a day in the life.

The following is my schedule from Wednesday, June 15th:

6:00am--Wake up to spend time with the Lord.  Still a little dark, but the sun starts rising around 6:20ish.  Gorgeous.
8:15am--Walk over to the kitchen area to make breakfast.  This morning I ate have of a roll with red plum jam on it, a gala apple (saved until now from Nairobi!), and some peanut butter from Zambia (more on that in a later post).
9:00am--Emmanuel comes over and Shannon, Carrie, Whitney, and I sit down with him in our kitchen area and learn the Toposa language.  Vocab, sentences, culture, really whatever we feel we want to learn that day!
11:00am--Language lesson over, so time for review--flashcards, drawings, conversations, practice with people at the fence, and repetition, repetition, repetition!
12:00pm--Lunch with the whole team--beans, ugali, and cabbage
1:00-3:00pm--Worked with Shannon and Carrie on my goals for the rest of the year.  I have four!  One for the homeschooling part of the job, one for adapting the AIDS curriculum, one for teaching the AIDS curriculum and training leaders to do so as well, and one for storying through The Word in a women's Bible study and in a classroom at a nearby school.  Finalized these today!
3:00-4:00pm--Back to the kitchen area.  Worked with Emmanuel and Whitney on some of the AIDS stories.  Learning culture from him and teaching him the curriculum at the same time.  (Just so you know, he totally remembered the stories and the lessons learned from them this morning!  Hooray!  I love this oral culture.)
4:00-6:00pm--Walked out to Regina and Regina's nyamana (garden) and weeded and tilled the ground with my hands and a stick.  Wish you could have seen the sky and the view on the walk up and the view from their garden.  Picture a dirt road with two ruts for the car wheels.  These ruts are dark mud, while the raised parts on the sides are covered with light tan medium sized rocks.  We walked in the ruts, except where it was really muddy and then we moved up on top of the rocks.  The road took a slight incline, as the altitude increased!  We arrived at the garden, which is surrounded by thorns branches, a fence!  We walked through the nyekidor (gate), which was a thorn branch easily moved to the side.  Now, for the garden imagine a field splattered with those light tan rocks, dark dirt, and little hints of green.  The green are the sorghum sprouts!  Their main crop here!  There are three trees that provide shade for the women/children who are watching the garden, making sure no birds or goats get in.  We got down in the dirt by the younger Regina and weeded and tilled the ground, making sure to go around the sorghum sprout.  Picture the sun up in front of us, on its downward path for the night.  And the sky?  Cloudless and blue.  All around on the outside of the garden are low desert-like plants.  And off in the distance are the tops of green acacia trees and on the horizon are the Dadinga Mountains.  Breathless.  I can't believe I get to be here and live life with these people.  (And in case you were wondering...yes, the work in the garden was super tiring.  Exhausting.  These women are so strong.)
6:00-8:00pm--A walk back down the road and across the river to the compound.  Whitney and I reheated some delicious peas, soy-based spaghetti sauce (instead of hamburger meat, we used minced soy!  pretty good!), and cooked some noodles!  Oh, and leftover peaches from a can.  So good.
8:00pm--Shannon, Carrie, Whitney, and I walked back across the river at night.  Carrie joked about if we felt anything brush against us in the little stream to keep walking, because it's probably a python.  (But the thing is, I don't think she was joking.  Seriously.)  We walked to a village just off the river.  Now, picture night.  Full moon in the sky, almost making it unnecessary to have a flashlight.  Almost.  A little path of that same dark dirt up to another thorn branch fence surrounding the village (can't remember the name, but it's Lopim and Lokware's village--two precious little guys!)  Picture little houses and granaries and kitchens of thick branches and grasses.  See in the middle of the village a tall tree.  And just beside the tree is where we circled up.  Emmanuel (our language tutor) led us in worship songs.  See the people, kids, women, and a few men (a lot of men are still at cattle camp) coming out and gathering around as we sing.  Look up!  There's the full moon up on the right, high in the sky, providing us with more than sufficient light to see without flashlights.  Faces, theirs and ours, were very visible.  We sat down in the dirt with them.  A little girl next to me, kept smiling at me.  Eventually, she leaned her head on my shoulder.  Smile.  (oh, and this is after she discovered my mole on my left arm!  They think it is so funny!  What they don't know is that they have freckles and moles too, they are just hidden.  Not as visible as mine on my very white skin!)  We listened to the Proclaimer with them.  This is a radio that has the New Testament voice recorded on it in Turkana, which is a sister language to Toposa.  We listened to 1 John 4.  Check out that chapter!!!  It's so what the Toposa needed to hear.  All about false spirits that cause people to follow them and force them to live in fear.  God's perfect love drives out fear.   Then, Shannon led the discussion.  They learned a lot!  We prayed and sang another song.
10:00pm--Arrived back on the compound and, on the way to the shower, saw a lunar eclispse!!!!  YES!!  Apparently, it was over by the time night reached America, so you all back in the states missed it!  It was really cool.  That full moon became darkened by the earth's shadow.  Light red-ish color.  Awe-some.
11:30pm--Tried to fall asleep.  Was really tired, but had to push pass the noises outside.  This time it was singing and pounding on sleeping animal skin mats.  The people were afraid of the eclispse, thinking it was the end of the world.  Please pray for us as we talk with the people about this.  All of them were terrified.  Some cried out to God, while others beat their mats to rid them of the evil spirits.  Pray for clarity on how to discuss this with the people.  That they'd see with God, they need have no fear of the end of the world.

And that's a day in the life of me, a servant of Most High God living in the bush in the area of Paringa, Sudan.

Pictures!

 Gorgeous, breathtaking, had-to-grab-my-camera-so-you-could-see sunset through the trees on the compound.

My dirty feet after walking across the river twice in one day.  Not too shabby, but still pretty muddy!  See my Chaco tan?  And my flip-flop tan coming in too?