This Week

One day in school Walker got to make a monster pancake that puffed up in the oven and then deflated after we took it out. I'm considering this a science/art project...

He got to kill the monster by drowning it in syrup and then cutting its face into many bite-sized pieces.

The latest project around the compound is "re-thorning" the fence. Large thorn branches are placed all around the compound to act as a barrier for both animals and people. We are paying several local men who are believers to cut and haul the branches. The work speed of Toposa men is quite...relaxed, shall we say, so this will be a week-long project or more.

In other news, we have had three villages in the Lolipan area be extremely receptive and attentive to the AIDS stories this week. We were also able to share the gospel in one of these villages and have invitations to go back to the other two villages on Monday. The rains have started to taper off, and this is the first week in months that we have been able to go out every day.

We had a small but nice victory in Kapoeta today. A lot of our friends have been demanding asking that we buy them things like wraps or cooking pots from town. We also needed to fill up 1.5 out of our 2 gas tanks, buy phone credit (pre-paid South Sudanese cell phone, holla), buy a new air filter for our truck, get several small repairs done to our truck, and stock up on whatever vegetables were available at the market. Not only did we get every single one of the things on the list done, we also were able to find an awesome bonus--fresh fruit! I've seen passion fruit in town occasionally, but it's been a long time since I've seen a pineapple, especially one that looked edible. Rarely do we have a to-do list that long, and I was only expecting to get one or two things accomplished. Three if we were lucky. For those of you who have spent any extended amount of time in Africa, you get how productive our trip was! To most people it seems like a small thing, but it was really nice to have so much success.