficulty is to do this work without a "community;" often, we are solo in the field, or the only non-native person among the natives, and this can become wholly taxing! We need to go out in two's at least (very good Biblical example for this, I dare say; and even the UN sends its people out in twos), but Across does not yet have the human-power to do this, so… it seems that too many of us get wearied quickly, complain a lot, get negative without realizing that is what we've become, and become sick in mind, body and spirit…I pray against this for myself, and trust the Holy Spirit to keep looming larger and larger with/in my daily living/activities in the field.

We do have a half hour "devotions" every morning (on most of the bases) on the bases, where all the local and seconded staff come together, sing praise/worship songs in either English, the mother-tongue of the people or else in Arabic, read the scripture with some exposition, and we pray for whatever needs are raised; this pretty much serves as the means of "community," mostly, and apparently is working, for even when people leave and go else where, what they always say they miss are these devotions; so far, they have not meant a whole lot to me, except for when the people sing in their mother-tongue or when they sing in English, but the patterns and rhythms are in their own language. Then, I usually experience (yes, experience because the Spirit of the Lord Jesus can be experienced, the same way we experience love/loving each other in any/all of our love relationships as human beings) the presence of the Lord and the oneness of the Body of Christ.

Practically, everything u can imagine is a "difficulty:" the lack of maturity/maturing Believers; the lack of trained pastors & evangelists; the lack of people to train and help equip them; the lack of training places for this to be done; the water we drink; the water we bathe in; the bed we sleep on; the hut/house we sleep in; the roof over our heads; the lack of permanent structures to live in; the toilet we use; the food we eat; where & how the food is cooked: the people who cook (lots of times, they're sick!), the flies; the mosquitoes; the snakes; the scorpions; the roads and lack thereof that we walk/travel on; the too much sun/heat at times.

I'm not finished yet! There's also the lack of electricity or solar power; the cost of everything always so high; the place of worship; the cultural and lack of cultural exchanges; the flagrant, destructive (satanic!) tribalism, even in the Church; the flagrant, oppressive devaluation of women and their overburdening work! The physical and verbal abuse of women; the sometimes disregard for children and animals; the way even the smallest child, girl child especially, is expected to begin working from very early in life; the paternalistic, still overly colonial attitudes of "Christians" we work with; always this inability to see ourselves as are in relationship to others as well as to ourselves; the lack of funds and donors to support or help us to help the people with basic, but dire needs, like healthy drinking water that is near to where they live, and so and so on…

Certainly in the midst of all these difficulties I have to remember to "Rejoice in the Lord always." The circumstances often don't give reason to rejoice, but I can always rejoice in the Lord who loves and cares for me. Please keep me in your prayers!

That's it for this post. What you you think about what I just shared? Leave your comment by clicking the link labeled 'comments' below.

It's Picture Time!

Greetings from Sudan! I thought you might be interested in getting a glimpse of the houses or buildings I encounter in Sudan. The dwelling huts are called tukuls. On the left is my first tukul. This tukul is modern in that the walls are made of block and it has a metal roof.

To the right is a semi modern tukul with a traditional thatched roof. The people use whatever is available to build their huts. Most often the walls are made of sticks and sometimes plastered with mud. The floors are most often dirt, but modern tukuls have concrete floors.

Below is our deluxe bath/toilet facility:) Notice the stick walls.

Here's a picture of Irene, a dear Kenyan sister with whom I shared the tukul. She works from SLC. You also can see me and Jolly, the Ufandan English tutor at the Yei Teacher Training Center. (YTTC)


Our major base of operations in Sudan is the village at Yei. Below is the teacher training center classroom building. You can also see the YTTC staff offices. Pretty fancy by local standards, heh?




Finally, below is a view of the Yei River that runs by the village.

That will be it for this post. You can leave your comments or questions by clicking the link labeled 'comments' at the end of this post.