Harvesting

I think most would agree that Autumn is a beautiful season full of color, change, and smells and tastes to delight in. Even though we live in the blistering hot south Sudan, we too are enjoying our fair share of Autumn beauty and reaping the benefits of the harvest. As most of you head to the pumpkin patch to pick out your bright orange pumpkins, we head to the market where we too find dozens of yellowish/green locally grown pumpkins. However, we have yet to carve jack-o-lanterns, but we have been making delicious goodies such as pumpkin bread, scones, cookies, pumpkin soup, and other pumkin delights. My teammate Scott has been pretty committed to making Sunday dinners all things garden. He and Larissa both have their own gardens on our compound and because of this we have enjoyed fresh salads and other fresh veg for the last few weeks. This last Saturday I went with my friend Mary to her garden and helped harvest sesame seeds. This involved bending over in the blazing sun, and cuting branches of sesame seed until I had a big enough bunch that could be tied together and hung to dry. I would say I successfully cut about 20 bunches. Aside from the heat, it was a great day and I'm thankful for a small taste of harvesting season here in s. Sudan. Here in Sudan the leaves may not change into beautiful Autumn shades, we may not have crisp cool air, or be able to drive to Starbucks to enjoy their pumpkin spice latte, but we are thankful for this harvest season, for the abundance found in the market, for the gardens that have been blessed immensely by this years rains, and for the reminder that we are a part of an even greater harvest.

You Are Special

“Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity, and power is false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: ‘You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.’ Henri Nouwen- Here and Now

In the last few weeks I have become very familiar with the book You Are Special by Max Lucado because I have read it both with the teachers at our training and with my small group. For those of you who are not familiar with this book, it is about a village of wooden people who were all made by the same woodcarver, Eli. Everyday these wooden people move about giving each other stars (good) and dots (bad) according to their talents, beauty, and gifts or the lack there of. The main character, Punchinello, was covered in dots because he could not do any of the things that earned stars. Because of the bad marks he had been given he began to believe that he was not a good wooden person. However, one day he met a wooden person who had no marks and she told him to go and see the woodcarver. Punchinello finds out that Eli thinks he is very special and that he should not care what the other wooden people think. The moral of this story is that we too are special and we should always be looking to our heavenly Father to tell us who we are.

No matter what town, village, or country we live in we are all human. Just like the wooden people in this book we move about giving one another stickers with our words and actions. We try to tell others who they are and we also begin to believe ourselves that we are who the world tells us we are. We fall into traps and then stoop to finding our identity in success, popularity, and power. But just as the quote above says, Christ came to announce that we are children of God and that our identity should be found in Him alone. God tells us He loves us no matter what and that we are all very special. It doesn’t matter if we are extremely successful or beautiful by the world’s standards or possess lots of wonderful things. God’s love for us never changes. I enjoyed seeing my friends here relate to this book just as much as I do and now we even go around telling one another that we are special because God made us and we are His.
Here I am reading the book to my small group.

The girls made a mirror decoration that will remind them they are special every time they look in the mirror.

Here is one of the girls telling the story to her siblings using the book to show pictures.

Making Pancakes

In the last couple of weeks the girls in my small group have been enjoying the book Mama Panya's Pancakes about a Kenyan women who plans on making pancakes for her and her son, but then her son invites all of his friends. Yesterday I brought all the necessary ingredients which can actually be found locally, and together with the girls we made pumpkin pancakes. I introduced them to the flipper and it was pretty hilarious to watch them try to flip the pancakes. They had a great time laughing at each other and themselves during the process. And then of course the great thing about cooking lessons is that you get to eat the final product. Others on the compound also lucked out because they were in the right place at the right time. Maybe now pancakes will begin to show up in Mundri town.

Way To Go Teachers!

On the last day of training we handed out certificates to all the participants to honor their completion of all 3 phases. Above you see them all standing proudly showing off their certificate. The week was very successful and went better than we ever could have expected. I am so thankful for each individual in the picture above and blown away by all of the growth I have seen since our 1st training in March. Now I look forward to visiting each participant at their school before I leave Mundri in January.

Dancing for Punishment

During Phase 1 of our training I wrote a blog post about the different jobs that are assigned for the week. For example: the time keeper, the energizer who leads songs when people get tired, the Spiritual minister who prayers or assigns someone to pray throughout the week, and the Lawer who is in charge of disciplining people whose cell phones go off during the training. At the begining of the week our Lawer was not feeling to well and didn't have much energy to do her job. But today she was feeling a lot better and became very serious about punishing those whose cell phones went off during the lessons. For anyone whose cell phone rang more than once during the day, they had to get up in front of the class and dance for punishment. I too got to join in the dancing fun because my phone rang 20 min. before our last lesson finished. I didn't quite have the same moves as my teacher friends, but it was still a funny sight to see.

Being Kids Again

This week at our teacher training I am reminded of my days in training courses for elementary education. I took a course on each subject area that I would be teaching in the school and for each class I was asked to create lesson after lesson. I learned about the different parts of a lesson and how if we as teachers do not plan well it can really impact how our students learn. This week we are sharing some of these lesson plan ideas with the participants at our training. And just as I had to present my lessons to my peers as if they were my students, this week the teachers in our training are also being given the chance to present their lesson and act as students. I laugh at how quickly we as grown-ups jump at the chance to become kids again. The teachers have had no problem acting as students as they pretend they don’t understand the teacher, point to the wrong pictures, ask silly questions, or blurt out obnoxious responses. I can’t help but smile as I see our participants grasp new ideas and have fun in the process.

In this picture Melissa (who has come for 10 weeks to help teach Michael and Karen's children) is teaching the participants a song before she begins a lesson on leaves and graphing. The participants had a great time learning the new song and participating in the lesson activities. Below you will see some volunteers holding leaves and joining in another song that ends with their leaves dropping to the ground. One of the best types of learning is modeling and then doing :o).

Abiding in Christ

"Remain in Me and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by iteself without staying on the vine, so you cannot without remaining in Me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who remains in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing."
John 15:4-5


Today was day one of the phase 3 teacher training seminar. This week our focus and theme is on the fruit of the Spirit and how we has teachers are called to live by the Spirit so that we can bear fruit and to encourage our students to live in a way that bears the fruit of the Spirit. Bethany started off our training by reminding the teachers that we cannot bear fruit if we do not first abide in Christ. As everyone stood under a Mango tree we discussed how a branch cannot bear fruit on its own and how it is the roots of the tree and the tree itself that provides life for the branches so that they can produce fruit. As we root ourselves in Christ we too can bear fruit.

This week for a visual aid we are creating pictures of fruit to remind us that we ourselves desire to bear fruit. Today the teachers worked diligently on drawing mangos and writing John 15:12 to remind us to love as Christ loves.