Where is Lokoja, Nigeria?
Today the church celebrates the Birth of John the Baptist, whom the Moslems call Yahyah, and who has a much-visited tomb in the Ummayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria. The church also prays today for the diocese of Lokoja, Nigeria, which is just south of Abuja, from where 300 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, people who believe girls should not be educated. Most of those girls are still missing. Three hundred girls . . . Lokoja . . . John the Baptist . . . Syria . . . so much need for prayer. . . The reading is from Forward Day by Day.
TUESDAY, June 24 The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist
Isaiah 40:11. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
So much of our scripture is violent and distressing, yet there are many passages like this, full of comfort and assurance that the trouble is over. Others might look at it and say, “Your God is violent and terrible, and the reassurances are flat and silly.”
Maybe that’s true. I tend to look at them more as descriptions of how we experience our lives rather than declarations of God’s nature. Our lives are difficult and often catastrophic—earthquakes, malaria, civil wars, and dangerous militias, to name only a few issues—and our lack of control means we blame God for it. But I don’t think God acts that way. And in the face of catastrophe, we say meaningless things: “Everything happens for a reason.” That’s no comfort at all.
Isaiah speaks peace to his people, trying his hardest to take their pain seriously and to offer the truth that everything will be okay in the end. When it’s not okay, it’s not yet the end. That “okayness” might be justice here or it might be eternal life, but this present trouble is not the end of the story.
PRAY for the Diocese of Doko (Lokoja, Nigeria)
Today the Church remembers The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist.
Ps 85 or 85:7-13; Isaiah 40:1-11; Acts 13:14b-26; Luke 1:57-80
Praying for the Central Gulf Coast
Today, the church prays for the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. That’s us. Today, we need your prayers.
Photos from Business Insider
I don’t think I have ever seen a storm like we saw last night. This was not a hurricane type storm, this was a thunderstorm that had Pensacola grey and dark and gloomy all day Tuesday, and then around 7 pm, all hell broke loose. Thunder. Lots of thunder. Not just a tornado watch, but a tornado warning for our area, one of those “get away from all the outside walls of your house to a protected inner area NOW” kind of warning.
The tornado warning passed. The tornado watch passed. We found a leaking door frame, and brought buckets. The thunder and lightning continued. We found a leaking ceiling light fixture, and put another bucket under it. The thunder and lightning and high wind continued. We found water coming down through a bathroom vent – thank God we have a lot of buckets. The thunder and lightning continued.
We found a leaking closed door frame in another part of the house – four mixing bowls, surrounded by towels. The thunder and lightning continued.
The thunder and lightning continued all through the night. We slept fitfully, AdventureMan getting up three or four times to check the buckets.
I know, it sounds like we live in a terrible house, but we have never had things leak like this before. I think it has to do with rain blowing up under the roof vent, that’s all I can think of. AdventureMan has already called the roofer, and the insurance office, who is not answering, due to the number of callers they are dealing with.
Our son and his wife, down the street, have no electricity, and will come here later for some coffee and to charge their electrical devices. A road near us has collapsed, and in the collapse, contaminated two wells, so we are on a “boil water” notice until further notifications.
Today, indeed, is a very good day to pray for the Central Gulf Coast. Most schools are closed, many offices are closed.
We sit high, but many are struggling with high water and flooded roads. Many have worse leaks than we have. Many are lacking power, and how can you boil the water without power? This storm dumped inches and inches of rain on us, so much rain that they don’t have an exact calculation yet. Our front yard is eroding in front of our eyes. And we are the lucky ones.
Pray for Pensacola.
Alzheimers and Cancer: Does One Decrease the Liklihood of the Other?
A study published today on AOL Health News has an intriguing find – that there is a negative correlation between Alzheimers and cancers. You can read the entire study by clicking on the type above. Below is a quote from the study:Ei
“Benito-Leon said that scientists need to better understand the link between Alzheimer’s disease, which causes abnormal cell death, and cancer, which causes abnormal cell growth.”
