A few weeks ago I had an interesting week. I ended up in Khartoum, Sudan for much of the week flying around visiting the Samaritan’s Purse projects. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to take pictures as security has a major presence and in general it’s not legal to take pictures, especially at the airports. I didn’t feel like getting my camera taken away so decided that I’d just have to write more this time around.
Khartoum was quite different than when we used to live there in 1994-95! Back then it was much more primitive with few restaurants and hotels around. Today it is a bustling city with many restaurants, more than twice the vehicles so traffic is sometimes pretty bad, and some very nice hotels and businesses. There is even a pretty nice “shopping mall” with a grocery store in it. How fun to go back and see those changes. I was also able to renew some acquaintances from back then which was good.
From Khartoum we flew out to the Darfur area (Nyala) to do a visit there. Even with all of the political upheaval of the ICC and the indictment of President Bashir we were still able to obtain permissions to get around which was amazing. We also visited Kauda which is where SP has had some long term projects.
Khartoum was quite different than when we used to live there in 1994-95! Back then it was much more primitive with few restaurants and hotels around. Today it is a bustling city with many restaurants, more than twice the vehicles so traffic is sometimes pretty bad, and some very nice hotels and businesses. There is even a pretty nice “shopping mall” with a grocery store in it. How fun to go back and see those changes. I was also able to renew some acquaintances from back then which was good.
From Khartoum we flew out to the Darfur area (Nyala) to do a visit there. Even with all of the political upheaval of the ICC and the indictment of President Bashir we were still able to obtain permissions to get around which was amazing. We also visited Kauda which is where SP has had some long term projects.
Here are the two airplanes we were flying on our trip. We spent a few hours there and then returned back to Khartoum. The next day we departed Khartoum for Juba. Spent a few hours there and then flew over to a small village called Yei for the night. Here are a few pictures to show what Yei is like. It’s another SP base where they have a workshop for the church building program. So far we have built more than 250 churches. It’s an amazing program!
The next day I had the privilege of being part of an Operation Christmas Child distribution. (The shoebox gifts) It was at an orphanage way out in the bush and all I can say is it was really a moving experience. The excitement in the kids was amazing. It’s so cool that the gospel is handed out with these gifts. Here are a few more pictures of that.
We returned then to Nairobi on Thursday. It was a good trip.
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