Sudan Partnership Weblog

Life has taken an unexpected turn this week. Jeff’s sister communicated that their mother has become very ill and was hospitalized. Along with many other problems she has developed pneumonia and her 83 year old body is not responding to antibiotics. Thus she has been placed in hospice care. We are told her life expectancy is only 1 – 2 weeks. So today we booked tickets to fly home to be with family in this time of crisis and life passage. Please pray with us for all the details we need to deal with before we leave.

We also are depending on God’s mercy for the journey out on extremely difficult roads between Adjumani and Gulu. Our last visitor, Blake Gaskill, found it to be quite an adventure taking over 6 hours to travel the 90 miles just 2 days ago. He started out in the bus but had to transfer to a commercial truck to finish the journey as the roads were blocked by the semi-trucks which were unable to get through between Gulu and Sudan. We plan to take a security road (not more than a track) which by-passes the most difficult passage the big transport trucks take on the travels in and out of Sudan.

Jaclyn Konczal and Erin Carkner will be staying in Adjumani continuing their lives and ministries here while we are away. We all have peace about the decision. We’ve just been discussing how much more intense our dependence on God in our existence here. At the same time, we have a deep sense of His presence with us, as well.

Words that take on much deeper meaning here come from the Book of James:

You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes…you ought to say ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’

If God wills, we will fly out of Uganda Wednesday Aug. 20th and arrive in Portland Aug. 21st. Depending on God’s will for Jeff’s mother, we plan then to return to Uganda Sept. 18

Two very big changes have happened since I last blogged. The first was Erin Carkner’s arrival from Imago Dei Community Church last month. Erin comes to us with a lot of cross cultural experience having worked with a refugee resettlement program in Portland, Oregon. The other more painful change was the departure of Rick and Faye Meyer as they wrapped up their 10 months with our Adjumani community. We saw them off Wednesday morning. The fluidness of community members and visitors (the Kearns family, also from Imago Dei Community Church, visiting last month) coming and going is one of the bittersweet facets of living in and ministering from the Adjumani Imago Dei Community. As we debriefed with Rick and Faye, it was very evident that neither they nor we are the same as we were before we initiated living in community together. There has been transformation in all our lives because of the good and the rough times we’ve been through together. Each person is being transformed and impacting others in their transformation. It is truly a refining process in all our lives. Beyond that, Rick and Faye have helped us further develop the vision and direction of our community. I think that’s the beauty of this whole thing of living in and working out of community that God seems to speak into the arena of direction and purpose for the community through the gifts, talents and passions of each individual. We thank God for loaning us Rick and Faye for this season. They have created pathways for others to follow and left their imprint on many hearts.

Geologist Hal Hansen, his 17 year old daughter, Kirsten and her best friend, Katie, spent days with us in the bush near our Magwi, Sudan site evaluating the water (borehole/wells) in the area. Hal was able to evaluate 8 wells, 2 of which were not functional. Others were seriously affected by sediment buildup. Only 1 or 2 are fully functional in this area where thousands of refugees are resettling. Each well must supply hundreds of people. Hal hopes to return in November now that he has a better idea of what is needed. The challenges are still ahead. We’ve heard that 300,000 refugees have been repatriated in a triangle between Yei, Torit (including Magwi) and Nimule. Clean water is a huge problem these people face.

Kirsten and her best friend, Katie, acted as Hal’s data and photo assistants. The girls endured dark pit latrines, no running water, bugs which seem to be on steroids, elephant grass over their heads, tiny black flies attacking eyes, ears and nostrils, old men wanting to buy them as their wives, offering many cows and goats. They learned that it is much easier to be a man than a woman in Sudan and that being white is to be watched every moment of the day and night. Meals consisted of oatmeal for breakfast, cheese and crackers for lunch, beans and rice for dinner everyday. The 8 hour journey covering 106.4 miles into Magwi was a great adventure, the 8 hour journey retracing every bump, bog and pool pure torture, part of the adventure digging the truck out of one difficult mud hole.

Jeff and I were impressed by the girls’ courage and endurance in those conditions and we are encouraged that Hal wants to return with a heart for helping people and expertise in problem solving tough water issues.

