Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a happy new year from Alyssa and Mindy!

(Maybe next year Toposaland will have some snow...)

Dad Comes to Toposaland

My dad came to South Sudan to spend Christmas with me! I am so, so, SO thankful for his week here. 

His birthday was the day after he got here so we made a cake! He's not into celebrating birthdays, but Alyssa and I are and hey...cake is good no matter what the reason.

We went to a nearby village so that he could meet my Toposa father and some of my other friends.

My American father and my Toposa father!

Dad got to experience Christmas Day, Toposa style! It was quite a bit warmer and a lot less commercial than Christmas in America.

He even ate maize meal and goat meat for Christmas lunch!

A big shout out goes to my Dallas friends and church family for sending SO MUCH! I feel so loved, and I really appreciate the effort that Trinity Fellowship (and others!) went to in order to be so generous to me.

Why yes, that IS a bag of Chick-Fil-A sauce packets and dark chocolate Reeses...

At first I thought there was some terrible mistake because a maroon t-shirt was one of the gifts. Phew, it was a TWU shirt and not an Aggie shirt! Thanks, Katherine!

Merry Christmas from Toposaland!

Sorghum Delivery!

Last week the Toposa team and a group of men from Texas hosted a 3-day leader training for some of the men who have been faithful to learn from God's Word on a regular basis over the past several months. Alyssa and I got to be a part of this training by teaching the HIV/AIDS stories to this group. It was a really good way to wrap up this ministry, especially since we know many of the men who were attending. There was a lot of good discussion after the stories about how they as believers should treat people with AIDS.

On the last day each man received a bag of sorghum to help feed his family. There were around 30 men from all over our area of Toposaland, so we needed every vehicle on the compound to help transport the men and their sorghum back to their villages.

 Our truck had 12 guys and we headed to seven different areas.

 One by one we dropped everyone off.

 Three hours of driving on roads like this...

 ...plus water in the fuel tank...

(by the way, these men aren't helping, they're watching)

(At least this wasn't us!)

...and we got to help men like Leno have a pretty good Saturday morning!

To Grandmother's House We Go...

Our language helper, Charles, is in Kenya at a training course geared toward helping people like him know how to properly evaluate the language skills of people like us...yikes! I can speak and understand Toposa just fine to do the "normal" day-to-day stuff, but if I were going to be officially evaluated I would probably fail! This course will hopefully help Charles be a more effective teacher when he helps other members of the Toposa team who will move here in a few months.

Since he's been gone, Alyssa and I have had more time in the afternoons. We took a little walking trip a couple of days ago. Napeyo (who is a believer!) wanted us to come with her to her grandmother's village. We shocked everyone by walking (gasp!) instead of going in the car. Most Toposa seem to have extremely low expectations when it comes to what us white girls are physically capable of doing. 

First stop, dry riverbed.

Tanning, South Sudan style...

It took about 45 minutes of fairly fast walking to get there. The area is up on a hill so the view was really great!

Her grandmother didn't end up being there, but we took a picture anyway. We walked back with Napeyo and two other friends the next day and found her working in her garden.

This is the one random pretty tree that we saw on the way. Napeyo didn't know the name of the tree so I told her it was called the Mindy Tree because it was beautiful. HA!

We got stuck walking in the rain on the way back both times! Dry season is here for the most part but every now and then there is a random shower that makes everything nice and humid.

Preparations

It seemed like everything was in the "preparation" stage around the village yesterday! Since rainy season is pretty much over, women have switched from working in the gardens to doing other jobs. The county commissioner is paying people bags of food in exchange for working on the road that comes from town to our area. Many people have been cutting down thorn branches and hauling them away so that the road is clearer and easier for cars to travel through.

Women are also rebuilding their house and ngachebe, or granary.  They will work on the roof separately, then "put the lid on" when it is all finished.

The houses are built on the ground, but the granaries are offset so that various creatures have a harder time getting in and eating whatever food is stored inside.

