On the Other Side of the World

Friday, November 03, 2006

My Final Week in Sudan

It's crazy to think that one week from today I will back in Nairobi, Kenya and preparing to leave for America. Today is my final day here in Wau, and we will be continually packing things up, working on the landcruisers, and getting ready to leave out at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. If you read this in time, please be praying for our traveling tomorrow and over the next few days as I move my workers from here in Wau to Thiet Church, which is northeast of Tonj. This week we finished with our final church for this area, and in record time. The fact that we finished three days a head of schedule was definitely a blessing from God that I did not see coming. That finished out the fourth church that I have worked with since being sent here to make blocks. We will begin the blocks at Thiet Church next week, and then I will turn things over and leave for home. It has been a wonderful time and a blessing to work here these past few months, but I will write more about that at the end of next week. Thanks again for ready and keeping up with me, and I'll be back home soon!

Thanks,
Cliff

Friday, October 20, 2006

Working in Wau

Again, I am sorry that I have not up-dated my blog over the past few weeks. I have been really busy lately with the work here and haven’t had time to sit down and write out what has been happening. Since I wrote last I have moved our operations from the Tonj area to a city west of Tonj called Wau. You can actually find Wau on most maps of Sudan if you would like to look it up. It’s getting further west and is actually about a hundred miles or so southeast of Darfur. We left Tonj two weeks ago loaded down with water tanks, block presses, tools, and men. The road was extremely bad and it took us fifteen hours to go the equivalent of about forty to fifty miles. Eight hours out of that fifteen was spent stuck in giant mud holes, digging out our tractor and vehicles. When a four wheel drive tractor gets stuck in mud, you know it’s a bad road. It was not a good day but God blessed us and we reached Wau after night fall. Our work there has gone well and we will be finishing up with the blocks of our first church, called Khourmadir Church, tomorrow. Preliminary work has already begun at our next church; Majack Church, and we will begin blocks there on this coming Monday morning. So our work in Wau is moving along well and quickly. We’ve got our system down pretty well now so it is making things move a lot quicker. Since this past Monday I have actually come back to Tonj for the week to buy more cement for our work in Wau and to organize our next church so that we can move strait from Majack Church in Wau to there. I met yesterday with the congregation at Thiet Church and took the first eighty bags of cement to the store room there, along with some other tools. It is my hopes that over the next week and a half they will begin their preliminary work as well, allowing me to move my guys all the way from Wau to there. Thiet Church is actually North of Tonj so we will have to drive all the way back to Tonj from Wau and then go strait north two more hours to Thiet. That’s my plan at least so we will see if things go accordingly. I only have three weeks left here in Sudan, before I have to go back to America so it is my hope that as I leave I will have completed the blocks at four churches and will see the blocks being made at the fifth. That would be really great and means that the work here is actually a month ahead of schedule from where I thought we would be when I first arrived here in August. So that is where we’re at right now with the work. I will be going back to Wau with my cement on Sunday morning early, so please be praying for our travel along that road, as it is still extremely dangerous and rough.

There are a few other things I guess I could mention as well. In Wau I’m living in a canvas tent, like the kind that the military uses in the field. It’s small but get’s the job done. I’m eating all local foods now and last Sunday was the first time that I ate cow intestines and this other dish that was green and had the consistency of snot. We killed another green momba snake at the Khourmadir work site and I saw a big Cobra in the middle of the road this past Monday on my way from Wau to Tonj, as well as a family of Baboons crossing the road. I was sick all last week with some kind of intestinal bug and then also a sinus cold as the weather here is changing and getting much hotter. In Wau there are actually a lot of mosques and arabs that live there, so it is a different feel than anywhere I’ve been before. As for prayer requests if you could continue to pray for travels, health, and that work will continue to go smoothly. Those are the main ones right now. Well, I guess I will end here and I plan to write once or twice more before I am back in the U.S. My time here is nearing an end and the days are flying by. It’s been a great experience to this point and I hope to finish strong. Thanks again for reading my blog and keeping up with me and for the prayers that get me through all of the hard times and situations here in South Sudan.

