Nuba Mountains

Dear friends

Thank you for all your prayers for the time in Nairobi and for your continuous support. I have already been back in Sudan now for one week and am doing really well here. The time in Nairobi was fruitful in a lot of ways. My job description was changed, about which I am quite glad. Now I am 40 % with the church empowerment project, with which I will be organising and teaching TEE courses amongst other things. 60 % of my time is still devoted to the Sudan Literature Centre, where I work on TEE materials right now. The job description is still a little bit open and will have to be changed again, but for now I am set with the 60/40 split.

I also got a lot of rest when I was in Nairobi, which I desperately needed. I didn’t realise how exhausted I was until I got to Nairobi – maybe that was to be expected after bushfire, contract issues moving around and everything else… But I feel that God blessed me lots and that I could really re-charged my batteries. During the second week in Nairobi I was already looking forward to going back to Sudan and I praise God for that. The first week back was really good and I settled in well at Across. One major answer to prayer also occurred, which is that I got to know a lot more people – a bunch of girls staying at the compound next to the one I am living on. I also get to know the Across staff a little better, which is nice.

As part of the TEE programme, I will fly to Kauda, Nuba Mountains (central Sudan) on the 7th of June with Samaritan’s Purse (SP), a Christian NGO. I am flying to Loki in northern Kenya tomorrow (Tuesday) on a UN plane with the World Food Programme and fly up to Kauda from Loki on Thursday. The next plane coming back from Kauda will only be on the 28th of June which SP also booked me on. So, I’ll actually have my birthday up in Nuba Mountains :-). The logistics are very difficult here so please keep praying for this trip.

My plans for Nuba are to connect with the Sudanese Church of Christ amongst other churches and with two women called Marissa and Tabitha, who do church outreach – I’d like to gather information on what the church needs and also what they already have. I have also been in touch with a guy called Ryan who works for Samaritan’s Purse in Kauda, who already does a lot of church outreach there. Apart from the semi-official info that I’ll gather for Across’s TEE programmes, I am personally interested in Nuba and to maybe one day work there, so I look forward to “testing the waters.”

Nuba will be around 45­C right now and they have lots of snakes/scorpions up there – so please pray for safety and good endurance of the heat. This will also be my first time “in the bush” as I’ll stay at different houses in the villages every day and I am a little worried that my cross-cultural awareness and readiness will let me down – I think it will be a huge learning curve for me. Please pray that I can really be flexible and open to whatever lies ahead over the next few weeks.