"Dust Gets In My Eyes"

This past Saturday, afterwork, I accompanied the Archdeacon to St. John's Parish, one of the five parishes within the Khartoum - North Archdeaconery. St. John's is located in Hay Yusif ( Hi Usef) and I drove all the way.

For those of you unimpressed, it is an hour away and involves the world's craziest drivers, including Sapana, and no rules. Not only that, the flashers were on both ways and could not be turned off. Lots of Sudanese hand communications that evening. I had to ask the Archdeacon after his prayer, if he prayed before all his trips or only those with American women drivers.

They just laugh at me here.

Along the way, he asked if I would like to see another of his churches and if I wanted to preach.

Okay, I have to admit this took me by surprise and I reminded him that I was laity. Thinking this would stop the conversation, he said no problem. I thanked him for offering, but at this time I did not think this was one of my talents.

However, if you wanted a sermon on how to connect with God through the internet, or how to choose the correct email provider to speak with God, or how to take pictures that would impress even God and send them as attachments, how to test circuits, or how to do Power Point presentations that would awe God, or prepare bar charts showing my good, bad, and not so good years, then I could give it a go.

Prior to beginning the enthralling topic of Budgeting, using the story from Matthew 25:21 (NIV):

'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!',

I was standing outside drawing attention to myself while trying to get cooler.

I happened to glance north and noticed that the sky was getting dark.

However, not only dark, it was getting brown.

For those of you who have seen The Mummy with Brandon Fraiser, you might think you know what a dust storm is. Well, that was created by professionals. This is created by Mother Nature. So, when you see this, you realize that somewhere someone had fooled Mother Nature and she was not happy.

As I watched this storm progress, the mother in me was trying to communicate with these wonderful children, that they should run home, quickly. That is Sapanastanding behind the car. They did not seem very anxious at all. I, on the other hand, remembered the last storm.


This last picture is taken from the steps of the church prior to running back inside.

So, what is it like? A dirty blowing snow storm, that hurts when it hits you in the face. However, that did not prevent these kids from staying outside. They simply turned away from the wind and walked along.

So, the adults went back inside, discussed budgeting in English and Arabic, and then, when the dust had cleared, took these group pictures.