It refers also to a study published last year on
Skin Cancer May Be Linked to Lower Alzheimer’s Risk, Study Says
A new study finds a link between non-melanoma skin cancer and a decreased risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
From an earlier study on AOL EveryDay Health:
WEDNESDAY, May 15, 2013 — A new study found an association between a history of non-melanoma skin cancer and a reduced risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The observational study, published in the journal Neurology, analyzed a cohort of 1,102 participants of the Einstein Aging Study at Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Institute of Aging in the Bronx, N.Y.
The researchers report that study participants with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer were close to 80 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who did not have skin cancer.Among the 141 participants who had non-melanoma skin cancer, only two developed Alzheimer’s disease. But the researchers say they’re still unsure why this link may exist.
“Our goal is really to identify risk factors and genetic factors for Alzheimer’s,” said Richard Lipton, MD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, and lead author of the study. “One explanation is that there is a biological link, and another explanation is there’s a link between risk factors. Really what we need to do is sort out the reasons for these associations.”
Researchers followed participants for an average of 3.7 years. The average age of study participants was 79. At the start of the study, none of the subjects were reported to have dementia, though 109 people had a history of skin cancer. During the study, 32 additional people developed skin cancer, while 126 of the subjects developed dementia. Out of the subjects with dementia, 100 of them had Alzheimer’s-related dementia.
“In neurodegenerative disease, specific cell populations have a tendency to die,” said Dr. Lipton. “In cancer, cells tend to divide out of control. Good health requires a balance between cell death and cell division. Skin cancer may reflect a predisposition to cell division, which protects against Alzheimer’s disease.”
But Lipton also said that subjects in the study with a history of skin cancer may also have lived a more active life, engaging in outdoor activities such as running, playing tennis, or swimming. “We know that physical activity and cognitive activity can prevent against Alzheimer’s,” he said. Therefore, more physical activity would also likely mean more time spent under the sun and in the great outdoors.
Some experts, such as Ahmedin Jemal, PhD, vice president of Surveillance & Health Research at the American Cancer Society, speculates that these findings simply reflect how healthy lifestyle choices can reduce Alzheimer’s risk. “Those people who develop skin cancer are more likely to be physically active and if those people are physically active, they are more likely to eat healthy food, such as fruit and vegetables,” he said.
Dr. Jemal also said there’s research suggesting that high levels of vitamin D can also protect a person from developing Alzheimer’s disease. “For our body to synthesis vitamin D we need sunlight,” he said. One study published earlier this year in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, suggests that high levels of vitamin D may jump-start certain genes in the immune system that are able to help dissolve amyloid plaques in the brain. These plaques are found to cause Alzheimer’s disease.
But Lipton recognizes there are limits to his study. While the researchers did adjust their findings for age, gender, education, and race, they did not base any analysis on diet or vitamin D levels. He added that his team is seeking funding to analyze blood samples of study participants, which may be able to detect certain nutrition-based biomarkers, which may help to better understand the study findings.
Heather Snyder, PhD, director medical and scientific operations at the Alzheimer’s Association finds the study’s findings compelling, but she’s also skeptical, since the number of skin cancer incidences in the study pool is relatively small. However, she said the study points to the value of further research.
“[The study] really underscores the need to understand the biology of these disease mechanisms,” said Dr. Snyder. “If we highlight what mechanisms might be connected in disease processes, if we can understand these disease processes, then we can develop therapies.”
The Clothes Dryer
I was talking to my Mom last night, asking her how her mother coped with having twins. She was trying to remember if her mother even had a washing machine, and thought not. She was only four, but she remembers a woman who came in and did ironing every day, and she thought maybe she also did all the laundry.
Imagine. Imagine doing diapers for twins by hand, in a wash tub with a wash board. It gives me shudders, but women worked harder in those days, life was physical. They also died a lot younger. Hmmm . . . having said that, my grandmother lived to 105.
