Christmas in Toposaland

The most important part of today was this group that met under a big tree here in Paringa. A few of the believers from nearby villages led the singing and the discussion after hearing the story from God's Word (Luke 1-2).

 She's got her fancy safety pin/bead hair for Christmas...

 ...and the answer is YES, that is a bra on the top of her head. Fabulous!

Note the Western clothes on a lot of the guys. The Toposa were told many years ago (and not by us) that they need to have new clothes to wear to Mass on Christmas. Most have a long way to go before they will understand that God sent Jesus for the Toposa just as they are, and He cares about their hearts, not their clothes.

Before we did the main celebration, we had a US Christmas at the Lewis house. We started cooking pancakes at 6am so that the boys could come out of their room at 6:30. They didn't want to sleep in, weird....

My gifts were a necklace, ornaments, and notebook from Uganda, a bottle of gold Heinz ketchup, dried fruit and a pumpkin from Carrie's garden.

Christmas Eve Part 2

Since there are three "units" (me, Alyssa and the Lewises) that are now one Toposa Team family, we tried to incorporate a Christmas tradition that each one of us did in the US. My family's tradition is pizza on Christmas Eve and Alyssa's family does a birthday cake for Jesus so we had both last night!

I may have had 4 pieces. Oops...

There are 7 different colors of sprinkles for the birthday cake and each color represents an attribute of Jesus (green for creator, yellow for light of the world, etc). We would read about the attribute, read a Bible verse that describes it, and then each person would get to sprinkle their color on the cake. My color was brown: Jesus is the servant of all.

I believe I've mentioned before that the Lewises' house gets extremely hot when you add the ovens cooking to the Sudanese heat. Don't judge the sweat.

Missing a few letters, but you get the point!

Christmas Eve Part 1

These activities really have nothing to do with Christmas, but since they happened today (Christmas Eve) I am considering them part of the festivities. Benton, Davis and Alyssa made one of those plaster garden decoration pieces where you mix the plaster and water together, pour it in a mold, and then put decorative beads and stones on it.

Davis is 9 and Benton just turned 12 on Thursday. They are awesome. Who needs pest control when you have two capable Toposa boys who love to kill the rats and bats that live in your shower area?

 The boys did a great job!

Here comes Sgt. Walker, age 4

He was sneaking around the corner to scare "Alytha"

Got her!

Poor Davis was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

God isn't Gandalf and Jesus didn't surf

You know how in the western church, especially in the US, there seems to be an occasional push to remind ourselves that God isn’t a prayer vending machine who resembles Gandalf, and how Jesus isn’t a white guy with long flowing surfer hair but actually was born in the Middle East? Okay, so take that sense of redefinition and multiply it by as many times as you can. That’s what’s happening out here. 

I’m reading the Bible through chronologically and it’s been a really helpful way to see how the Bible is ONE story, not a bunch of stories that God thought were important enough to group together. The reading plan I’m doing is a one-year plan. Last week I finished Genesis (with some chapters from Psalms and John 1 on a few days), currently I am reading Job, then in January I'll move to Exodus and so on. 

South Sudan is so, so, so underdeveloped. In fact, minus our compound with its solar panels and two vehicles, the area where we are is literally about as developed as Old Testament times. It’s hard to imagine, especially with all of the globalization and development in other parts of the "developing world", that some places still live out all the stereotypes in a National Geographic documentary. I’ve met less than five Toposa adults who can read. Some of the kids can read a little bit because they are in primary school. Everything we do is oral, so I have to read Bible stories a little bit differently when I’m preparing for a story group. This week we’ve been telling Luke 2 in preparation for Christmas. The emphases are in MUCH different places than what I’m used to. We’ve been talking about how Jesus was born on the earth just like a Toposa. In the US I learned how shocking the birth circumstances were: Jesus was born in a barn with the animals. There wasn’t even room inside anyone’s home or hotel and how dare the earth receive its king like that? Well, the Toposa know all about being born outside among the bulls and goats because that’s how all the women give birth. There isn’t a concept of what an “inn” is out here so of course visitors to villages just sleep on the ground with everyone else. The new perception of God from Luke 2 is that He came not in a shocking way but in a very ordinary way to show that from the very beginning He made all the effort to show that He is really Emmanuel…God WITH us. The Christmas story is just as applicable in Toposaland as it is in Dallas or Lubbock. I mean, duh I already knew that in my head, but now I’m really experiencing it. Two different things.