Cliff

Monday, September 25, 2006

Back From My R&R

I am sorry that I have not been able to write in such a long time, but things have been busy the past few weeks. Today is Monday and I just returned on Saturday from a two week R&R that we get after being in the field for eight to ten weeks at a time. It was nice to take a break and to relax. The rest was much needed as I was definitely starting to get sick more often and frustrated with people more easily. Over the course of my break I was able to go to a game park in the Masai Mara, in Southwestern Kenya. I was there for two days and then I went to Zanzibar, Tanzania for an additional week and two days. The game park was great and I was able to see every animal there except for a Cheetah. I guess that will give me a good excuse to go back again some day. My time in Zanzibar was a very interesting one. I spent the first two days there with a fellow co-worker named Matt Nowery, who had already been there for a week when I arrived. After those first few days he headed back to Sudan and I stayed on in Zanzibar. The next day, however, I found out that my Visa Debit card had expired a month earlier while I was in Sudan. Then I also found out that all the places in the north of Zanzibar where I was staying stopped using credit cards the week prior because of a discrepancy with a bank in Kenya. So there I was, in Zanzibar not even knowing if I would have enough money to make it the next week I had to stay there. I had previously purchased my air ticket out before I found out about my credit cards. I had to budget my money out, first for my accommodations, then for my ride back to the airport and the exit fee to leave the country. Then I determined how much money I could eat on every day. Over the course of the next week I could not stay in the nicer places that I had hoped to, or eat as much as I would have liked. At first it felt like that this was going to be the worst vacation ever, but God had a different plan.

Instead, it became a sort of adventure. I found out that the cheap place I was staying actually had a kind of breakfast in the morning that consisted of an egg and some bread. So that was a blessing and allowed me to skip lunch every day and make it to a cheap dinner some place. I met a whole bunch of different people from about ten different countries around the world. I hung with people from Germany, Norway, England, France, Denmark, Canada, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, Iceland, America, Australia, Tanzania, Italy, and Japan. During the day I was able to meet a lot more local people than I thought I would and ended up playing an African version of checkers almost every day with these guys working at a construction site along the beach. I took things that I had in my bag and that some of my new friends gave me with when they left, such as: used suntan lotions, an old flashlight, used jam, old shorts, etc, and used them to barter with local people for necklaces and other souvenirs. Let’s just say that I got really good at bartering and meeting people and that I got some cool things that actually only cost me a pair of old socks and two or three dollars… thanks to all my friends who left their old things with me. I did get to go snorkeling for the first ever while I was there, which was a really fun time. There are many more stories such as these and this definitely wasn’t the vacation that I had in mind. In some ways it was better. It was the first that I had ever thought to myself, “do I actually have enough money to make it home?” So I prayed a whole lot and made it back to Nairobi with the equivalent of around three dollars in my pocket. God really did take care of me on that trip and still allowed me to meet some great people and to have a wonderful experience.

So now I am back in Tonj and working hard. I really did hit the ground running on Saturday and have worked two full days since. Things didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped while I was gone but they also didn’t come to a complete stop and blow up. So that was good. I have roughly six and a half weeks left worth of work while I am here in Sudan and I am looking forward to getting a lot of work done and having a good experience the rest of the time that I am here. I will miss my workers and the people here in Sudan when I leave but it will be really nice to be back in the states and to see everyone again. Well, I will leave off here and will be able to write on my blog more frequently from now on as things happen. I have made a new photo album in my Yahoo pictures site just for my R&R. I was about to put around 45 pictures on there from the game park and from Zanzibar if you would like to check them out. Thanks again for taking the time to read my entries and for keeping up with me while I am here in Sudan. Just keep on praying for our work with the churches, for our health, and the rains to stop so that we can safely get to the churches that we need to work on within the next month. Thanks for all your prayers and support!!

