Happy New Year!

We had an interesting night New Years Eve. The singing at the church behind us started at 10 pm then at midnight the church bells started going as well as the fireworks. At 1 pm things quieted down for about 5 minutes and then the LOUD, kind of like rock, music started and it went all until 3 or so. to say the least, it was not a restful night!

We did not go to church on New Years Day and the lady who cleans our apartment scolded me for that. She said" It is an important day and you should go to church on important days!" Guess I got put in my place:) This woman is wonderful - she has been helping us learn the greetings in Arabic and she always puts me in a good mood cause she is always singing Christian songs as she cleans.

We are feeling a little more comfortable here. This last week we have been taking the "bus" different places just to see what is around and how the bus system works. Our first big outing was to find where Lynn lived 34 years ago. After emailing a friend in Kenya who got us in contact with people living on the SIL compound here and getting their phone number and then directions, we set out. When you get a bus here, you go to the bus stop and there are 4 lines of buses and they each have their own area that they go to. Now, we knew that we needed to get to the Juba University but did not know which bus to take so we get to the buses and just start asking around and finally are told to get on the bus that goes to Customs. Ok, we get on the bus and Lynn asks a guy if he will tell us when to get off and another guy speaks up and says that is where he is going so we just following him. We get off the bus and have no idea which way to go so again we ask and get some sort of directions. Another phone call and we are on the right road wondering down it and we see another foreigner standing outside a gate and, yup, that is our guy looking for some lost folks:) It was great to see the place and see all the changes that have happened.  We then walked 1 1/2 hours to get home.  All that to say that we are finding our way around town and it feels good to be able to get where we need to go.

We are looking forward to 2015. We pray it is a year of peace here in South Sudan and a year for people to start putting their lives back together.  We also pray for each of you and give thanks for the support that you all are giving us.