One really neat thing that is also extremely annoying to my type-A Western personality is that the really good conversations about God’s Word seem to happen when I don’t plan them. It’s frustrating to go to all of the trouble to continually remind people “hey, we’ll be coming back every Wednesday afternoon to listen to a story from God’s Word,” or “all of the women are invited to come to our compound tomorrow at 3 to sing and talk about a story from God’s Word,” and everyone says they will be there or they will come, and then like two people (or no people) show up. Then we could just walk into a village completely unannounced and there will be like 20 people that come over to sit and listen and all of them ask good questions about the story. God’s schedule is soooo not my schedule. That’s okay, just not a concept that I easily embrace. As I’m learning more and more, I am so NOT in control of anything out here.

Christmas Cards!

South Sudan's Next Top Model

Ngakidamdams are Toposa celebrations, and most of the time they make absolutely no sense to our team. The things that seem to be fairly consistent are special clothes, whistle blowing, and a lot of jumping up and down in a big circle. Sometimes other things are thrown into the mix, like gunshots, killing a bull, or my personal favorite, switching up the time and doing it in the middle of the night at max volume. I love staying awake all night to gunshots and singing! Not.
Christmas is an especially popular time of the year for ngakidamdams. There will be a big one on Christmas day, plus apparently they like to practice because there have been large ones the last two days. On Thursday night some of the girls who were returning to their villages post-celebration stopped by our gate to show off their moves. Half hilarious, half totally ridiculous.

 Normally the girls wear cloth skirts and a wrap and don't all look the same, but because they had been at a ngakidamdam they were wearing their party outfits.

 You know you're jealous you can't pull off this much attitude in one outfit.

 The short "skirts" are made from shells that are strung together, and these are for really special occasions. We think Christmas was the reason for these skirts, but maybe there was a totally different reason they were celebrating that day. The long green skirt in the middle is the normal ngakidamdam skirt. It's made from goat skin and has yellow and green beads stitched into it.

I'm loving the ear-to-nose ring. I think it really completes the look.

It's Beginning To Look A Tiny Bit Like Christmas

It is so hard for me to remember that Christmas is almost here! Something about the heat and the lack of Christmas parties/decorations/music makes it seem like Christmas doesn't really exist. But Christmas DOES exists and it's not about the weather or Santa or gifts or any of that in the first place.

However.

South Sudan DOES need a liiiiittle bit of Christmas decoration and who doesn't love a good batch of Christmas cookies?!?

Welcome to Christmas, Team Toposa style.

 Our Christmas tree is a thorn branch from a tree limb on our compound. Alyssa's mom had the awesome idea to send us strips of paper, staples and a stapler so that we could make a "thankful chain" for Thanksgiving. On each slip of paper we wrote something we were thankful for. We thought it would make a perfect garland for our tree!

 We hung parts of the chain on our door and along the top of our kitchen area.

 Carrie, Benton, and I made Christmas cookies yesterday. The oven made the inside of their house approximately 1 million degrees.

 Make that 2 million degrees.

 This is Carrie's best friend's baby, Lotikitoi. Lotikitoi is 10 months old and some of his favorite things to do are dance to music, pee on the floor, and eat candy-cane shaped Christmas cookies.

Walker "helped" by cleaning the icing off of the utensils.

A Week (mostly) In Bed, and the Good News

I got strep throat for the first time ever, and I'm blaming Davis. He had it in Uganda, and he should've left it there. This totally kicked my butt and I was in bed starting right after breakfast on Tuesday until Friday. Yesterday was the first day I felt like a human being again and today all that's left of The Plague is a little bit of a cough. Thank you, antibiotics!

Because I was asleep and/or heavily medicated for 4 days I feel like the week flew by. It's already Sunday again! Last week we were in Kop on Sunday night. A big group of us had finished singing and were sitting on the ground listening to a Toposa man named Joseph tell the story of the rich young ruler when all of the sudden a very drunk man runs up to the group and HIGH KICKS his way into the middle. HA! He kept falling down so he would high kick, then lay on the ground until some of the people pushed him out of the circle. This happened 3 or 4 times. High kick, fall down. High kick, fall down. Eventually his friends carried him away and we went back to listening to the Bible story.

