Making 21 Years!!!

Our dear friend Elnai James has made 21 years!!!  We rejoice with him at this accomplishment!  We were thrilled to get to share this special day with him!  What an added celebration that the day his nation of South Sudan was voting to receive its independance and be born as a new country, he was celebrating his birth and life up til now!

The party began with necessary hand washing! Something as Americans we seem to always forget...running water must have made us lazy!

The table was spread!  Meat, Avacado, Chapati, Chips!!! A feast for any young man!  We thank Jesus for Elnai's love for our girls!  They have taken him quickly as an uncle or big brother!

The cookie cake was a fun treat for us all!

Thanks Ms. Pat for chocolate chips! We are putting them to good use!

Elnai James just left this week to head back down to Entebee and work on some details with paper work and do some studying before his school begins at the end of the month. We had so much fun with him!

Thank you Jesus for allowing this young man to make 21 years! We wish you all could sit and hear from him the story of the last 20!  God has been so faithful and His mercies are truly new every morning!

Continue to pray for Elnai James and his homeland. The voting is "offically" over and now there is a month to wait on the counting of the results due to infrastructure and such.  60% of the southernors needed to have voted and to vote for succession for the vote to go through.

Please pray for honesty, purity, truth in these days of counting and waiting.

Pray for the safety and peace of communities ESPECIALLY on the north/south border.

Pray the Church will rise up and call all men unto JESUS.

Pray JESUS might meet Sudanese from the north and south by any means He chooses, dreams, visions, His Word, missionaries, neighbors, His voice!
Thank you for celebrating LIFE and Sudan with us tonight.

Sudan

Please check out Joy Phillips' blog...we serve under her leadership in our Sudanese ministries...Mango Ministries.  Her latest update is super helpful in understanding what is going on this week in Sudan.
http://www.joyphillips.blogspot.com/ Thank you for your prayers!

Sudan

Check out www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12144675 and keep praying!
The maps and pictures at the end of the article are especially helpful.

Elsie Jayne, Lucy Mae and FRIENDS!

The holidays are different here in many ways, but in so many ways the same. Everyone loves to be around people that they love and enjoy this time of year. While we have really missed our family and friends in the states this season, we have not been lonely!

Jesus has blessed us with so many dear friends around us right here in Arua! 

This is just Elsie Jayne showing you it can be COLD in Arua too. It was maybe in the 70s one morning and so she had to put on LONG sleeves and her gum boots to play outside.

Elsie Jayne and Jane made banana bread for friends in the neighborhood and had a blast doing it!

Lucy has made a new little friend Mercy...she is staying with the Taylors a "new" IMB family that lives in Arua now.  They are loving on her while her adoptive mom went home from the hassles with the government here to try and enjoy the holidays with her family in the states...she comes back next week to keep pushing forward to get her sweet daughter home.  Pray little Mercy senses the peaceful presence of Jesus in these days of massive transition.

We enjoyed a really fun day of painting and playing with the Taylor kids!

I know I am biased, but Lucy is so CUTE in her painting smock!

Daddy built the girls a sand pit for their Christmas gift! (that's what it's called here) and they LOVE it!!!

This is when he first showed it to them.  Elnai is in the background and our neighbor and friend Louise is holding Lucy as she puts her feet in for the first time!

Hours of entertainment!!!

Enjoying Christmas songs with Elnai James...a very talented musician!

Elsie Jayne is learning photography! Thanks for your paitence!  This is us with our precious friend Sarah!  She lived in Arua when we first moved here, but now is following Jesus in Bunia Congo where she teaches Bible Translation at Shalom University.  She teaches languages...in French (She's British). She's amazing! We praise Jesus for her and her friendship. We had a lovely week with her visiting! A very happy way to begin the new year!

Pam and Stan Wafler are our American friends!

They work with the Baptist International Mission Board and have lived just around the corner from us the whole time we have been in Arua. 
They have just returned from a hard time in the states as Stan's daddy passed away.  We had the privelge of keeping their kids while they got away this week for a couple of night. 

Jacob, Jack and Joanna were so much fun!!! 

The girls with Joanna Wafler and precious Baby David Azite...Jane's baby.

David again...we love this boy, whom Lucy has named Bubba!

Boxing Day

Our favorite day of Christmas week was Boxing day!  We spent the morning boxing up toys and clothes to share with the orphans at the ORA base here in Arua.  Our dear friends Sam and Kim Trenwith had been living there the past 6 months, but are back in New Zealand now. We miss them, but still enjoy the friends we've made at the base. The girls love the freedom of worship there with 20 other kids!

Billy enjoyed getting to share his set of Christmas Bible stories again!

and the kids LOVED acting it out!

One of Elsie Jayne's favorite people in the world right now is Peace. She leads worship for the kids at ORA and is so fun. She is 16 and a mom to Levi...another friend of Elsie Jayne's!  I think the friendship is mutual...they both were really enjoying their Christmas candy too!