Clothes dryers came much later. Even today, most women in the world hang their clothes to dry, some even lucky enough to have special racks or lines for that purpose, others hang them over shrubs and bushes and fences surrounding their homes.
Today’s meditation from Forward Day by Day caught my attention; in Germany the last time I lived there, I did without a dryer, hanging my clothes on racks, and I did just fine. I had the time, I had the space and it was just a different pace of life.
Mark 8:34. If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
A few years ago, a young husband and wife started an intentional community in rural Ohio. They share the house with others committed to simple living, to daily prayer and worship, and to issues of justice, especially around hunger and care of the earth. The farm not only yields enough to feed the members of the house and volunteers, but also supplies thousands of pounds of food each year to the local pantries.
I was struck by one story about their common life. They decided to get rid of the clothes dryer. After all, it’s not a vital machine, they determined. They could use a clothesline and conserve energy and money. Hanging clothes to dry would be an exercise in patience, in slowing down, as well as in planning and coordinating the wash with others in the house.
This small sacrifice provides powerful insight into the faithful witness of this group of people. I don’t know if God wants me to give up my clothes dryer (please, God, I hope not). But I do believe God calls us to sacrifice, to make hard decisions, to give up important things, so that we can take up the cross and follow Jesus.
I’m Screwed
It runs in my family – I can remember my Dad on the phone for hours, booking our hotels for Italy, especially, making sure everything was perfect. We like to be in control of the details, we like to make sure everything will run smoothly. We like to have records to back us up and to insure our trips will not run into any snags.
Oh well.
Yesterday, on the way to our son’s house to take care of the sweetest little baby in the world, I got a phone call from Alaska Airlines that my carefully crafted reservations, all paid for, were not going to work now that there had been a schedule change.
For a minute, it was like my brain went on hold. I had worked SO HARD to make those reservations, with just the right routing and just the right amount of connecting time and everything was PERFECT and now it wasn’t going to work? She was offering me alternatives, but all I could think of was having to change our cat’s reservations, having to re-arrange all my PERFECT arrangements.
Hmmm. . . Even at the time, I could laugh at myself and my horror that now it wasn’t going to be PERFECT. Even at the time, I could hear God laughing and saying “maybe I have something better in store for you.” I could hear him, but getting off that hamster wheel in my brain is like trying to make a steaming locomotive make a 90 degree turn. I need a few minutes for the gears to shift, for the impetus to slack; change does not happen quickly, it happens in stages.
She had an idea, but had to call me back. That gave me the time I needed to take a deep breath and roll with it. When she called back, I was ready for her suggestion, which involved switching to an airline I never fly, a route I avoid, etc. but I was ready. The timing achieved the goal I wanted, which was to fly from Pensacola to Juneau in one day.
Then, as it turned out, there was also a problem with the return, same deal, something about being or not being a code share flight, or being or not being an Alaska Airways flight. Here is what I am experiencing with all my flights – these airlines might SAY they are a team, but when I call Air France to use my frequent flyer miles, they always want me to fly Air France, and they have these routes that will take me from say Atlanta to Paris to Kenya to Johannesburg, rather than putting me on the partner flight that goes directly from Atlanta to Johannesburg. And here is the line I hate: They haven’t released any seats on that flight for us to use.
Here is the truth as I see it: anything is possible. I have seen it happen. There are phrases bureaucrats use to put up barriers, but if they want to help you, those barriers can fall.
OK, OK, back to the subject. I am grateful to Alaska Airlines for calling me and sorting out the problem with ME. At the same time I just happened to check on some other reservations I have only to discover, online, that the reservations had changed from something I loved to something I hated, and when was Delta going to tell me? There is a disclaimer at the top saying I can try to change the changed portion or I can cancel my trip. If I hadn’t checked, how would I know??