I also experienced that God is beginning to heal and restore my soul after the difficult months behind us. I’ve learned much about myself and about my God through all of it. Some people have dry periods in which they find it difficult to pray. I had a long dry period with difficulty believing Scripture. However, the richness of the Word is like fresh, clean water to me in recent days. I read yesterday that Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered. So even he had to learn many things while walking this earth as the Son of Man. It was a revelation to me that he learned through his suffering. Who would have thought the God/Man who was perfect in every respect had to learn anything. That speaks to my soul. Seeing all the suffering in this part of the world can easily overwhelm me but to know that it is not in vain gives me hope. There is much to be learned through suffering.

Sudan says Uganda rebels kill troops, start “war”
07 Jun 2008 13:15:02 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Skye Wheeler
JUBA, Sudan, June 7 (Reuters) - Ugandan rebels have killed 23 people including 14 south Sudanese soldiers and “started war”, a south Sudanese minister said on Saturday.
Wednesday’s raid by Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas at Nabanga village on the remote Congo border appeared to signal the collapse of peace talks with the Ugandan government that have been hosted by south Sudan since mid-2006.
“The LRA have started war,” south Sudan’s Information Minister Gabriel Changson Chang told Reuters in Juba. “Southern Sudan will not be the place where they can wage this war.”
Chang said his government would decide how to respond. “We do not yet have a definite position on this,” he said.
Nabanga had been the site of tentative meetings between Ugandan officials and the LRA’s fugitive leader Joseph Kony, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
But he failed to appear in April to sign a final deal to end more than two decades of civil war in northern Uganda that have killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 2 million more.
On Thursday, a Ugandan military spokesman said Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan would launch a joint offensive against the LRA if Kony failed to commit to talks.
“RECRUIT, ABDUCT, REARM”
Major Paddy Ankunda, the Ugandan spokesman, said the elusive rebel commander had shown he had no interest in negotiations.
“As usual, Kony has used the peace process to recruit, abduct and rearm himself to fight on,” Ankunda said this week.
He said agreement on the need for a multi-national operation was reached at a regional security meeting in Kampala on Tuesday. It would be led by the DRC government with the support of a U.N. peacekeeping force based in eastern Congo, he said.
Kampala says the United States has pledged its support too.
Kony is thought to move between camps in lawless northeastern DRC’s Garamba Forest and Central African Republic, security experts say. The guerrillas have also used bases in neighbouring southern Sudan in the past.
Aid workers say his forces have raided villages and abducted hundreds of civilians in the three countries in recent months.
Kony and two of his deputies are wanted by the ICC in The Hague for crimes including massacres, rapes and the kidnapping of children as sex slaves and fighters in their insurgency. (Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)

We are tracking this info. The Ugandan paper, The Monitor, had an article yesterday with unsubstantiated reports that the LRA had attacked a Sudanese garrison in Nabanga this past Thursday. And that there had been a 4 hour battle with a Sudanese Commander killed in the action. I found Nabanga on the map. It is located on the Southwestern border with the Congo. We’ll have to wait and see how this develops. All is quiet in Northern Uganda and Jeff and I still plan a trip to Magwi, Sudan this Wednesday with Hal Hansen, his daughter and friend. I just found another update in the Ugandan Sunday Monitor:

GoSS suspends talks over LRA attack

Angelo Izama

Kampala

The Government of South Sudan (GoSS) has suspended its mediation of the peace process between rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan authorities, a day after attacks by the rebels on an SPLA base.
The attack came on Thursday as President Museveni was delivering his State of the Nation Address before Parliament in which he too declared the peace process over.

“It would be unreasonable for the Government of South Sudan to continue [with the mediation],” said Mr Gabriel Changson Cheng, the GoSS information minister.

Mr Cheng, who spoke to Radio France International (RFI), said the decision to withdraw his government’s mediation was brought about by several other factors including the attack itself. “[The LRA] are the ones abrogating the peace process,” he said, adding that the other party to the talks, the Uganda government, was equally disinterested.

“We have become victims,” Mr Cheng said. The attack at the DR Congo-South Sudan military outpost of Nabanga, which served as an observation point for SPLA forces as well as a food distribution centre for the rebels, claimed the life of a major and 21 of his troops.

Sources familiar with goings-on in South Sudan tell Sunday Monitor the LRA attack was led by Commander Smart Ojara, who holds the rebel rank of lieutenant colonel, and was aimed at raiding the SPLA detach for food and weapons.