This morning we met under a mango tree and listened to the story of Luke 1 where the angel Gabriel appears to Zachariah and also to Mary. We will listen to and discuss Luke 2 in our groups next week in preparation for Christmas. As people in the US are trying to remember the "reason for the season" there are millions of people in other parts of the world who have never even learned about the Reason in the first place! As you are reading/hearing the Christmas story, pray for the Toposa as they hear about "the Good News of great joy which is for all people!"

Justin Beiber Gets A Haircut

So I don't have any biological brothers, but the Lewis boys are filling in those roles quite nicely. Benton hates it when I tell him he looks like Justin Beiber so I try to do so as much as possible. Carrie's House of Hair was open on their back porch this evening so I took advantage of this opportunity. Justin Benton had a mohawk for about 30 seconds mid-haircut. HA! I loved it.

 This is his "before" picture.

 Carrie should've just stopped at this point and let him sport the crazy mohawk for a day or two, just to freak the Toposa out a little.

 Davis was the least dramatic out of the three.

 Umm hi, this is the kind of picture that wins in the "Cutest 4 Year Old of 2011" category. Walker is a mess but he makes up for it by being cute and hilarious. We have five puppies right now and they are each Walker's best friend.

 He does not like haircuts.

We told him to pretend he was a soldier so that he could be still while Carrie did the parts around his ears.

Jacob's Story, Part 2

Thursday: Shannon, Carrie and I went to Lomayen to see what had been happening. There were about 80 people (plus 30-40 kids) gathered while Shannon and Jacob taught about what it means to pray. The Toposa church learned that prayer is talking to God like they talk to their friends. It is from the heart, not something that is memorized. They learned that they can thank Nakuj (God) for things that He has done, things that He has created, and things He has given them. They learned that when someone is sick or their sorghum crops are suffering, they ask Nakuj to heal and to help them instead of going to the witch doctor. A couple of men and one woman stood up in front of everyone to practice talking to Nakuj from their heart.

We listened to the first chapter of Acts on the proclaimer, and Shannon and Jacob taught about how Christians are to come together to listen to God’s Word, pray, and help each other.

Friday: The whole family (Shannon, Carrie, Benton (11), Davis (9), Walker (4), me, and Alyssa!) went to spend the night in Lomayen. We got there around 6 so we had enough light to set up tents in Jacob’s father’s village and to set up a sheet and projector in a cleared area. White people tend to attract a lot of attention in the middle of Nowhere, South Sudan, so 7 white people plus a vehicle plus funny looking cloth houses plus a loudspeaker was a total freak show. In this case it worked to our advantage because by the time it was dark and we had sung a couple of Toposa songs together there were almost THREE HUNDRED people gathered to see the Jesus Film.

The Toposa notice VERY different things in the movie than I do. There was a lot of laughing when Jesus sends the demons from the man into the herd of pigs. They would all point out the camels whenever they were in the background of a scene, and they made fun of the Roman soldiers’ helmets. The Toposa don’t ride any animals (considered animal cruelty…hmm) so there were comments whenever anyone in the film would ride horses or donkeys.

This was the first time most of them had seen a video so even though I think they understood that it wasn’t real, a lot of the guys sitting in front of me scooted back a little bit when Satan came in the form of a snake to tempt Jesus in the desert.

There was a shooting star right about the part in the movie where Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey.

About halfway through the movie a guy plopped down about three feet away from me and sat the rest of the time with his AK-47 on his lap. This is normal, right?

After the film was over Jacob stood up and talked about it for a little while, and we sang a few more Toposa songs. By the time we were all in our tents it was around 10:45pm.

Hopefully you are now more aware of how you can pray for the Toposa! Ask God to encourage Jacob and the other new believers in Lomayen. Thank God for saving so many people in that area and ask Him to help these men and women understand what they hear on the proclaimer. Pray for Shannon, Carrie, Alyssa and I, that we could know how to best help these new believers and encourage Jacob. Shannon is going to help Jacob teach every Wednesday, and Carrie/Alyssa and I are trying to figure out how to do some sort of women’s Bible story group, too. Jacob speaks enough English that he can help translate when Shannon is teaching, but if we want to do a women’s group at the same time then we will need another person to help us tell the Bible stories.

Please keep praying that we can find a consistent person to help us with language! The group in Lomayen is a perfect example of why knowing the Toposa language is so important to our ministry here. Your prayers DO make a difference in South Sudan!

Jacob's Story, Part 1

This really isn’t Jacob’s story. This is God’s story of how He is using Jacob to tell the Toposa about the hope and salvation found only in Jesus.