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was a new experience for us...a man in the market was selling something that looked like grapefruit to me(earilier in the week)! I'd never seen those here, so I asked about it. He told me how frustrated he was because a man had cheated him. He told him it was an orange tree, but now, look at this! They call it "grape" something he told me!!  So upset. I decided to encourage him by buying all he had!  We had grapefruit for breakfast on Christmas morning!!!  Elsie Jayne was not super thrilled with the taste...but even after this face, enjoyed hers...she said, "it's spicy, mommy!"  It is something intense! 

Allow us to re-introduce you to our friend Elnai James. You have seen him here in years past, or in update letters even. He is a friend from Sudan. He has lived with us since December 21. School begins the end of January...so we have a few more weeks together.

Elnai made Christmas day very special. Our dear 20 year old friend received his FIRST ever Christmas gift!  That was humbling and fun to be a part of.  He keeps showing us more of Jesus through His life and presence and we are really grateful!

As we look toward Sudan's vote for the south to become independant this week even...we thank Jesus for a moment-by-moment reminder in our home to pray...through this lovely young man.

The girls really enjoy Elnai too. 

This is him with a friend, Innocent on Christmas day watching the movie, "The Nativity" with Lucy too!

Our yummy, fun, totally American Christmas lunch enjoyed with a Sudanese and a Ugandan!

Merry Christmas!!!

Our Neighborhood Happy Birthday Jesus Party

We had a Happy Birthday Jesus party in our yard the Thursday before Christmas.  We invited our friends in the neighborhood and the pastors from the churches in Nebbi came with their wives. Billy told FIVE stories from the gospels of Jesus' birthday story.  Some friends helped us act out the stories...

The angel came to Mary (with her side-kick, Elsie Jayne - this is not part of the original text!).

Billy narrates to the crowd as Joseph and a VERY pregnant Mary look for a place to stay in Bethlehem.

The happy couple with the newborn Jesus!

The Shepherds go and tell everyone of this amazing thing they have seen! Lucy was a sheep, but not so thrilled with her costume! Maybe next year!

The STAR appears and leads the wise men to Baby Jesus.

The wise men follow the star and bring their gifts to the Newborn King.

Then the visitors all got a chance to re-tell the story.

And to act out the story again as well!

Christmas in Yumbe

The Tuesday before Christmas we had the honor of encouraging the Christians in Yumbe, a district to our north.  The church we celebrated Jesus' birthday with had never had a Christmas "party" before and it was SO MUCH FUN!!!!

Billy shared the story of Jesus' birth from both Matthew and Luke's gospels and we enjoyed a more formal worship service together...and then it was GAMES and silliness all afternoon!

 Billy with Pastor Gift.

 Our dear friend Mambo Charles (here holding Elsie Jayne) is the one who invited us to this church, where Billy has visited many times.  He also thought it was a great idea for us to dress up as "Father and Mother Christmas" and pass out candy.  CRAZY TIMES!

We tried to find shade against the church building to watch the silly games!

So much fun!!! A three legged race, sack race, egg race, and the ELDERS race!  Too hilarious to watch the over 40s run, down a whole soda, and then finish the run.  Yes, I'm sorry, but when 50% of your population is under 14...40 is considered an "elder."

We stopped by the health centre where Mambo's wife and our good friend Joyce works as a mid-wife. We got to see two new babies she had helped birth in the night.  She works 24 hour shifts for a month at a time!!!  She sleeps in her office to be ever available.  Mambo got to go and stay with her for Christmas!  This couple is COMMITTED to serving their community and we are committed to helping them be a light for Jesus in a dark place. We thank Jesus for their friendship.

Mambo, Joyce (holding Lucy), Elnai James (in back...a Sudanese friend who arrived this day and is staying with us this month), Joanna and Elsie Jayne and then Rebecca (a friend of Mambo and Joyce who traveled with us for the day)!

Today's Cobra

Today we had a cobra on our compound! 

Simon, our watchman, and dear friend HEARD the snake in the bushes and began chasing the thing. It was HUGE! The chase lasted a couple of hours and involved neighbors on all sides!  Quite exciting! 

 The final death blow!

 The beheaded snake!  People are SERIOUS around here of being sure that the snake was dead!

Trust me...it's dead!

The most exciting part of this adventure this afternoon was that we had been looking for this particular snake!  We think she is the mother a group of little snakes that keep showing up around the yard. 

Her final resting place...The odd thing that doesn't just happen where I come from, is the guy you can't see in this picture holding the long stick is a pastor that came by for tea with Billy.  They were talking in the living room when there was lots of yelling outside and they ran outside to find the chase with the snake in full swing. Of course, both men joined in and the Pastor and Billy helped with the kill and burial.