"Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul."

-Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Comtemplation

Well I'm still enjoying myself in the Nuba Mountains. I've traveled north to a place called Kaliib, which we consider our Northern Belt for church reconstruction purposes. The SP guys up here are great and it's a very encouraging group to be around. I'm researching some churches, making sure they meet our criteria before we commit to working with them. Then the ones that do meet the criteria I need to sit with and interview so I can write up their history. While I still think much of my job is frustrating, I realized that it can best be described as "making social calls and drinking tea". All in all it's a pretty good lot.

Experiences of the last few days:
1) I had a meeting with some pastors who then invited me to attend a wedding that would begin there in about an hour. But then they told me my pants were too dirty so I would have to change. Since they were my only pair of pants, I wasn't able to attend the wedding.
2) I was in a nearby town and had stopped to talk to someone. A pastor I didn't know came up and asked if I could give him and his family a ride somewhere. Technically we aren't supposed to do that, but I thought I was headed that way anyhow. As we were driving I found out that this pastor had just returned from Khartoum for the first time in 11 years. He had fled there during the war and was just now returning. I thought that was pretty sweet to get to drive a family home after they'd been forced to leave 11 years earlier.
3) I eat bread for breakfast and rice and lentils for lunch and dinner. We do have biscuits and fruit for snacks, but the meals are pretty consistent up here. I enjoy it.
4) Got on the wrong road when driving back from a church site and eventually started to think we were lost forever, then we popped out on the main road within sight of our own compound.
5) Got stuck in the mud three times while driving from our main base up to our sub-base in Kaliib. One good shower for 30 minutes can turn the roads into a nightmare. The drive normally takes about 4 hours and we made it in 61/2 or 7. That's actually pretty decent. It's going to get worse. Further south guys have already spent the night stuck in the mud.

The trick to this place is simple: Nothing is going to go according to plan, so accept it. Life is pretty good once you have that rule down.