Let’s back up: When the Lewises first got to South Sudan 2.5 years ago they had to wait for the land to be cleared for their house. This meant they had to live at a tented camp in Kapoeta, which is the closest town to us that you can find on Google Maps. It’s about 10 kilometers south of Paringa, the area we live in now. While they were living there their 3 boys would play with different kids in town, one of them being Jacob.

Fast forward: The Lewises moved out to Paringa. Davis and Benton became good friends with Peter, a Toposa boy their age. Peter left Paringa and went to Kapoeta to go to school there for a while. Shannon gave Peter a proclaimer (a solar-powered radio-type of thing that plays recordings of the New Testament in Turkana, a sister language to Toposa) to take with him so that he could continue to listen to Bible stories while he was away at school. Peter met Jacob at school and they would listen to the proclaimer together. There is a fairly decent church in Kapoeta so the boys would go there and hear more Bible teaching. Peter left that school and he (and the proclaimer) came back to go to school in Paringa several months ago. Jacob stayed in school in Kapoeta and continued to go to church and learned about who Jesus is. Somewhere in this timeframe he became a Christian.

3 weeks ago: Jacob had finished school and returned to his village. He lives in an area called Lomayen, which is a 30-45 minute drive from Paringa, depending on "road" conditions. Jacob remembered the Lewis family from when he played with their boys a couple of years ago and came to our compound to tell Shannon his story. He had come to talk to Shannon three or four times and kept asking Shannon to come to his village to share God’s Word with everyone. Right before the trip to Uganda Shannon agreed to go. There is a group of Toposa men that he disciples every week so he took several of those men with him out to Lomayen. When they arrived there were around 40 people gathered and listening to the Jacob as he told them how the message of Jesus changed his life and how God's word is true and important and they needed to listen. Each of Shannon's friends told a story from God's word, including Luke 10 and Romans 8 (none of them can read so they hear God's word and memorize it), and by the end of it there were over 120 people listening! Shannon explained a little more about what it means to be a follower of Jesus and around 80 people stood up and said that they wanted to follow Jesus, too. Shannon explained that no one can follow Jesus AND witchcraft, it's either one or the other and even after several people sat back down there were still 40 men and 20 women who kept standing and one by one cut all their witchcraft beads and necklaces off. Shannon then shared about baptism from Acts 2 and all of those people said they understood and wanted to be baptized. The guys who had done the Bible stories walked everyone to a big mud puddle near the village and baptized everyone. So there were 60 new followers of Jesus among the Toposa people! Shannon left a proclaimer with Jacob so that everyone could listen to God’s Word together.

Ngakidamdam

Ngakidamdams are giant celebrations, and apparently the Toposa have a lot to celebrate because these things happen a lot. This is one of the most confusing things about their culture because so far we haven't noticed many patterns or "rules" about what goes on at one of these things. I do know they involve karoting ("karot" is the Toposa word for jump) in a circle, whistle-blowing, gunshots, and they last for hours. The time of day is irrelevant. Ngakidamdams can happen at 2am or in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes it is one village, sometimes it is multiple villages, sometimes it is for a certain occasion and today it was for nyapeses, or unmarried girls. Except even this was confusing because there were plenty of married women, men, and boys there, too. Alyssa, Carrie and I went to just observe and it turned out to be a gold mine of weird Toposa things. Due to the Toposa clothing (or lack thereof), I'm not going to post as many pictures as I'd like to. You're welcome.

 Notice the green skirts of the girls on the other side of the circle. These are made out of goat skins and look green because of the yellow and green beads that the girls sew onto their skirts. These are their special ngakidamdam skirts and aren't worn every day. The smoke in the background is where they are cooking the bull that was slaughtered earlier in the day. And no, I did not eat any.

This little girl had bottle caps tied or sewn or somehow attached to her hair. What? Why? I haven't seen this on anyone else and I don't know what the deal was. Interesting fashion statement.

This video shows the karoting. Sometimes they will all karot, but since this ngakidamdam was especially for nyapeses, everyone stood in a huge circle and sang/clapped while some of the unmarried girls karoted in the middle. During certain songs they would invite others to karot, too. 

Black Friday

Let me just preface this post by saying that I'm currently listening to Bing Crosby's White Christmas album in my tukel in the middle of South Sudan, which is just weird.

Anyways.

