The journey from Raleigh/Durham Airport to Nairobi went smoothly. Family and friends came to see me off (or to make sure I left?). It's a long trip (about 20 hours) but it went pretty comfortably. I arrived here in Nairobi last evening and settled in at the Methodist Guest House. Today has been intentionally -- a "slow" day, to allow time for a little jet lag and for repacking my bags. It appears that I will not get out to see anything of Nairobi today.
A new friend, Mark, who heads up Baptist Global Response for Sub-Saharan Africa, took me to eat lunch at a pleasant little Italian restaurant. It was inspiring and exciting to hear from him some of the ways BGR is working around the continent to deal with various natural disasters and ongoing developmental problems.
I am to be picked up to go to the airport at about 5:30am tomorrow to go to the smaller, in-town Wilson Airport, from whence I will fly out to Rumbek in Southern Sudan.
So far, not much has happened on this trip. Everything has gone according to plan. Even the flights to Detroit, then to Amsterdam and Nairobi, have been remarkably uneventful, pretty-much-ontime and relatively comfortable. I have had pleasant conversations with a number of people along the way, but other than that -- nothing much has happened.
And yet, throughout the journey, the sensation has increased that "God is up to something, and He is allowing me to get in on it." I have a calm excitement building inside me as I get closer to Sudan. As people keep saying about Africa, one doesn't know what will happen until it has happened, so I have no idea -- beyond the most superficial -- about what will happen over the next three weeks. I just know that, whatever it is, it will be good, because God is Good and He does good (Psalm 119:68).
That is not to say that the circumstances of my time in Sudan will all be "fun." I spoke last weekend with someone just-returned from Rumbek, and she told me that because there had been a few rains, the weather ought to be relatively cool. "What does 'relatively cool' mean?" I asked. "Oh," she replied, "maybe about 100 ... maybe 90 at night." I hope that she perhaps has over-estimated the temperature. Nevertheless, her weather forcast does not cause me any doubt that God Himself has prepared the way before me.
When I have told friends that I was going to Southern Sudan, they have often asked whether it is "safe?" It seems to me that the word "safe" is irrelevant. If one is always concerned for "safety," one does not really live; he merely exists. And while I will take no unnecessary "chances" with my physical safety, I can be considered to be among the safest of humans, simply because I am going with the Lord where the Lord wants to go, and I an being allowed to work beside Him in whatever He is doing.
One cannot ever be "safer" than that, whether in Southern Sudan or in Rocky Mount.
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