Well,it is a new day in South Sudan. On Saturday the Transitional Government was put in to place. The hope and prayer is that this is the beginning of true peace in South Sudan. Please continue to pray that the leaders will put the needs of the people and country first.

We celebrated the day by staying at home. Not because we could not go out, just because we had no reason to go out! I must say, it ended up being a boring day - boring enough that Lynn made a coffee cake in the afternoon!

We are thinking of making a trip to Khartoum in March - well, at least is going and we will see if I can go along or not. With the change in government in Khartoum that happened last year it is now much easier to go there. Of course, we have now waited until the hotter time of year to go but, oh well, a little sweat never hurt anyone.

We will be coming to the States in June this year for 4 months to do speaking wherever anyone wants us. It is always an interesting time doing the speaking. We are building on past visits so it is like seeing old friends and then the new churches is the opportunity to make even more friends. It is tiring and fun at the same time. It is nice to be able to talk with folks who have an interest in the places that we work and the wonderful people that we work with. It is great when people have a lot of questions even political questions that I pass off to my hubby to answer! 😁

Oh, guess what??? We have city electricity at our apartment building! We have had it for about 3 weeks now and while there have been a few outages, they have not lasted long. We have not blown any chargers or computers either so that is really good! We now have street lights in parts of town and each day new areas are getting city power so things are brighter at night. Bad thing now is that there is so much light at night that I cannot see the stars as well.

We are feeling better about things these days. Lynn and I reminded ourselves that we are at the 5 year mark and that is often when missionaries get discouraged. It helped remembering that and talking it through together - we try to laugh more now rather than just look at the negative. Sitting and talking with our friends and partners here over a casual tea time or meal is also a good way of getting past some of the negative feelings.

Something just happened that is one of the difficult things about being so far from family. Our son's father-in-law just passed away and we cannot be there at this time. Please keep the family in prayer as they plan a funeral and adjust to a new reality.