November news

The rains have endend here in our area of Sudan and the sorghum has been harvested. What a great rainy season we had! The Toposa were able to get two harvests of sorghum. We have enjoyed going to the gardens and working with our friends during this time.
We had a team from E3 partners come to help with Bible storying this last week. Many people heard the stories for the first time and several prayed to receive Christ. One group spent time with the children in the afternoons sharing the gospel. The kids loved this! The other group went into the villages meeting and praying with the women.
Benton and Davis have been raising chickens. We now have our first chick and he is sooooo cute! The boys have done a great job keeping the chickens fed and put up in the coop. We never knew chickens would be so much fun to raise.
We have recently found out that we will have two young ladies as journeymen starting in April 2011. We are so excited to finally have someone to help us with the work here in Toposaland. Please pray for Allysa and Rachel as they prepare for this new journey. What a blessing this is for our family!
The registration for the referendum in January has just started in our area. There have already been a large amount of people fleeing to Kenya. Our plans are to stay here until January 5th if all is quiet. The referendum vote is on January 9th. This is a HUGE deal in Sudan. This is the vote that would separate the North and the South. Please be in prayer for Sudan. Pray for peace and guidance in this situation.

Exciting times

God is doing great things here in Sudan. We are so excited to be part of the work that He is doing. In the last 2 months there have been 42 new baptized believers. The Toposa people are now eager to hear God's Word and are responding to Him.
We just had a team from Calvary in Beaumont, Texas out to help with Bible storying. They were GREAT! They went out with us in the mornings and again in at night sharing the Bible stories using the story cloth. The Toposa attended the sessions every day and on the last day were given the opportunity to respond to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. There were 31 who responded to God's call.
Shannon and I have been out several times this week to follow up with the new believers. One village was listening to the solar powered New Testament that we had given them when we arrived. What a great joy to see them listening to God's word!
Please continue to keep the Toposa people in your prayers.

New Update

Sorry for the delay in my update. Too funny that living over here in the bush can take up so much of my time. Cooking everything by scratch, doing laundry, homeschool and all of the visitors throughout the day seem to keep me quite busy.
We are doing great! It has really been warm these last few months. Temps have been over 110 degrees in the shade, making it very difficult to fall asleep at night. It rained a couple of weeks ago which really cooled us off. The garden could not survive the heat so we will start again once the rains come.
Shannon has found a new language tutor. He drives to Riwoto every morning for his lessons and then practices in the village in the afternoons. It has been funny to see the Toposa react to how well he is catching on. We are grateful to have finally found a dependable language helper. The boys are also doing well with the language. They are with the kids all afternoons so they are definitely being exposed. I am not doing as well. I can greet and say basic words but no sentences. Hopefully, once homeschool finishes up, I will be able to join Shannon with his lessons.
The boys now have 7 goats. They have been a lot of fun and a lot of trouble. We have had to talk Shannon out of killing them several times. They have eaten all of our flowers and all of our transplanted trees. We have now fenced around the surviving trees so hopefully they can grow. Benton keeps waiting for one of the goats to have a baby. He researched the gestation of a goat and was so disappointed to find out that it was five months. One is really looking pregnant, so maybe one day we will wake up to a new kid.
We have 4 of our best couple friends coming to visit us next week. We are so excited! We will be doing discipleship training and the girls and I will be meeting with the ladies and children. The Toposa ladies are excited to meet my friends. Please pray for safe travel from the US to Sudan for our friends.
I have a few pics of some things we have been doing. Davis playing in the river after the rain, Me and some girls wearing our Toposa skirts(they made me one), Toposa women in their ceremonial dress.
Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Pray that we will show Christ's love in all that we do. Pray that we will have positive attitudes in the tough times, knowing that our Father is always with us. The elections are coming up in April which could cause fighting again. Please pray that all will go smoothly during this time. Southern Sudan has not had fair elections since 1986.