So I write this from the country of Sudan.  I now have another country to check off in my list of travels.

We are in a town called Yei in southern Sudan.  It's about 50 miles from the Ugandan border.  It took us three days by bus to reach this place.  But it's beautiful here.  This is not what I expected Sudan to be like.  I expected it to be like Samburu District in Kenya where it's hot and dry, there's nothing green, no water, etc.  But at least this part of Sudan is lush and green.  The weather is comfortable, but humid.  It's really quite lovely here.

The mango trees are just ripening now, so mangoes are everywhere.  Any time the wind blows, they come crashing down.  It sounds like a bomb if one of them happens to land on a tin-roof and you're underneath it.  I only mention bombs, because it wasn't too many years ago that bombs were regularly dropping on houses here.  The people of Southern Sudan have been through a lot.  Many of them are just returning as refugees from Uganda and Congo.  They all have remarkable stories. 

There is one family that was just dropped at the side of the road by the UN High Commission for Refugees and basically told, "have a nice life..."  They've got no food.  They had to build a basic house.  But they basically have nothing and have to start their new life that way.  There are a lot of stories like that here.

We are here on sort of survey mission.  We wanted to see the spiritual atmosphere here and see about possible ministry in the future.  We've been staying at a compound called Harvesters - Reaching the Nations.  (see www.hrtn.org) They run an orphanage and school here.  We were hoping to be able to get a pretty good glimpse of ministry with the locals, but unfortunately most of the time we're in the compound and we don't have any translators to go out with us and visit the local villages.  We do visit houses every evening for fellowships, but we're not out for very long.  So our vision trip to Sudan so far has been a bit short-sighted.

You can keep us in your prayers.  We'll take that 3 day bus ride back to Kenya on Monday, travelling in Africa is always an adventure.  But you can also keep Sudan in your prayers.  There is a window of peace here right now, but in 2011, there will be a referendum and the people of Southern Sudan will have a chance to vote for independence.  Pretty much everyone believes that the independence vote will win, but the question is will Khartoum honor it?  Probably not.  And so this place will go back to war.  I generally don't get involved in rebel movements, but I can say that I support the southerners on this one and I'm just waiting for official recognition of a new country called New Sudan.

God Bless the New Sudan!