Peace Lutheran Church Missouri Synod - Glidden, Iowa

Sudan Reflections 8 August 30,2009 “Money Talks: being a businesswoman in Sudan”

Good morning,
From my journal : “Armed with $13,000 strapped around my waist, I boarded the plane for Sudan.
I think I looked at least 7 months pregnant, but then I was going to Sudan to give birth to a
permanent building, so why shouldn’t I look pregnant? Vanity strikes, though, even with the
freedom of going somewhere where nobody knows how you really look anyway. As Rick knows, I don’t
have much experience handling large amounts of money, nor do I know how far it will go, but I am a
very tight person.

But this trip I had an unexpected money blessing. Like loaves and fishes, God increased the dollar
from 2 pounds to 2.7 Sudanese pounds. That is almost 1/3 more! So to get the building going
fast:
strategy #1: set an opening date. They love ceremonies here (often I think for the reason you
buy water, soda, sweets and biscuits for the participants!) My last Saturday , the 22nd, would
be it.
Strategy #2 : pay in bits and pieces but keep it coming in crisp $100 bills. That kept the
builder’s eyes open and focused on moving along
Strategy #3: have some features for important people to come and see
Strategy #4 “ invite the big guys.”

End of journal entry

It dawned on me after a few days and word got out that I had American dollars, that I was
functioning as the bank of Yambio. This town is the county seat for Western Equatoria State
in South Sudan, but the one bank that was there had failed and closed. American dollars are
the trading medium for the business people to go and buy goods in Uganda or Congo and resell
in Yambio. It used to be going to Congo was the oft repeated trip but now the stakes are too
high along the Congo road with LRA activity so the longer trip to Uganda to buy is taken.

So I learned not only to insist on the2.7 exchange rate but also that just exchanging dollars
had some buying power to get “your best discount,” a phrase you always use to find out the final
price of things. So once I realized I had enough money to complete the building, I set out
to buy a wished for item for each person of Hands of Mercy. That meant a mattress for 8 people,
radios of 4, blankets for 2, clothing for one, etc etc. It was a red letter day towards the end
of my trip when in fact those things were purchased and distributed; I had likened
giving out first aid kits to giving someone a$500 bill, but a mattress (to a person crippled
by polio or club feet and drags himself on the ground) was greeted with unending whooping,
clapping and “tambuahe, M’bori” thanks to God. Never will I spend $45 on something without
remembering what relief, what joy that expense in the form of a mattress brought to some people
in Sudan.

Back to the strategies of money talking in Sudan.
So we set the date for opening right from the first day of my meeting with the builder. I will
save the actual opening details for another email, but having a deadline really got
things in motion, in a culture where you remember me writing earlier: African time is NOT our
concept of time. We set about to write up invitations, costing me a pound to print one page at
the computer center, so we did half page invites with room for our official stamp. I made a
whole journal entry one day on the power of a stamp, but for now, having a typed invite with
a Hands of Mercy stamp meant a lot!

Strategy #3 was really fun. I have written about the challenges of clean water before--
of the daily function of children to go to the wells (rather than school) with their yellow
jerricans many times a day. And so many times I had talked about collecting rain water off
the church guesthouse roof but no cisterns to be found. They just had not done it that way
before…..But t hanks to a US pastor visit recently, two plastic cisterns and gutters now provide
wonderfully clean water, delivered right there at the guesthouse with e ach rainfall.

So I set about to have our own cistern and rainwater collection at Hands of Mercy. It didn’t
take much to convince the builder, once he saw I had the money to pay him to get a cistern from
Uganda. He had a brick raised platform built right off the middle of the veranda (not where
I would have put it!) to speak loud and clear -- Hands of Mercy was having something new in town!!!
Unfortunately it did not arrive before the grand opening or before I left, but I am trusting
my next visit will hear the praises of using water from the heavens. (see picture in opening ceremony)

So every day, I would walk down to see the progress, take the many pictures of guys doing this
or that; everyone wants their picture taken with some evidence of doing some “real work” (see
picture of men plastering the shop) In case you don’t remember: Hands of Mercy permanent
building is an L shaped building consisting of a large classroom, a shop (complete with
metal door, a real splurge of an expense but one the builder insisted was necessary), an office,
a storage room and another room for our photo studio (future income generating effort), all with
a veranda to keep our machines under cover. And an embarrassing large “cornerstone”
that is really a monument, commemorating the foundation laid August 6, 2008.

So with typed and stamped invites given to the government people and other churches, with
the rain holding off most of my whole time there so construction kept going and the necessary
food bought and most of the project completed, we had the grand opening. Supposedly at 10 am, but
at 11 there still were only two invited guests, plus the Hands of Mercy people but I was too
excited to be worried. Then came the seminary students to fill up the seats and the usual
straggle of children watching for any excitement of the day and at 11:30 we began to open and
dedicate the building. The painting was not finished, nor clean up accomplished but the
building was, for all purposes, really ready to be opened. Out of the our bag of sewing notions
from the pillowcase dresses, we found some white bias tape and stretched it between two posts for a
ribbon and I remembered to locate the scissors.
For the next hour, we heard speeches from the few government officials who came, from the Episcopal
priest who came and from the SPLM (freedom political party of South Sudan) friend of our manager
and our church representative. And I got a chance to speak, with the Lord giving me the words
of what it meant for the church to welcome the vulnerable as important members of the Body of Christ.

But the speech that burned into my heart that day came from Angelo (if you remember the young
man who walked on his hands upside down until we got him his own three wheel adapted bike-- and
whose story I repeatedly tell as “Angelo’s wheels”). Fortunately I have it on my little flip
video camera because as he spoke for the group, he explained how these people were once scattered
beggars of the town and now are not a forgotten group of real people. It could not have been
spoken better by the most eloquent speaker in the world, as everyone hushed to watch this
vibrant young man swing himself out from the crowd on the ground to come to the front. I
think the most important government official or leader there was humbled by the testimony of
this man of what it meant to feel in himself some esteem. And to recognize he is esteemed in
God’s eyes just as importantly as t he one who wore the government uniform and arrived
on a motorcycle. That moment made any of the hardships of going to Sudan, or raising money
for HOM, (my main occupation at home) fade into the realization: the Lord’s Hand is the Hand
of mercy, making “One Body in Christ” a reality.

Could I ever ask for more than this? The privilege of taking first aid, and glasses in the
name of Christ, of taking lovely quilts for widows or hygiene for orphans and children, of
taking toothbrushes and pens for seminary st udents-- all of those wonderful “things” I am sent
with, important as they are, fade in comparison to this one statement-- that people, who were
once excluded, ostracized and forgotten, have begun to realize they are precious, worthy and valued
members of God’s family and His Body, the Church.

Would that we all realize the gift the Lord offers to us-- an inheritance as a child of God,
eternal life and value found only in Him. While I began this reflection with the fact money talks
(and it did), the real talking of that day was done by the Lord through Angelo. To truly know
God cares for you and will never abandon you is the gift Angelo gave us. May we live in the light
that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son Jesus Christ so that the outcasts, the
lame, the blind, the poor, all of us could have a place forever with Him, free and whole and loved.

In Christ, our redeemer,
Pat