BEACH Site

My First look at the beach with white sand and crashing waves. Kayla Bell is with me here.

This FOOT

This foot was given to me by God. It has carried me in the jungle and many roads. It has so many scars and it is so little. Thank you Jesus for my feet.

Leaves for Dinner!

Make Way Partners has been working in Sudan for a long time. MWP is working with a tribe called the Dinka's. My tribe (Moru) and Dinka's don't get along very well in the jungle, but we all suffer the same things and we Worship the same GOD! Here is a story that was so true of life in the jungle. The leaves come from a certain tree and are very bitter and I have eaten them when my belly was so hungry. I want God to use me to change starving children and widows for His GLORY in Mundri, Sudan, Africa!

You can read more here on page 3: THE LEAVES

Sudan’s Grocery Bag

Inside the safety of our fence, orphans greet us with huge smiles and great hugs. We see them dance and play throughout the day. We hear them drumming and singing praise songs late into the night. We smell their food as it is cooked on open fires three times a day. From “within the fence,” it is difficult to imagine the harsh reality for orphans “outside the fence.”

The first prayer walk with this team brought reality pretty close to home.

As we walked, I noticed a torn, dirty plastic bag on the ground. I asked the team if they knew what it was. In many ways it was an unfair question because to eyes in bodies that are accustomed to full bellies, it looked like a torn, dirty plastic bag of rubbish. But, from what spilled out of it and from having seen it so many times before, I knew exactly what it was.

I said, “It’s someone’s grocery bag.”

The scenario probably went something like this: a woman, more than likely a widow, with a number of children went out to the bush hoping to find some food. She would have had a jar or can in one or both of her hands, hoping against hope that even in this record-breaking drought she could find a well that still had sufficient water in it that she would be able to draw up enough of its reserve to boil whatever food she found. She would also have a baby strapped on her back by a sheet and a large cloth balanced on top of her head to bind up and carry home whatever food she hoped to find.

Like most of the widows and orphans in Sudan, her only food-find for the day was---once again---leaves. So, she gathered what she could stuff in her small, plastic bag which had obviously been used this way many times before. The only food her grocery store stocked today was a sack of leaves. They would provide no nutrition for her young children, but she would boil them in water hoping to comfort her babies by bloating their bellies with leaves. At least they would feel full.

She would deal with the dysentery the leaves caused tomorrow; today she would focus on the only comfort she could provide – a sack of leaves.

She then took the dirty cloth from atop her head and placed the torn bag---now stuffed full of the fruit of her day’s labor---inside it. Next she tied the four corners of the cloth together and balanced it once again atop her head.

Imagine the several-mile walk back home after her long day of searching the wild countryside for food and water. Imagine her worry. Imagine her emotionally “checking out,” not paying attention to all the details so that she might not hurt so deeply for her children. Imagine her bending over to take her hungry, crying baby off her back to nurse him with what little milk her malnourished breast would offer.

Now, imagine with all the distraction, perhaps the knot she made with the four corners of her cloth was not tight enough, or perhaps a hole wore through it as the sticks and thorny leaves braised it as it bounced along her walk through the bristly bush. All we know for sure is that somehow, her only yield of the day, her only food offering for her children wriggled its way from her sack and fell to the ground.

By Kimberly Smith...MWP.

David Platt... Jesus is...

Sweet Tea!

Sweet Tea is a southern drink that is so goooooood. We are learning to make sweet tea in Alabama and have it at every day.

Surely his marcy will be with me