This nyakumet (old woman) wanted me to take a picture of her kalabash with its new rope holder that she was making.

Some of my friends were sitting around their cooking areas and making new goatskin skirts and/or re-beading old ones so that they will be ready to wear during the ngakidamdam (celebration) later this month.

Namunyen (her name means "sand") was making a new bracelet.

Regina was putting new beads on her skirt.

I have no skills when it comes to any of that so I just sat and talked and took pictures. :) 

Sigh...

Alyssa and I had a bet going about who would win the Texas Tech vs. Baylor football game last weekend. Since Texas Tech lost, I had to hold up my end of the bargain and wear a Baylor shirt and take this picture. Sigh...

For Example...

For those of you who are members of a Southern Baptist church, you know that the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is right around the corner. I know that before I came here I wasn't really aware of what my money was specifically going to, but now that I am on the receiving end of some of that money, I am very aware of how much of an impact this offering has!

For example...

The money you give lets me have a place to sleep at night!

It builds kitchens/living areas and provides solar panels so that I can have electricity and run the refrigerator.

It buys solar-powered audio players so that the Toposa can listen to God's Word.

It pays for our translator who helps us learn the Toposa language.

It pays for our vehicle so we can go to different areas even when the roads look like this! (It also pays for the repairs when we need new tires or brakes...these roads are rough!)

Thank you for giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering!

This Week

One day in school Walker got to make a monster pancake that puffed up in the oven and then deflated after we took it out. I'm considering this a science/art project...

He got to kill the monster by drowning it in syrup and then cutting its face into many bite-sized pieces.

The latest project around the compound is "re-thorning" the fence. Large thorn branches are placed all around the compound to act as a barrier for both animals and people. We are paying several local men who are believers to cut and haul the branches. The work speed of Toposa men is quite...relaxed, shall we say, so this will be a week-long project or more.

In other news, we have had three villages in the Lolipan area be extremely receptive and attentive to the AIDS stories this week. We were also able to share the gospel in one of these villages and have invitations to go back to the other two villages on Monday. The rains have started to taper off, and this is the first week in months that we have been able to go out every day.

We had a small but nice victory in Kapoeta today. A lot of our friends have been demanding asking that we buy them things like wraps or cooking pots from town. We also needed to fill up 1.5 out of our 2 gas tanks, buy phone credit (pre-paid South Sudanese cell phone, holla), buy a new air filter for our truck, get several small repairs done to our truck, and stock up on whatever vegetables were available at the market. Not only did we get every single one of the things on the list done, we also were able to find an awesome bonus--fresh fruit! I've seen passion fruit in town occasionally, but it's been a long time since I've seen a pineapple, especially one that looked edible. Rarely do we have a to-do list that long, and I was only expecting to get one or two things accomplished. Three if we were lucky. For those of you who have spent any extended amount of time in Africa, you get how productive our trip was! To most people it seems like a small thing, but it was really nice to have so much success.

Uganda!

After Alyssa and I got back from Nairobi we had a whole week before we headed out again, this time to Uganda. The ladies that work for our company in our part of Africa got together in Entebbe for several days of fellowship and prayer, and let me tell you, it was just what the doctor ordered! We got to celebrate two new babies, hear what God is doing in other parts of east Africa, and pray for each other.

We left Kapoeta and flew to northern Kenya to pick up our teammate Holly, then flew on to Nairobi to catch a commercial flight to Entebbe. Our flight was delayed, plus it was raining, so the stewardesses handed out these stylish trash bags ponchos so we wouldn't get wet when we walked to the plane around midnight.

Entebbe is right on Lake Victoria so it is a really beautiful place!

It was great to spend time with friends and also eat some good food.

And huge thanks to Renee for all your hard work to make it such a relaxing and encouraging time for all of us!

Note: we did actually have a lot of lessons and prayer times, but I just didn't take any pictures then!