Update About My Nephew in Sudan

Rebuilding Christian churches in southern Sudan

A church in Tonj, Sudan,
that Ben helped to build

You may remember that my nephew Ben, a civil engineer, is working for Samaritan's Purse, an international Christian relief organization. He is in southern Sudan, where he has been helping with rebuilding Christian churches that were destroyed in the recent civil war. His role is to organize workers and materials and to provide expertise and oversight for the construction.

Opening service in the church at Tonj

When he first arrived, he was headquartered at Tonj, a small town in southern Sudan. He helped build three churches in that area -- one in Tonj, one in Thiet (45 minutes south), and one in Mapel (1-1/2 hours north.) The church members in those three villages had already assembled their materials and made their cement blocks, so they were ready to begin construction.

Now Ben is at Rumbek, another small town in southern Sudan, rebuilding churches in several villages in the area. A letter he wrote to his mom early this month gives a glimpse of some of the challenges in a third world country where many modern conveniences, such as blacktop roads, don't exist.

I have been getting quite of bit of rain recently here in Rumbek. The main problem though I have been facing is the flooding that was caused by the eastern and southern parts of Sudan getting so much rain. It cut off all the roads that go to Uganda from Rumbek for two weeks.

This put a strain on the town and my church projects because almost all the food and merchandise is brought up from Uganda and all my church materials are brought up from Yei and Uganda. We were forced to delay the start of building churches in this area from the end of August to the end of September because we were not able to transport the supplies and building crew up.

I've also been cut off from my two most northern churches by the flooding. The road to them is under water and the current was so fast it ripped a big culvert out of the road way.

It has been a challenge logistically because I had one of our 20 ton trucks stuck on a different road on that side of the river but I was not able to reach them because of the flooding. I had to send one of my Sudanese staff members to that side by having him swim across the bad place and hitch rides with different trucks to get to the 20 ton truck. Luckily I had both of my small New Holland 4wd tractors on that side to help pull the truck out of the mess.

One of the crazy things they told me about the place the truck was stuck at was that it was so far out in the bush that at night there were a couple of Lions that prowled around their trucks growling and disturbing them. There was a big line of trucks stuck at this one spot so all the driver had to gather together at night to make one big camp with many fires to keep the lions away.

Although disaster struck when one of the tractors was helping pull another trailer out of the road to clear it for our twenty ton to go by. My drivers allowed another truck that was helping them to pull the trailer out of the way to hook the other trucks tow line around the front tractor weights. I suspect they tried to jerk everything out real quick and when they jerked they pulled the front axle off of our tractor.

That was a mess because then I had to send and hire people to dismantle it and put it in the back of our 20 ton to send it back to Yei and no telling how long it will take to get fixed.

More recently, Ben wrote that the roads had dried up enough that he could travel to the two northern church sites again. The road to Yei, an important route for bringing in supplies, has also opened up again. He's hoping his teams can resume construction in late September. Before then, he'll spend a week in Kenya at a Samaritan's Purse Africa ministry retreat. I hope it is refreshing and uplifting because I know he's been working hard. Please continue to pray for him.

Technorati tags: Samaritan's Purse, Sudan, rebuilding Sudanese churches

The Sudan in 1941

History and Old Stuff...

The authors of my 1941 Social Studies book, Our World Today, ask the readers to imagine an airplane ride over the continent of Africa...

Continuing along our airplane route southward from Air [a mountainous area of the Sahara], we soon notice a change in the appearance of the country. The yellowish gray of the desert is giving way to a light green color. Descending near the earth, we see that we are passing over grasslands, with scattered shrubs and trees. This is the Sudan.

The Sudan is a broad belt of grasslands lying between the Sahara and the tangled growth of the jungle bordering the equatorial forests of central Africa. It is within the Tropical Zone. The western part belongs to the French and is included in French West Africa. The eastern part belongs to the English and is known as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

It is a region of summer rains. The annual rainfall varies from about ten inches near the Sahara to twenty or more along the southern border. The Sudan is one of the most promising agricultural districts of Africa. The grasslands are good for grazing cattle and some parts will grow cotton and other crops usually grown in the warm temperate zones.

Source: Our World Today (p. 110-111), a geography textbook written by De Forest Stull and Roy W. Hatch and copyrighted in 1941 by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA

They didn't know about the oil of the southern Sudan in 1941. Or maybe it didn't seem worth mentioning.




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1941

The News from Sudan Is Personal Now

All In The Family...

My nephew Ben has left this week to work for a year in southern Sudan for the Christian humanitarian relief and community development agency, Samaritan's Purse.

Ben is a recent college graduate with a master's degree in Civil Engineering. He has wanted to spend some time working in a third world country where he could use his skills to make a real difference.

With that in mind, he applied for a job providing construction expertise and supervision in Sudan with Samaritan's Purse. He interviewed and was hired, and now just a few weeks later, he's en route to Africa.

Last week, he attended some orientation sessions (in Washington, D.C., I think), and next week, he'll have more orientation in Kenya. From there, he goes into Sudan and joins a team to begin work. My sister said that Ben is traveling light with just two suitcases, one of which holds his new, really good backpack.

Supposedly, the semi-autonomous southern part of Sudan is not as strife-ridden as the Darfur Province in the western part of the nation where the government has been allowing genocide. Still, the south has endured decades of war and has millions of refugees. (For more information, see the CIA's brief history or Wikipedia's "History of Sudan.")

I think my family is proud that our good, fine Ben wants to do this, and we admire the humanitarian and missionary spirit in his heart, but we feel some concern for his safety and well-being. If you have a prayer list, will you please put Ben on it?




Here are my two children (Keely on left and Isaac in the middle) with Ben (on the right) in 1995 at the Little House on the Prairie historic site near Independence, KS. It's hard to believe that Keely is now 21, Isaac is nearly 18, and Ben will soon be 26.

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Samaritan's Purse

A year ago today, I posted a 1994 photo of my kids and their excellent snowman.