I admire Alaska Airlines for stepping up to the plate. It can’t be easy for their people to face the wrath of people like me who don’t want their plans changed, who liked their plans just the way they are.
When these things happen, once I have a chance to cool down, I think about some changes and disappointments as being a protection. I don’t always understand why something didn’t work out, but I believe it was for the good. There was a house I did not buy on a slippery, landslide prone area in Seattle, a house with a magnificent view. I still think about that house now and then, and now, with the tragedy in Oso, I am thankful I did not buy it. I had put an offer on the house, then changed my mind, knowing I would worry all the time I was overseas about it slipping down the hill. It was enough to deter me, knowing I would worry too much about it, and always be looking for signs of instability, that I would become anxious when it would rain – and if you know Seattle, you know that rain is a given.
The screwed part is really that no matter how carefully we plan our trips, if we are flying we are at the mercy of large bureaucratic airlines who really don’t care about our comfort or convenience. They don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of miles on my frequent flyer card; I am just a logistic to them. Within the US, most ‘business class’ isn’t that much better than economy, and ‘economy comfort’ is still squished three abreast in seats that are too narrow and so you are touching shoulders with your neighbors. That is just wrong. A shift in reservations should trigger at least an e-mail, so people to whom it matters can make necessary changes. It’s not just me, we are all screwed.
Rape Goes Unpunished in US Military
This is disgusting. We’ve all known it’s true. The warrior culture protects those cowards who impose themselves sexually on both men and women. God willing, things will change. It’s already started, with the relieving of those in power who have imposed themselves on women who came forward with their complaints. Let there be more, until this culture is wiped clean of their disgrace.
Rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Rape is a personal violation.
It’s time for the good men and women in the military to police this up, to stop the outrage. Expose those bullies and cowards who prey on others.
Military Sex Abuse Investigation: Documents Reveal Chaotic Punishment Record
AP
by RICHARD LARDNER and YURI KAGEYAMA
TOKYO (AP) — At U.S. military bases in Japan, most service members found culpable in sex crimes in recent years did not go to prison, according to internal Department of Defense documents. Instead, in a review of hundreds of cases filed in America’s largest overseas military installation, offenders were fined, demoted, restricted to their bases or removed from the military.
In about 30 cases, a letter of reprimand was the only punishment.
More than 1,000 records, obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, describe hundreds of cases in graphic detail, painting a disturbing picture of how senior American officers prosecute and punish troops accused of sex crimes. The handling of allegations verged on the chaotic, with seemingly strong cases often reduced to lesser charges. In two rape cases, commanders overruled recommendations to court-martial and dropped the charges instead.
Even when military authorities agreed a crime had been committed, the suspect was unlikely to serve time. Of 244 service members whose punishments were detailed in the records, only a third of them were incarcerated.
The analysis of the reported sex crimes, filed between 2005 and early 2013, shows a pattern of random and inconsistent judgments:
—The Marines were far more likely than other branches to send offenders to prison, with 53 prison sentences out of 270 cases. By contrast, of the Navy’s 203 cases, more than 70 were court-martialed or punished in some way. Only 15 were sentenced to time behind bars.
—The Air Force was the most lenient. Of 124 sex crimes, the only punishment for 21 offenders was a letter of reprimand.
—Victims increasingly declined to cooperate with investigators or recanted, a sign they may have been losing confidence in the system. In 2006, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which handles the Navy and Marine Corps, reported 13 such cases; in 2012, it was 28.
In two cases, both adjudicated by the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, the accusers said they were sexually abused after nights of heavy drinking, and both had some evidence to support their cases. One suspect was sentenced to six years in prison, but the other was confined to his base for 30 days instead of getting jail time.
Taken together, the cases illustrate how far military leaders have to go to reverse a spiraling number of sexual assault reports. The records also may give weight to members of Congress pushing to strip senior officers of their authority to decide whether serious crimes, including sexual assault cases, go to trial.