New LRA spokesman Justin Okello, however, told RFI the rebels had instead been attacked by a joint Ugandan/SPLA force.

The nearly two-year peace process has unravelled fast in the past two months. Mr Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, was a no-show on April 10 for the signing of a final peace deal at Nabanga.

And a spate of abductions in his reported locations between the forests in eastern DR Congo and Central African Republic suggest he is rebuilding his forces. The heads of the militaries of Uganda, DR Congo and GoSS on Wednesday said they plan to launch a joint offensive alongside the UN’s Monuc forces in DR Congo on the LRA.

The LRA fighters say they will defend themselves in what amounts now to a resumption of hostilities even if the peace process is yet to be officially called off.

Former Mozambican Presiden Joachim Chissano, who is a special envoy of the UN secretary general to the talks, is in Kampala for discussions about the future of the process. He is expected to meet with Ugandan authorities as well as the chief mediator of the Juba process, Dr Riek Machar.

Mr Chissano was yesterday also set to meet Mr Timothy Shortley, the senior advisor to the US secretary of state on Africa and an observer at the Juba talks. A few weeks ago, Mr Shortley, speaking in Washington, said the phase of negotiations with the LRA had ended after the rebels failed to sign a final peace deal.

Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who led the government delegation in Juba and who just returned to the country from a tour of the United States and Europe, said yesterday he would issue a statement after meeting with Mr Chissano.

I am humbled and blessed by the love and understanding of you who sent comments and e-mails since I last wrote. Thank you so very much. You have truly comforted and helped me.

God willing, Jeff and I will be in Sudan again next week with a short term team coming for a vision trip and with expertise in repairing borehole/wells. I don’t expect the conditions have improved since we were last there. So pray for grace and endurance as Jeff and I will sleep another week in our incomplete camp with the leaky roofed huts which also lack doors and windows. I was also reflecting that it will be nice to know we will pour the slab for a permanent latrine as we’ve been making do with a hole in the ground with a tarp for privacy but no roof. So my contrived toilet seat is either sizzling hot from the sun or wet from the rain. I have to admit I’m not a good camper. I hadn’t really done any camping in the past 25 years until we started this Sudan thing. The short term team will be staying at the local guest house which is one step up from our camp situation. Jeff and I would stay there but don’t feel it just that we spend the money when we need money for building. So I’m praying God will give me a sense of humor in all of this. I know we will be encouraged by Hal Hansen, his daughter Kersten and her friend who are the ones joining us for this week long trip.

It has been so difficult for me to communicate lately. But I feel freer now that we’ve been to Sudan and back again this past week. This short trip was good in that we were able to sort out some relationships with some of the Sudanese who had attached themselves to us. We decided we had to fire 4 of the 5 Acholi guys who had insisted we employ them. It was messy but Jeff was strong and dismissed them with a generous severance of 3 months salary each. We retained one of the men, Okot Francis, as the Deputy Director of SudanVenture, the new organization we are attempting to launch there. Okot has proved himself in the past few months with his integrity and knowledge of how things work with the government, etc. So we feel more confident now that we can move ahead. I had been so depressed and felt so oppressed by the situation with the other 4 men and especially the self-appointed leader who was dictatorial and who we found mishandled money and resources (there is even reason to believe that he and some of the others simply stole from the project). Jeff and I both feel greatly relieved to have that chapter behind us. Jeff expressed his desire to help the 4 he dismissed if they want to continue working as day workers and prove to be teachable. He is incredibly forgiving.

In all of this, my heart of heart has practically failed. I find it hard to trust people and I am having great difficulty in feeling compassion for people. I don’t like the place I’m at in the process. I don’t like feeling so hard hearted but am not able to conjure up sympathetic feelings. I watch Jeff and marvel at his patience and heart for people. I have to trust that God will renew my spirit and restore my heart and soul, too. Psalm 23 means much to me. “He restores my soul” offers a wonderful promise to me that I won’t always feel this way.

It’s been a crazy ride the past few weeks. Today I was reminded that Jesus came into the mess to bring redemption and in that we may have hope.

We found things in Magwi were a mess when we went up last month. The rains have started, so things are muddy and the holes in the roads are becoming deep ponds. But that was just a glimpse of the mess. Relationships among the 5 men we’ve been working with had broken down and the work had come to a halt. We were pleased, though, to find two brick and grass thatched huts standing on the property which had been all bush when we left in April. Jeff and I slept in one of the huts but the men had not finished the roof so when it rained we got a little damp. Perhaps because one of the guys mismanaged the money, there were no windows or doors either. The good thing, though, was that the thatch which was in place kept the hut cool in the daytime.

