From Rick

March 21, 2009

Forgive me for the brevity of this post but I wanted to get this short summary up before I get engulfed in my “real” job on Monday. I promise to get some pictures up soon.

On behalf of Jalle Team “B” (Jim Sterling, Ty Homer, David Wood and Rick Wood), I want to thank you for your prayers while we were traveling in and out of Sudan.
Each of our eight flights arrived early to their destinations and the 12 hours of driving to/from Jalle was fairly uneventful, although rough since there are no paved roads in South Sudan.

Once in Juba, we were greeted by Jalle Team “A” (Fred Beesley, David Green and William Majok) and several Sudanese leaders. We were allowed to walk through customs without our things being searched since one of our Sudanese friends is a high government official and they waived us through the line – not that they would have found much more than 5 duffle bags of children’s clothes and 4 trunks of supplies for David, Fred and William.

When we arrived in Jalle, we were able to walk the Jalle Community Center job site. Just for clarification, a community center in Sudan refers to several buildings while typically being a single building in the US. Fred and David have done a tremendous job in overseeing the manual digging of 320+ footers in solid dry, clay soil for the six buildings being constructed. We estimate that the pouring of the footers should be completed by the end of March. The Ugandan team that will be leading the erection of the steel buildings will also arrive by the end of the month to begin their work. We are hopeful that the team’s part of the project will be completed by the first of June.

By the way, Ty Homer will remain in Jalle until early April in an effort to help Fred and David complete the concrete work. Ty was an instant hero by identifying a way to reduce the time and amount of concrete required to finish each footer.

Overall, David, Fred and William are in good spirits and leaning on God’s strength daily to help them through this project. It is a tough place to live, physically, spiritually and culturally. In fact, William is the only one who has gained weight during this time, although David and Fred are looking lean and mean.

Again, thanks for your prayers. The team FEELS them and is what DRIVES them. Please continue to lift them up! Pray that they have plenty of workers and materials to complete their work. Pray for their health. Pray that they will have the opportunity to speak into the lives of the young people working with them (Many Sudanese know they are Christians but don’t fully understand what it means to have a personal relationship with Christ).

More to come…

Rick