two of our boys, Arikangelo (boy on left, that's his warrior face) and Amule (pronounced a-moo-lay, not "a mule" haha!), recently graduated secondary school and moved off the compound. they are attending the Yei Vocational Training College, training to be drivers/mechanics. it's great to see our kids "leaving the nest" and stepping out into the real world to make a life for themselves. i visited Arikangelo yesterday because we missionaries have a weekly Bible study that meets near the YVTC. i was so encouraged by our brief interaction because i saw how much the Lord had worked in his heart throughout his time at Iris. the college leadership asked him to preach at church the next Sunday, because they can see that he is a leader and a preacher. they also want to elect him as the Head Boy, which is the equivalent of class president in the U.S. but the heart-leap moment for me was when he told me his sermon topic. he wants to preach on fasting and call the students to fast every Friday for Sudan!! he asked me where the verse in Esther was about her calling the Jews to fast. Arikangelo really caught the vision and heart for fasting when i introduced it to the kids. from the first day he did it, he loved it. he felt strong, he felt grace, his heart was alive, and the Lord has answered his prayers and showed him His provision as he has fasted and prayed.

i'm so proud of Arikangelo, for how much he has grown in God. this is what it's all about, raising up and equipping people and them going out and doing the same. the Lord is spreading the message of prayer and fasting and He's using our kids - the least likely, the outcast. so like God...

3 of our kids

one of my favorite things to do is play with our smallest kids in the morning. the compound is pretty quiet because most children are at school, only the toddlers remain. we have about 8, and they all laugh when i walk up and shout "Arfa ana!" - "Pick me up!" after a few rounds of picking each of them up and swinging them around, i'm pretty tired, so i'll sit down with them of just stand. they battle to hold my hands and i try to have enough fingers available for them all to hold. i'll usually have 2 kids on one side and 3 on the other. one little boy that is recently warming my heart is jackson. he, along with his brother and sister, are our most recent arrivals. their mother went crazy and abandoned the children. their father is a soldier and is away a lot. he had left them in the care of a friend with enough money for 6 months. he was gone for 2 years, and the children lived practically untended to in the army barracks. they came to us sick and sad. the friend who was supposed to have been taking care of them did not even know their names. the girl is about 12, and you can see that she has suffered much, probably all kinds of rape and abuse. she rarely smiles and is somewhat rough and hardened. you can see the affects of the cruel life they've lived on the older boy, about 8, as well. he's active and plays with the kids but will often hit and fight with the others for no reason. but the youngest, jackson (pictured), about 5, has somehow managed to come out of his harsh life unscathed. he is such a sweet and gentle boy. he's very calm and quiet most of the time.

yesterday, i picked him up and he just gently rested his head on my shoulder and smiled. i rubbed his back and he laughed. i thought i was going to melt. the Lord is truly cultivating a mother's heart in me. i'm believing that as these 3 children are at Iris in the presence of the Lord and His Spirit, He will fully restore them and heal their broken hearts, as He's done with so many others.

when nothing works....and then, when it does

when nothing works....

i had a really rough week last week. first and worst of all, i got malaria. i had a 106 fever, my body ached, and my head throbbed. i would go from pouring cold water on myself (with clothes on) to shivering cold after the medicine would take effect. the fever combined with the heat outside and no breeze made for a pretty miserable state. after the malaria abated thanks to medicine, i had to contend with the most awful cold sores on my mouth that i have ever had (my body's reaction to the intense fevers). i could barely talk or eat.

other things fell apart as well. right when i came to Sudan, the visa requirements changed to $50 every month, instead of $50 every 3 months. this is a huge financial burden on the expats in the country, and some of them complained in Juba and immigration changed the requirements back to $50 for 3 months. i was very excited by this news, but apparently it had not reached Yei yet. i went to the airport and was denied a 3-month visa. they instructed me to go to the immigration office in town. i went that day and was denied the visa again. i had to concede to spending $50 for a 1-month visa and went to exchange my $100 bill at the local exchange place. i handed them the money and they denied me a good exchange rate because of a small red stamp on the bill. WHAT?!?!? i tried to maintain peace but just couldn't. i told them this was ridiculous and just walked away, having settled for the lower exchange rate. then another day that week, i walked for about an hour, in the heat, to reach an NGO that has a good internet connection so that i could email out my january-february update (still have not been able to send). it just so happens that that day, the internet was not working, for some reason, which has never happened to me before. i was about to cry.