We also discovered that one of the men has taken a second wife so now has a wife and children in Adjumani and another with him in Magwi. His Magwi wife is soon to deliver their first child together. The others do not seem to have confronted the issue so the church is suffering perhaps from this and from other issues with their focus.

When we finally figured out what was going on, we decided we needed to step back from the mess and have been trying to process where things stand and what we need to do. We also discovered we need to develop a constitution to be legal with the government so our Nongovernmental Status as SudanVenture will be authentic. Jeff is working on that now.

We have been in Kampala for the past week for mission meetings. Now we are preparing to return to Adjumani and plan to go to Magwi later this month. We so need wisdom and discernment as we return to the mess. I was reminded this morning that Jesus faced the mess. In fact, for this he died. And with his death and resurrection there is promised redemption in messes such as this. We certainly need that hope.

On another note, Esther Miller and Derin and Andra Williams left us last Wednesday to return to the USA. Our community will greatly miss them especially as we go back to Adjumani. Jeff and I also will miss our colleague, Connie Jarlsberg, who’s been a great friend and exceptional help (with medical advice and as our field leader) over the years. She had her farewell party this past Sunday and leaves the Uganda field June 10th. Our prayers are with them all as they face big transitions in their lives.

The missions conference in Kenya is past history now. Our travel went well as did the meetings there. The young folks spent a lot of afternoons in the sand and surf while Jeff and I spent a lot of time escaping the heat and humidity in the wonderful air conditioned hotel room. Just goes to show we are getting old.

Nonetheless, we have shifted gears back to ministry. We are enjoying our newest short term community memebers, Darren and Andra Williams, from Rick and Fayes’ home community. Rick and Darren are working on projects building chicken coops from local materials and a fruit drier which went into commission today drying mangoes which are abundant from the trees in our own compound.

Yesterday Faye, Andra, Jaclyn, Esther, and I went to Uderu Baptist Church which is located in the far reaches of Adjumani District. You would almost think you had come to the ends of the earth because of its remoteness. We arrived to find many people in the church awaiting our coming. It proved to be a very rich time of sharing about valuing each individual member of the body and recognizing the giftedness of those ministering to each other in the church. Some of the gifts we identified among them were the gifts of teaching, administration, helps, hospitality, mercy and wisdom. This church has only been in existence 4 years so it is wonderful to see how the Holy Spirit is developing them. In this particular church many of the men joined us for the day and insisted we have a Q & A time so we dealt with issues that are very pertanent to them about people backsliding into witchcraft and what I perceive to be adultry though they spoke of it as men taking a second wife.

Today we shifted gears again in preparing to leave for Sudan tomorrow. We hope to spend a full week this time with the purpose of bringing more focus to the ministry attempting to define some boundaries to the work. We’ve felt rather scattered and unfocused in the last trips as there is much to see and learn before knowing how to start working. This will be Esther’s last trip with us as she returns to Oregon the end of April. In February she left sewing materials with 5 women so we want to see how they are handling the project as it was laid out for them and encourage them to become a catalyst to bringing other women into the project. We also want to invest time in simply getting to know them and encourage them so we plan to invite them to our camp site for tea one day and then hopefully to join them in cooking dinner one night for their families and the 4 of us. Jeff will be attempting to spend a couple of days just in dialogue and training with the 5 guys, husbands of the 5 women, who are on staff with our NGO SudanVenture to try to get on the same page with one another. It’s challenging as they have a lot of ideas which require money we don’t have so Jeff needs a lot of patience. Rick, Faye, Darren and Andra will remain in Adjumani and continue ministry here while the rest of us are in Sudan.

I find I am far from excited about another Sudan adventure. The past few trips have been far more adventure than I could easily handle emotionally. So I would appreciate lots of prayer that we’ll have a smooth trip without a lot of excitement such as sleeping in the bush due to car troubles and broken bridge experiences. I am encouraged, though, that one of the guys is meeting us in Nimule and will travel back to Magwi with us. I always like having one of them accompany us as it comforts me greatly. FYI we’ll be away from April 10-18th.