Day 4 - Travel to Mundri, S Sudan

Sunday, March 17, 2013
We awoke early today to prepare for our flight to Mundri, South Sudan.  We flew out of Kijansi which is in between Entebbe and Kampala, Uganda.  We loaded up in 2 -12 seater planes with all our luggage.  We are using Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) which exists simply to help people reach the hard to reach places with the gospel.  We are so thankful they agreed to fly on Sunday.  The pilots prayed over our flight and mission before take-off. 
The view from the plane is beautiful.  Uganda is so green and lush right now.  As we got into S. Sudan, we could see the White Nile river and things became more barren.  We had to stop in Arua, Uganda before officially leaving the country. Our first flight to Arua was ~1 1/2 hours, then only 45 min to Mundri.  Once on the ground in Mundri we were greeted by many people that had come to see us.  Our main field partner there is Jefferies.  Some of his co-laborers are Paul (the archbishop of the WHOLE world), Coffee, Steven and Repent - will have to give details on all of them soon.  All the children there wanted to shake our hand - they were so friendly and happy to see us.  I gave the men some letters that my friends, Bethany and Louanne (who have been to S Sudan previously) had written them.  They were so happy to receive them.  We then traveled by 2 land cruisers back to the Mundri Compound which we also call the BrookHills coumpound because that is who had it built originally.  Now Jefferies organization owns and runs the compound.  This is where we were supposed to stay saturday night.  There is a large room with 10 beds for the girls and that is where we rested a bit before going on to buaygi.  Church was still going on at a nearby building and so we joined some of the kids outside and took pictures and played soccer with them.  They fed us rice, lentil beans (mush), chicken and rolls.  We sat out under the mango tree and visited with the men and played banana-grams.  Some of the World Harvest Missionary women stopped by to say hello too. 
We finally loaded up all of our stuff into the land cruisers and left about 5pm for Buagyi.  IT took about 1 hour to drive there on the dirt road they call Highway 1.  When we arrived at Buagyi we all settled 2 by 2 into rooms that were just large enough for 2 twicn beds and a little walking space between them.  It was quite hot in the small rooms so it took us a while to get settled in. 
They fed us again at Buagyi in which we had our usual - rice, beans and a roll.  The Lowry's seasoning some brought from home was helpful.  We all sat out under the mango tree and made our plans for the 1st clinic on Monday.  Wendy also shared a great devotional on Psalm 63:3.  We also got letters from home which was a very encouraging way to start the week in Buagyi.  About 1/2 way thru the devotional, it started raining, which was a suprise but very refreshing.  We moved into a larger room and prayed over the Moru men that God has raised up to serve their people alongside Jefferies. 
After that some of us ventured to the showers.  I was just going to wipe down with my wipes, but Lauren and I decided to go ahead and try out this African shower thing.  IT was definitely a challenge to figure it all out.  But this time it is dark and the shower and latrine stalls have no light and are located at the end of our row of rooms. There are separate stalls for men and women.  We basically used a small bucket full of the "clean" well water and a plastic water bottle.  The shower stall is just a small concrete room in which you had to watch for lizards, big spiders and wasps all while trying to douse yourself in soap/water and not get the water in your mouth for fear of giardia or whatever else lurks in this "clean" water. Our quick dry towels came in handy, but soon we were sweaty again from the heat.  We got a little more settled in a our rooms and went to bed excited for our day to come - all snug under our mosquito nets.