Cliff

Monday, August 28, 2006

Working in Tonj

I’m sorry that it’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to write on the blog. Things have been extremely busy here in Tonj since I’ve arrived and yesterday (Sunday), was the first day that I have had off in three weeks. That’s just because the last two Sundays I have had to work in order to meet some pastors and to get supplies and materials here. Since the business men I am mainly working with are Arabs, their days off are on Fridays and it has happened that my materials and supplies have come in on Sundays via airplane from Khartoum. However, I do not think that I will have to be working on too more Sundays while I’m here because after this week my systems should be in place and running themselves for the most part. At least well enough to where I will not have to work seven days a week. Six is enough for me. Working in the real world is quit different from going to school, which has been my life for the past seventeen years or so. I have two main employees of my own here in Tonj, in addition to the large number of church volunteers and pastors that I have to feed every day when they work and manage our work progresses. Some great news for the end of this last week was that I finally got both of our Landcruisers fully repaired, as they both were in bad shape when I arrived here. Both had some damage on them, had never been regularly maintained, and neither of their winches worked at all. Times have been difficult over the past few weeks but there have definitely been more positive things happens occur than negative. There have always been many instances where situations worked out for the good and it was clearly the handling of God that allowed them to workout. We’re almost finished making the blocks for the first of the four churches that I am working with here. The name of that church is Mapel Church. Over the course of the next several months I am here, we will be working to complete all of the concrete blocks for the four churches in this area that are ready for their blocks to be made. Some are as far away as four hours driving and some are much closer. So please be praying for things to continue to work out logistically here as well as for traveling safety as the roads are only getting worse and worse with each rain that we have. It’s becoming very difficult at times to move supplies and ourselves around to these churches. Also, please pray for health as I have been sick now a few times since I’ve been here and have required some I.V.’s and antibiotics. The good news is that I have not had Malaria yet, or something worse. God is doing a great work here in Southern Sudan so please keep praying for our operations here, our workers, and the Church which has undergone a tremendous amount of persecution over the years. I’ll write again on here as soon as I can and I believe that I will be able to update my pictures in about two weeks, so you can continue to see what it looks like here in Sudan. Thanks again for all your prayers and support!!

Sincerely,
Cliff

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Moving To Tonj

Things here in Yei, South Sudan have been really busy these past few weeks and we’ve gotten a lot done during this time. We are about to finish up one church that’s called Lazira Church here in town. Two weeks ago we began one church in the village of Mongo and this next week we are going to start on another church in the village of Longemere. That church will actually be built up on a giant rock next to a small mountain and will look really great once it’s finished. I, however, will be leaving Yei this coming Tuesday headed to a village called Tonj. Tonj is a very long distance away from Yei, located Northwest from here. It’s actually just southeast of a larger town called Wau. You can actually locate Wau on most maps but not Tonj. Wau and Tonj are not too far south of Southern Darfur as you are looking at a map. There are two churches in Tonj and two in Wau that have collected all of their natural resources and are ready for us to start making the blocks that will be used to build their churches. Once I am there, which should be some time in the middle of next week, I will be on my own and running the operations there and in the area. I'll be managing our men there making blocks at each church site, as well as stock pilling construction materials such as cement, rebar, lumber, and steel in preparation for construction on these churches. I'll be doing a lot of driving and logistics between Wau and Tonj and this will definitely be a different experience than I have had thus far. The area I will be in has a completely different kind of tribal people than here and is more heavily influenced by the arabic north. The people who are there are known as the Dinka and are known to be a little more hostile than the ones here. As well as a little bit less dressed, so I am told. It's hotter there and conditions are a little worse due to a lack of water in the area. I will working mainly with these four churches through September but soon there after I will be meeting with and starting new churches within the "area" (meaning within two or three days drive from Tonj), in order to get them started collecting sand and stones for building. Right now we have four churches going there but have been told we can expect to do up to fifty before we are finished in the area. I'll be flying up on this coming Wednesday after we drive back up to Lui to catch the DC-3 cargo plane. Our block makers will be coming with our new tractor and trailer at the beginning of this week but won't get there until one or two weeks from now. The roads between Yei and Tonj are really bad right now due to all the rain and we have had recently. We heard that there are forty trucks stuck on the road between there and here at this time. That's why I will be flying and our tractor and block makers will take a little while getting there. Please be praying for my safety traveling, the safety of our workers, cooperation with the local church their in Tonj and with the local people, health, my transition into my new position in Tonj, and that relationships will be built while I am there. I know I will have more specific prayer requests in the future, but these will be good for now. Also, please take some time and look at my new pictures that I have been able to post in my Sudan folder under My Pictures to right of this blog. I have several hundred pictures by now but the few that I have posted in there are some good ones that I've been able to take lately. Once I am in Tonj I will have even more limited access to communications than I do now, so I will be relying on Kristine and my family to continue to up-date my blog, so check back here from week to week in order to catch up on what's been happening here in South Sudan. Thank you all for your prayers and support and for taking the time to keep up with me and reading my blog. I will be able to post some more pictures on here around the middle of September when I get a short break back to Kenya. God is good and He's been taking good care of me here in Sudan.

Thanks Again and God Bless!
Cliff