The past two days have been filled with things that only happen in Africa. It was either the best or worst Thanksgiving I've ever had, and I'll let you decide which one you think it should be. Alyssa and I had plan A for Thursday, which was to fly from Nairobi to Lokichoggio, Kenya and then drive the 4 hours to where we live in South Sudan. This is what ended up happening:

-It's raining in Nairobi so we are told we can only take 15kgs of hand luggage to make it easier for the plane to take off. Alyssa and I had a total of 57kgs (re-stocked on some groceries in Nairobi) so we re-packed the essentials into one bag and left the rest to be brought to Loki by the airline on Saturday and we could pick it up then. Uh, we don't live in Loki so that won't work well. I think we looked a little desperate/pathetic so the luggage loader guy snuck ALL of our bags on the plane when the guy in charge wasn't looking.

-We get to Loki only to find out that it's been raining all day so the river is flowing...so we can't cross it. Remember, dirt roads and no bridges.

-Alyssa and I go to a place in Loki to eat our pretend Thanksgiving lunch. Our only option was African food buffet style. Sketchy. Some sort of "meat" stew, a green food that tasted just like mashed potatoes, some rice and this beans/hominy mixture that was suspiciously crunchy. The place had a TV so we watched some terrible '90s movie while we waited for the rain to stop.

-It didn't. On to plan B, which is spend the night in Loki at a tented camp. We got to stay in a private house, which was odd but spacious. Round two of Thanksgiving dinner was African food again. Alyssa and I decided that the closest we could get to pumpkin pie was to eat the rest of our package of peach-O's candy...because it's orange and that's the best we could manage.

-The rain stopped during the night and the river was low enough to drive through! We know a guy who drives a taxi in Loki so we had hired him to drive us to Kapoeta. Halfway out of town he says he's sick so he finds his friend to drive us instead.

-It takes us two hours to cross the Kenya border/customs and get through the South Sudan border/customs process. We saw about 5 cars get stuck in the mud so thank you Jesus that never happened to us. The customs process is ridiculous and includes many rounds of passport stamping, car registering, baggage checking, and trying your best to blend in and not appear to be the only white people within a hundred miles. 

-My favorite sign in the South Sudanese immigration shipping container office said "immigration employees shall not play cards, checkers or dominoes during work hours." Guess dominoes got to be too interfering with productivity...

-Flat tire in between the border and Kapoeta. Africa is communal and this situation was no exception. Three cars of people stopped to help and that tire was changed in under ten minutes. Our driver didn't want us to get out of the car so we just sat in the backseat while the car was jacked up and tilted to the side.

-6 hours later we get to the tented camp in Kapoeta where our truck was parked. Fortunately it hadn't rained recently so the river outside Kapoeta was easy to cross.

-The villages closest to our compound were having a huge celebration as we drove past. Lots of whistles, singing, gunshots (final count was 20-something), jumping etc. I'm pretty sure it was a welcome home party for us. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

-We get home to find that bats have taken up residence in our kitchen (bat poop all over the floor) and that the elusive rat had managed to chew the edges of TWO containers on our kitchen counter AND somehow got the lid off of one. Not using that dry milk powder anymore...yuck.

So, that was Thanksgiving...Africa style. Everyone of you should go eat a piece of leftover pumpkin pie in my honor :)

Equator

Did you know that the Equator runs through Uganda? I didn't. But now I can say that I've stood on both hemispheres at the same time!

 Water swirls one direction in the northern hemisphere, the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere, and straight down on top of the Equator!

One of the gift shops has the marker line running through it on the floor. Kinda cool!

Thanksgiving AND Christmas in Uganda

The first day of our meeting was our Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I will miss our huge family Thanksgiving get together that we have in Dallas every year. This year I celebrated with my Africa family instead!

 Hello.

 The kids put on a skit with the narration of the Christmas story from the gospel of Luke. I think I've become like an aunt to the Lewis kids because I kept trying to take pictures of the boys and I definitely think they did the best job. Davis was Joseph.

 Walker was the hotel manager who had "no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn"

 That night we had a white elephant gift exchange with about 50 people!

 My gift. Coffee and chocolate, perfect!

 Alyssa got coffee and THIRTEEN packets of gravy mix. HA!

Even though I won't be able to do my usual holiday traditions with my Dallas family, it is nice to know that I have a new family here in Africa! Alyssa and I are trying to come up with fun Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions that we could do for the next two years. Got any suggestions?