“How many more rapes do we have to endure to wait and see what reforms are needed?” asked Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., chair of the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee. She leads a vocal group of lawmakers from both political parties who argue that further reforms to the military’s legal system are needed.
Air Force Col. Alan Metzler, deputy director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, said the department “has been very transparent that we do have a problem.” He said a raft of changes in military law is creating a culture where victims trust that their allegations will be taken seriously and perpetrators will be punished.
The number of sexual assault cases taken to courts-martial has grown steadily — from 42 percent in 2009 to 68 percent in 2012, according to DOD figures. In 2012, of the 238 service members convicted, 74 percent served time.
That trend is not reflected in the Japan cases. Out of 473 sexual assault allegations within Navy and Marine Corps units, just 116, or 24 percent, ended up in courts-martial. In the Navy, one case in 2012 led to court-martial, compared to 13 in which commanders used non-judicial penalties instead.
The authority to decide how to prosecute serious criminal allegations would be taken away from senior officers under a bill crafted by Gillibrand that is expected to come before the Senate this week. The bill would place that responsibility with the trial counsel who has prosecutorial experience.
Senior U.S. military leaders oppose the plan.
“Taking the commander out of the loop never solved any problem,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the personnel subcommittee’s top Republican. “It would dismantle the military justice system beyond sexual assaults. It would take commanders off the hook for their responsibility to fix this problem.”
Gillibrand and her supporters argue that the cultural shift the military needs won’t happen if commanders retain their current role in the legal system.
“Skippers have had this authority since the days of John Paul Jones and sexual assaults still occur,” said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain and senior fellow at the Women in the Military Project. “And this is where we are.”
___
Lardner reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Leon Drouin-Keith in Bangkok and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
Giving Birth to Gun in the South Sudan
This is the newest blog entry from my friend Manyang David Mayar in the South Sudan He visited Pensacola as part of an IVLP program with our Gulf Coast Citizens Diplomacy Council:
Pregnant women fleeing the fighting in Jonglei state, South Sudan.
I was in the town of Bor when fighting broke out last month in South Sudan. I managed to escape the town despite being shot in the arm. But many other people had a far tougher time – people like Nyiel Magot, nine months pregnant and faced with the awful choice of staying in Bor’s hospital or fleeing into the bush.
Against her doctors’ advice, Nyiel decided to escape the immediate danger, and with her five children, took a narrow path out of town which was packed with people also heading to safety.
But, she told me, with every step she took, she grew weaker and more and more people overtook her.
“I was really tired and the pain became really unbearable,” Nyiel said. “I knew the time had come for me to give birth and I had to get out of Bor immediately to escape the attackers.”
Giving birth in the bush
Later that evening, the pain finally forced Nyiel to stop. Instead of a hospital ward, she found an abandoned grass-thatched house.
Luckily, there was a traditional birth attendant nearby who used her bare hands to help Nyiel deliver a healthy baby boy.
But the cold nights and hot days of December in South Sudan soon started to take their toll on the new born and reports of an imminent rebel attack forced Nyiel and her family to leave their hideout.
They walked for days until they crossed the River Nile and came to a large camp for displaced people in Awerial. And then her baby caught diarrhoea and started to vomit.
He was rushed to a hospital in Juba where, after days of treatment, he recovered.
A child of conflict
It was in the hospital in Juba that I met Nyiel and heard her story – and also learned the name of her little baby.
Nyiel had called him Matuor, the Dinka word for ‘gun’, because he was born amid gunfire.
As the conflict continues in South Sudan, I fear he won’t be the last baby born in the bush with such a name.
All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian
AdventureMan came into the room where I was reading and handed me this book. “Will you read this?” he asked, and there was a note in his voice that sounded a little aggrieved.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You sound a little peeved.”
“I read this,” he said. “I thought it was pretty good, but when I read the reviews on Amazon, some people called it ‘trivial’,” and I could see he was embarrassed that something he thought was pretty good others believed was of little importance.
