Sudan 2010 - Day 2 - Orientation... Holy Cow!

Sunday Morning began with CMA’s (Christian Mission Aid) orientation for our afternoon flight into Sudan. After a brief description of their work in Africa… they got down to the nitty gritty issues of working among some of the Sudanese tribal people… Don't touch the cows, women or politics.

First, cows are almost sacred, a sign of wealth (cost about $350.00 US) and status in their tribal world… so OK- not that we were tempted to go cow tipping or start a round up, got it- don’t mess with the cows. Second, be careful around the women as well… be careful touching them too… hand-shakes and greetings OK but watch anything that might be misinterpreted as an inappropriate advance which in times past would provoke revenge. Watch the small gifts of appreciation (which we brought many to thank them for their help) it could be construed as a down-payment on another wife… more than one is allowed here. The usual dowry is more cows which are expensive (see above). OK… got it… Cows and women keep a healthy distance. Finally, don’t go there on Politics… seems it’s elections season here with some controversial candidates and huge referendum vote coming soon. They tend to get passionate about their politics here (see last civil war on Wikipedia for info) so OK avoid conversations on the health care debate, tea parties or the unrest in Mideast (standard answer for all Q’s political- Hmmm- how about that! ).

Finally, we were briefed on water quality in the village, mostly good, they have us covered but showed us a nasty worm that was prevalent in the area in recent days. You swallow the eggs in the water, they loge in your muscle tissue and grow to 3 feet long. They come out your ankle or arm and you have to slowly extract the worm by rolling it up on a stick by ½ inch at a time. If it breaks? you have to get it removed by a painful ugly operation. OK then… avoid the cows, women, politics and 3 foot muscle worms, we are ready. Oh yeah… share Jesus – that we can do and are excited to do.

One last thing, we headed to airport with Cows and worms on our minds and boarded our flight to Loki, a small town in south central Sudan, our staging airport where were to fly in a small 12-seater plane to the village. Mid way to Sudan and just over the equator comes the announcement “We have a slight technical problem and will be returning the Nairobi!” What does slight mean? Visions of every airplane movie we have ever seen come to mind… the jokes start flowing among us to ease the tension. Did you make the life insurance payment? Wow, My wife will finally be rich. We had an uneventful flight back but as we landed- it sure took an extra long time to stop the plane, and as we sped down the runway we passed 4 emergency fire trucks with lights flashing waiting for us. Nah… we were fine and they never did tell us what was wrong. We did get a free hotel stay out of the airline and a promise to try again tomorrow morning! Now would be a good time to pray for Tom, Ted, Rick, Steve and Gary.

Sudan 2010 - Day 1

Our team of 5 eager Missionaries began their adventure at San Diego airport early Saturday morning at the Alaska Airlines check in area. The agent was looking up our reservations and made the discovery that all our flights had mysteriously been canceled… all the way to Sudan and back! We scrambled, prayed (woops- prayed 1st) and the agent was able to restore our tickets but we lost our seats… so we began what turned out to be 3 planes and 20 hours in the air – you guessed it… in the center of the rows. It was hard to be ungrateful since we did get seats at all, but “Lord…in the center of the row?”. We arrived in Nairobi, Kenya pretty worn, got in the longest visa line (always seems to work that way in traffic too- you know, when you change lanes) and we were greeted by Brett and Cathy Hoelzer’s big smiles… ahhh- home is where the family of God is.