Man plans and God laughs

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When Ellen, Karen and I made plans for this adventure, our only limit was that Karen could only be away from work for two weeks. So we divided up our time, planning to do classroom observations, teacher training and then follow up for one week in Harvesters at Terekeka and the following week at Harvesters in Yei. In early October we learned that the school in Yei was having exams this week, so we couldn't do any observations. Since I was kinda sorta the one in charge of the training phase, I panicked! What would we possibly do here in Yei for three days? So I frantically sent emails, numerous times, to the contacts that I had here and stressed, stressed, stressed! Then, lo and behold, Ellen, who was already in South Sudan, sent me an email and reminded me to let go and let God make the plans. Did He ever!

These past two days have been delightful! Fred Dearing, district supervisor of the Yei district of United Methodist Churches, and his wife, Libby, made arrangements for us to go out to Grace Home for Children, a home for vulnerable children (they don't like the word "orphan"). I had read about it in Fred's September newsletter and being there in person was awesome! Yesterday we took books and a few games donated by Harvesters (how ironic is that, but sharing what you have is typical of the South Sudanese culture, hmmm, and Christianity, too) and did some impromptu classes in the three R's. Grace Home just opened 2 months ago, too late for the children to attend school because the school year here starts in February and ends in December. Thus the children were eager to have someone sing, play, and work with them, and we were very glad to do so. They even greeted us with a sweet welcome song.

Today we we returned with a bit more structure to our plans and spent an hour doing math, reading and writing, as well as performing "I've Got a River of Life." Then a large team from Ginghamsburg UMC* arrived, including Elizabeth Heft, who helped me find a more suitable guest house last February, and acco paying them was Dr. Sharon, who received the dozens of pairs of eyeglasses I had collected. So while they sang and played with the children, we took a tour. The main kitchen, in a separate building as is the Sudanese custom, had two rocket ovens that could cook huge pots of food with a tiny bit of charcoal. They have a fruit and vegetable garden that even includes g-nuts (peanuts), an orchard with several varieties of fruit, solar power, and three bee hives (they are working to become self sustaining, and growing most of your own food, plus selling the surplus certainly helps. There are four houses in which up to six children and a "Mama" live, plus a home for the couple who are the administrators, a guard house (still considered a necessity in South Sudan), a bore hole, storage buildings, and a close by primary school. Libby Dearing had a vision of this home, and in less than three years it is a reality, with 20 children ranging in age from 2 1/2 through 13.

Tomorrow we will be going to see a training about finance, a site where they employ a program called "Farming God's Way," the old and new church and school at Ligitolo, and then to the UMCOR headquarters and Fred and Libby's home. Then we will fine tune the training we will present on Saturday. God must have really laughed at my "Woe is me, how will we fill our days?" He always has a plan for us, one far better than we could imagine.

*Ginghamsburg UMC is the home church of Michael Slaughter, whose books, such as "Christmas Is Not Your Birthday," are so inspiring.

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