Big mistake, Adventureman.
I might read a little of the reviews when deciding whether to buy a book or not, because I won’t remember it when it comes time to actually read the book or review the book, but I never, NEVER read the reviews as I am reading or before I review a book. And, truthfully, I don’t really care what this reviewer says or that reviewer says. Sometimes I read a New Yorker review of a book and I think “that reviewer has her own filter and can’t see beyond her framework” or “Wow! That reviewer saw some things I’d like to see!” Sometimes I will read a review and then read the book and think that the reviewer really missed the mark, positively or negatively, it could be either way.
Reviews are opinions. We all have them. Some you might agree with, some you might not, but don’t let them touch you, or your experience with the book. We are each unique, and see through a unique lens!
First, it delighted me that I read this just after I read Babayaga, because I ejnoy Paris, and delight in walking Paris, and in Babayaga and in All the Light There Was, people do a lot of walking in Paris. So much so in All the Light There Was that I ran down to my little map collection for the Paris maps and would track the heroine through Paris. It was fun.
Although All the Light There Was is called a novel, I don’t think it is. As I read it, I thought it was highly biographical or autobiographical, based on a diary or diaries. The significant details – how the mama stockpiled food just as war was announced and all the places she stored it, including under the bed, the clothing they wore, the sweaters they knit, the indignities they endured, and the risks they bravely took against the occupying Germans – it doesn’t sound made up to me, it sounds like a story someone has told from that time.
The details are so strong – the bicycle tires that are treasured because if they go flat, that is the end of the last transport they have, the dresses that have become too big because people have eaten too little – these details sound like voices to me.
So I would not call this book trivial. This book captures a moment in time, it’s a snapshot. The characters don’t have a lot of depth, the events don’t have a lot of texture, but I do know what occupied Paris ate during the last years of the occupation (turnips) and the ambivalence with which Paris viewed their Jewish citizens. In this war-time Paris, Kricorian captures well Pastor Martin Niemoeller’s poem about When They Came for Me:
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
Many in Paris were happy to see the Jews go, happy it wasn’t them. Kricorian tackles this issue indirectly, with a light but inescapable hand.
One of the things that was shocking to both of us what that when Maral’s ancient Auntie Shakeh died, and we see the tombstone – she is 35 years old. We knew she and Maral’s parents had escaped the Turkish efforts to eradicate the Armenians in Turkey, but because we are seeing the story through Maral’s eyes, her parents and aunt seem ancient, whereas in today’s terms, they are very young adults.
Don’t read the reviews, AdventureMan! Read the book, take from the book what you will, enjoy your own experience. Write your own reviews!
Manyang: Our Friend in South Sudan
God willing, in life, people cross paths and share their stories. I told you about Manyang, how he visited us near Christmas in 2012 and how his story changed our lives. Now, when we hear stories of the South Sudan, it is immediate, it is real, because we know the story of a young boy grown to be a very fine man, who survived the chaos and horrors of the janjaweed invasions and tribal conflicts before his country attained nationhood.
I recently wrote to Manyang, hoping he is still alive. It was that basic. I asked him, if he could, just to let us know he was alive, and that whether he could respond or not, our prayers were with him, for him, his family and his country.
This morning, by the grace of God, I received this wonderful response. Please, join your prayers with ours for Manyang/David, and his country, South Sudan, for peace, safety and prosperity, for justice and equitable distribution of resources.
I am glad to hear from you again. I have been talking of the nice people I was able to meet in Pensacola. Whenever, I talk about these people you are the first people I talk about. I still remember the nice dinner we had in your house.
I think God touched you to worry about my safety. You might have heard from news report the critical condition my country – South Sudan is going through. It is just like the story of my childhood to many other children now.
A political row in the ruling party here, turned violent in Juba, the capital of this country on December 15, 2013. Heavy artillary were fired and sporadic gunfire broke out in most part of the city. it was a genesis of another war which is now going on. Thousands of people were killed only in Juba.
