God is a Way Maker

Everything about Sudan is hard. It is hard to get there because the roads are so bad & flying every time is not in the budget. To drive 200 miles will take you a literal week. As you can imagine, the roads are made of mud & enormous pot holes and having Billy's 4X4 Land Rover Defender (pictured above) is an absolute blessing when traveling in such conditions. Thank God we only had to drive for about 5 hours north from Arua to a little town called Yei where we were attending a networking conference & hosting a pastor training. (Just in case you were wondering, the Darfur region you hear about in the news is still a 2 week drive from where we were in Sudan!)

Last week was also a little hard personally for several reasons ... our dog died, our computer died, we received some discouraging news in an e-mail & all of this while I was in Southern Sudan apart from Erica. Although this has all the makings of a #1 country music hit, it also had the potential for making us easily forget all that God has done & hindering us from finishing well here in Uganda & Sudan.,, While thinking about my own problems I was also at the networking conference (pictured above)being confronted with all the major issues Sudan is facing: land mines all over their country preventing farming & road development, post war trauma, poor education, corruption of the government, poor distribution of billions of dollars a year in domestic & foriegn aid, not to mention drought & flooding & the razor thin peace agreement between the North & Southern part of the country.

The conference actually went very well & proved to be an excellent time of networking for our WGM team of 6 (pictured right: Reuben, Joy, Karen, Terry, Billy & John) representing various aspects of ministry & development. There were more 130 people from across the globe representing 60 organizations, churches & institutions. It was really a vision of what the Kingdom of God is to look like. There were many good ideas exchanged, several good sermons & great times of relationship building. It looks like WGM has a promising future ahead of them in Sudan, so that is exciting!

As I reflected about these issues & our uncertain future I will be honest & say that I was a little frustrated, sad & a bit overwhelmed as each day last week seemed to bring difficult news that was hard to hear. Now, none of these issues by themselves were really that horrible, but the combination of them was challenging to trust Jesus with.

As I was thinking about all of this Jesus reminded me ... I AM the Way Maker. God has a history of making a way where there seems to be no way. Even more than God simply making a way and telling us to get out of His way, He says, "I want to teach you My ways & guide you so you can know Me & we can fellowship together." Psalm 25:4 & 5 says, "Show me Your ways O Lord; teach me Your paths; guide me in Your truth & teach me, for You are God my Savior, & my hope is in You all day long." Other verses began to flood my mind & I soon realized there is a place for problems, whether a computer crashing, an uncertain future or a nation that needs healing ... God says, "I AM the Way Maker."

As we then began the training of the Sudanese pastors (pictured right) later that same week, I had a renewed sense of God's presence in both the troubles of Sudan & also the personal issues we are facing. God continues to teach me that when difficutlies arise, these are opportunites to either go deeper in my walk with Jesus or I can view them as negative circumstances that will poison my relationship with God & others.

It was sad to have my final pastor training in Sudan & our days here in Africa are rapidly coming to a close. But inspite of all the issues in the world I still trust in the fact that the Lord is a Way Maker!