Greetings from Tonj.  My name is John Lazar, and over the next few weeks, you will be meeting the members of the latest team here, among them students, midwives, and my identical twin brother Joe.  We have all taken different paths to get here, and now that we have arrived, we are using our different gifts to the best of our ability to lend hands around the clinic.  And there is no shortage of work to be done, that’s for sure!

Today is Saturday, our first day of rest since arriving on Tuesday.  Each day has brought with it insights, lessons, and terrific surprises.  Today, I was impressed most with the sheer variety of places we can help around the clinic.  As I said, it was a day of rest, and  I mean this in a relative sense.  We were at work in the morning, and the afternoon held some more fun activities.

I came here after completing my first year in medical school, and have been working pretty exclusively in the clinic during the week.  But today I was able to get my fill in all the other work that goes on here on a daily basis.  Many of us began by helping with the construction of the new clinic.  Only a frame stands right now, but already I can imagine this new building being so much larger than the clinic we have been using.  It will be exciting to see this project come along little by little each day.  After a few hours on the site, there were repeated patients in the clinic, which is closed on weekends to everything but emergencies.  So the clinic, together with the construction site, was hot with activity on this Saturday morning.  Following lunch, we got some down time, but later in the afternoon we went into Tonj to have some fun and do some advertising for the next day’s event: a screening of the World Cup in the local Church.  We obtained a projector and satellite dish, and have been planning an event to promote a feeling of community and entertainment.  How did we advertise, you might ask.  By heading to the soccer field and playing soccer with the local children, and passed on the news about the World Cup.  Even getting on with duties is fun here.

I’ve come to understand that there is aaaaalways things to be done here, and there’s a job for all of us to do.  And today was a fun opportunity to get a glimpse of some of the other goings-on outside of the clinic itself.  It is a really dynamic and growing place I’m blessed to call home for the next month.  Thanks for reading, and see you next Saturday.

This is Daniel writing on June 24. Today I went with half of the medical clinic staff to a village 45 minutes outside Tonj called Malony.  There has been a lot of construction in the last couple years, and we were able to drive 2/3 of the way on a paved dirt road.  We had to off-road the last third to the village.

This was the first time we had ever done an outreach in this village, even though our government-paid security guard lives in it.  His name is Dut, and he is quite silly and very fun.  I worked in the pharmacy again.  I also was able to share the gospel using an “evangecube” which was translated into Dinka.  A surprising number of children and adults knew some English—even enough for a complete conversation.  I made friends with a boy named Michael and with the headmaster Barnaba.  Barnaba took to liking me, and offered to pay 50 cows for the dowry of my first Sudanese wife.  He said, “you will stay here, and you will become Sudan.”  He was very kind, and very thankful to have me share the gospel with the children and adults.  Michael asked me for my Christian name, and I told him it is “Daniel.”  Then I shared the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, and the children really enjoyed it; especially the part when God shuts the lions’ mouths.

It eventually began raining and we had to close the clinic.  But we had a puncture in one of the vehicle tires and had to wait for Sebit and our driver to be fixed.  There was a portable metal room at the village that In Deed and Truth had brought a few months ago to use as a temporary medical facility, and we took shelter in it.  A Sudanese mother and her children joined us inside for the hour we had to wait.  She had a delightful young girl perhaps 3 years old.  While sitting in a chair I held out my hand to her and she came close to stand by my legs and eventually hug them.  But she soon began reaching up to climb into my lap, so I picked her up and played with her for a while.  She was very calm, and she eventually fell asleep in my arms for a half hour.  I had much of that time to pray for her.  She will likely grow up and not remember me, but I was happy to pray that she grows up to know her heavenly Father’s embrace as she today knew mine.

It is very hard to believe I had been here only two full days.