I was in Bor, the captal of Jonglei State, about 125 miles north of Juba. The violent in Juba quickly spread to us in Bor and I was forced to flee to the bush with my family and the rest of the civil population as the town was quickly seized by anti-government forces. I carried my back on my head, walk long distant and drink dirty water again and eat grains when I was in the bush for seven days.
(This is a screenshot from Google Maps; Bor is the “A” north of Juba)
(These are photos from Manyang’s BBC blog, referenced below. Please go there to read more in his own words about the terrors of the South Sudan chaos.)
The government forces recaptured the town and we returned to the town. Many more people were killed and bodies were lying everywhere and there was a terrible smell. The rebels killed everyone they found in the town including old women, lame, deaf and all vulnerable people. And I was wounded in the upper left arm by a stray bullet of soldiers celebrating. The wound has healed and I am fine now.
It did not take long for the rebel to recaptured the town of goverment forces for a second time. And I was force to flee, this time cross the River Nile by boat to a makeshift camp across the river. This was where I got an access to go to Juba which was abit calm at the time. I am now in Juba staying in fear, not knowing where else to go.
God was speaking to you those conditions I was in in December and part of January. We spent Christmas and New Year Day on the run. I am glad for your prayers were able to lead me out of that mess. I still have hope that your prayers will continue to press political leaders to reach a peaceful solution to this crisis.
I have a live blog where I am sharing my bush experiences. You may have a look.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcmediaaction/posts/Pens-down-in-South-Sudan
Share my message with the rest of the great people of Pensacola. My heart is always there with you.
Blessings
Manyang
Ghost of Christmas Past
I remember Thanksgiving. It was yesterday. The season has never gone so fast, with Thanksgiving being so close to Christmas. Taking care of my sweet little granddaughter in the afternoons was a wonderful, quiet interlude in an otherwise swirling-with-events December, complicated by AdventureMan and I both catching terrible colds and lacking energy during the middle part leading up to Christmas.
I wouldn’t pass up the babysitting part for anything. My little granddaughter is the sweetest little baby ever. If she fusses, she doesn’t fuss much, and it is easily covered by “change my diaper” or “feed me” or “I really need to sleep” or I’m bored, walk me around a little until I fall asleep” or “Now I really really need to go to sleep!” Every now and then she fools you with an “I’m too hot! Take some clothes off!” but that makes me laugh, because once you do she is so grateful she just gurgles and coos. She is also beautiful 🙂
We had a wonderful Christmas, colds gone, great houseguests, fun family times, including taking our grandson to his first Nutcracker. Just after Christmas we rushed off to a family wedding in south Florida – a horrid 13 hour drive down – so I grabbed a few Christmas photos before it all gets taken down:
Here’s what I love. We have so many decorations loaded with Christmas baggage – you know the kind. “Oh! We got those candlesticks the year we moved to Wiesbaden!” “Oh! Remember that palm tree from our CENTCOM years?” “Look! Our creche!” “Oh! Our Damascus ornaments!” It is wonderful, and it is time consuming, and with a short Christmas this year, and a lot going on, I did something I have never done before. I saw some ornaments in WalMart, I call them “bang-for-your-buck” ornaments, sparkling snowflakes and stars, 20 for $2.98.
I bought a lot. Maybe about $25 worth. A lot of twinkling little stars and snowflakes.
The tree was all silver balls and silver stars this year, with an ivory cross on top.
The stairwell was all silver snowflakes. It was magical. It was also quick and easy and inexpensive – I grinned every time I saw it.
I did pull the Nurnburg angel out; I don’t think I can do Christmas without her and she provided a pop of red against all the greenery and silver and white.
The little silver reindeer are easy; stored all together in a box that says “Early Christmas” right along with the suction cups that hold them up – if it takes me five minutes, it’s a slow year, LOL.
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