We rolled up the legs on our trousers and jumped into the wild, warm surf as our little speedboat tugged against its anchor in the rising tide. Before us was a mesmerizingly beautiful beach, drawing, it seemed, all things toward itself. As our team waded through the water with baggage and provisions atop our heads, stumbling in the thick, powdery sand, we felt like explorers in a new land.
Funny how your place in this world seems tenuous when you consider the place of the world in a grander setting. And how time seems as massive and unstoppable as the motion of a Gas Giant when you dare to hold a moment of it.
We journeyed here to learn more about them: their culture, their hearts, and to generate some media that will help build up the mission teams who will one day serve here, as well as build the prayer support for those ministries.
Rich or poor, young and looking forward or old and looking back, comfortably settled or barely holding on, the people we have sat with and laughed with and prayed with are all, in some way, still searching for that place that is home – much like we are.
No matter what however, we were always happily captive to our imaginations, eternally optimistic, and not so mischievous to warrant a police record but not taking anything too seriously either. This was a great way to grow up and sometimes I miss the kid I was.
Literacy is like a living thing. Children who read are taught by adults who themselves can read. It is a skill that trickles down from generation to generation, and when the cycle is broken, a people group can become functionally illiterate in a very short time. The war in Sudan disrupted education to such a degree that an entire generation was being left behind.