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I’ve officially arrived in London after being out in the bush of Sudan for nearly two weeks with no electricity/phone/internet. I didn’t realize I was going to be out of touch quite that long! Two days ago our thermometer in Nasir read 136.5°F before it broke. We took this reading at 4:30PM so we can only speculate what it was at 1 or 2 but can safely say it was upwards of 140. Now I arrive in London and it’s 40°!! It feels amazing.
I met up with two other guys on the team in Amsterdam and then we flew to Kampala where we packed our things at the house of the one of the missionaries. We got into Kampala super late because we had difficulties with our plane after take and had to return to Amsterdam about an hour after take off. When we did arrive, we started repacking all of our stuff and getting rid of anything we could because we had a very tight weight limit on the plane we were headed to Sudan in (Cessna 206.)
We spent from 2:30 AM to 6:30 AM re-organizing and minimizing, trying to get down to our weight limit. It was most difficult because of the radio equipment that we were carrying. We had a 200ft coaxial cable that weighted 70 lbs by itself. Finally, after a night of no sleep it was time to head to the airport again. When we got there they decided to put us in a Cessna Caravan, capable of handling a much higher weight load so ultimately all our work to downsize didn’t even really matter! Ah!
We took of from Kampala and flew into Torit in Southern. There we waited to meet up with the Douglas DC3 which was carrying the radio tower itself, along with the German engineers who designed it. Stepping off the plane there, the heat hit us pretty hard. I knew it was going to be a toasty couple of weeks. After a few hours, the DC3 showed up and we were on our way to Aweil (Uwayl.)
We arrived in Aweil, landing on a dirt air strip in the middle of a village. Immediately we were surrounded by hundreds of curious onlookers. When a plane lands in a small village like this, everybody knows it. We unloaded the tower and our other supplies into a land rover. The rover was driving back and forth in between the radio tower site and the air strip and while we were waiting to for the rover to come back for us, I shot this image of the DC3:
We got to stay in the compound of a largely Canadian missions organization called Cush for Christ. I slept in a tent along with friend and videographer Taylor Martyn. It was super warm, even at night, so sleeping in the tent (with no fly) was much better ventilation than it would have been in any of the huts.
The next morning the tower started going up. There were 20 elements, each at 10 feet in height. The German team that was putting everything together has been building similar towers all over Africa for a couple of years. They were quick and precise and the tower really went up fast!
The Sudanese people are wonderful and were very excited to have us in the area working on this project. Many of them are hungry for the Word and can’t wait for this new avenue to receive it in their language. Pastors walk and bike hours in the heat to get chronological Bible story training.
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That’s it for now cause I am really tired. I am going to catch a nap and then hopefully head out to watch the Liverpool futbol game somewhere tonight. There’s a bunch more images and stories to share so keep an eye out for more posts soon. Thanks for all your prayers.
We are here in Kampala after some crazyness in our flight schedule. We are set to leave again on a privately charted Cessna 206 in about 2 hours. I think I will be completely out of touch from now until I get back in a little over a week.
Please continue to pray for our team! I will post updates and pictures asap!
We are onboard our flight to Entebbe Uganda at the Amsterdam airport and just got news that a plane has crashed here. We are unsure of the severity at this point but its our understanding that no one was killed. I wanted to let everyone know we’re okay! Hopefully we’ll get to take off soon but with a situation like this it could be several hours. Please pray for people onboard the aircraft!
I am writing from the Amsterdam airport right now… just got off a 7.5 hour flight from Detroit and slept just about 6 hours of it… it was wonderful… but I’m still pretty tired…
I love this airport except for the fact that is well-known that you cannot purchase chewing gum here…. why do I begin craving it every time I land here! AH! There is literally ZERO gum ANYWHERE!
Things got pretty crazy as I prepared to leave the country because the bag I was going to carry my clothes/extra equipment in ended up being just a tad too small… but fortunately I was able to come up with a solution. (I’m carrying on two bags, no checked bags… in these two bags is all my photographic equipment, clothes and supplies for this 3 week 3 day trip.)
About this Job
For those of you that don’t know, I’ve been commissioned for a job by an organization called Aid Sudan that is taking me into South Sudan to photograph and document a number of different projects but primaroily a project entailing the construction of a 200 foot radio tower that will be used to broadcast Christian radio, health and hygiene training and local news to approximately 1 million people in south Sudan.
From Sudan I head to London to spend a 3 days (I’ve been in the airport a couple of times but never actually into the city… I can’t wait.) I’m going to try to make it up to Stonehenge.
Then I’m off to Guatemala City to photograph a giant revival on March 13-15th led by Luis Palau. After the revival, I’m sticking around another 5 days or so to photograph some missions projects that PCBC in Dallas is involved in and plan to return to US soil on March 20th.
I’ll try to keep this updated as often as I can but I’ll be about as far out of communication as I have ever been while I’m in Sudan. But please keep an eye out for updates, I’m excited about this adventure.
And lastly but most of all, please keep me and the other guys in your prayers. For safety and for God’s guidance and wisdom. Pray that God will use us to impact these people and that through us God will show these people the splendor, power and grace of His love.
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