Updates

Thank you again for all your prayers and encouragement. This is now an update of our current situation here in Goli after the bush fire two weeks ago.

Things are settling back into normal life/routine again and I am back to my 6 classes a day schedule. The women's department closed this week and everybody breathed a sigh of relief, though this might sound horrible. However, the women and children were the biggest problem after the fire, since a lot of the things burnt and it was difficult to actually finish their term, which finishes earlier than the men's term. The men seem to pick up and fall back into the normal routine and I hope this is continuing until the end of March.

I was just looking at my blog again and read the newsletter I wrote in the middle of January, in which I quoted a piece of Scripture I felt God had given me for this coming year in Sudan. At that time I didn't really know what it meant, but reading it again now (I forgot about it actually), completely struck me in a different way:

"By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was waiting for the city with permanent foundations, whose architect and builder is God."

I guess the bit about "tents" and "God is building his permanent city" really struck me the most - since all the mud huts burnt down, we are now working to finish all the permanent buildings hopefully soon. But there is something even more significant in there, which is that God is the architect and that things are under his control. I think it just encourages me to know that despite the fact that I might not understand everything right now and face trials in my "tents", God knows and he controls.

Right now, most of us are not sleeping in tents - though about 6 members of staff are - but are still sleeping in mass accommodation in the class rooms, which will still be the case until the end of March. Please pray for strength and grace for each other to bear a situation with little privacy, which is taxing for everybody. The good side is that we really get to know each other though.

Please pray for my heavy teaching schedule that I will find my way into preparing for classes and becoming a good teacher. Since the women have left now, I am only with the men, which also bears its challenges since I am a single 23-year-old woman.

Thanks again for your support, financially as well as prayerfully. Let me say a special thanks to the students and staff at RTC, who gave a spontaneous offering, so that I can replace some of the things I lost during the fire. This was really unexpected and is very appreciated!