and then, when it does...

this past sunday, jennie and i traveled to arua, uganda to do banking and get the Iris mail. we had to take public transport, which can be up to an 8-hour journey, what with getting stopped and hassled at road check points for no reason, border control stopping the vehicle for inquiry for hours, the 2 foot ditches and potholes on the road....you get the point. not to mention our vehicle was named "No hurry in Africa" (all the cars here have names stamped on the windshields). jennie and i laughed and said it was prophetic for our trip. but it took only 5.5 hours, and practically no trouble along the way. we stayed at an amazing hotel, paradise to me after living in difficult and meager conditions in one of the poorest places on earth. the hotel had american food and a swimming pool!!! all i had wanted for weeks was a burger, and they had it! the next day, we went to the bank to withdraw money and set up an account for me. a process that could have taken 4 hours (as it has in the past) took only 2, no trouble at all. we had lunch at an indian restaurant, another craving of mine. i charged my phone at a local cell phone shop, having been unable to do so for days because my charger was broken. when i didn't have small enough change to pay for the service, they let me go for free! this is unheard of around here, someone graciously giving a free service. i knew it was the Lord. then i ran into some friends unexpectedly at the hotel who had just arrived and whose driver was heading back to Yei that morning. the trip back took 3.5 hours, a miracle!

the stress of daily life is compounded here. the normal stresses that i am accustomed to in the States are exponentially magnified here. it's a whole new level of learning to walk in peace and maintain a state of resting in the Lord. i consider myself to be a pretty laid back person who's not stressed out easily. but here, i'm close to exploding every other day. there's always something going wrong, someone causing trouble, something falling apart. God is definitely going to take me deeper into the truth of entering the place of rest.

at the same time, there are those days when everything falls into place. when this happens, i feel His grace and mercy, how kind He is to me. i pray He keeps these days coming, but at the same time teaches me to walk in peace on the other (more frequent in occurrence) days.

our babies worshiping

this is super cute. i caught the kids singing one of our worship songs here. the lyrics go "Sing glory glory, sing hallelujah. No turning back, no turning back." They think it goes "Sing lolly lolly, sing hallelujah...." it's so cute! when you hear the song change in the video, it's cuz they see our black truck called a "tipa" drive by and start singing about that. their names from right to left are: aba, ima, vicky, peter, daniel. vicky's got a porridge mustache too :)

God is my portion

when it comes to the things of God, i have a zeal for authenticity. i resist hype, exaggeration, us trying to help God out because it seems like what He does in and of Himself is not "cool" enough, impressive enough, and doesn't make for a good enough story. as i am here in africa, i want to be real. i want to tell the truth - the good, the bad, and the ugly, the nitty gritty, if you will, the times when things work and they don't. many people think, as did i, that africa, or ministry among the poor in general = non stop salvation, healings, power of God coming down all the time. but it's not glory all the time. there are very real challenges, disappointments, times when nothing happens, no one gets healed, no one shows up. not that we settle for that. we don't focus on it or allow it to weigh us down. we always contend for fullness, for more. but i don't want to promote a false understanding or encourage a lie that we're just walking on water here and everyone is hungry and it's glory all the time. i don't want to only tell the glory stories. and i don't want to exaggerate what God does because i am undermining His power and His wisdom then, and thereby implying he's not right in the way that he chooses to move because it doesn't cause people to "ooohh and aaahh" and praise me.

i've had some Bible studies and prayer meetings recently that weren't all that great, let's put it that way. the kids were disengaged and looked bored. there just wasn't much on it. i know God is always there and always comes when we call, please understand i'm not questioning or denying this fact. but we all know that sometimes, the anointing is just not there or He doesn't show up as strong.

2 things i know. i am going to contend. i want to see the Acts 2 signs and wonders, especially people being convicted at the preaching of the Gospel (which, contrary to popular belief, does not happen automatically here.) i want to see the spirit of repentance fall and people hit the ground weeping as they rend their hearts. i also know that God is my portion. at the end of a day when everyone gets saved, people are healed, etc, i go to bed saying "This is not my portion, You are". and at the end of another day when no one gets saved and there's no anointing on anything, etc. you lie down and say the same thing. your identity is not what God does through you, but who you are - a son, a lover of Jesus. and so you're completely satisfied and content no matter what happens, or doesn't. this is what i'm learning.