Tonight you can hear and feel that this African city is alive. It’s midnight here and music can be heard, people are cheering and no one has to worry about getting up for work tomorrow.

I have tried by best to keep from using this blog for anything political. But the situation has gotten the best of me. I have written a letter to the editor and thought by possibly writing openly here, it might have more effect. This post is in response to this month’s Newsweek cover story titled ‘Our Mutual Joy’ in which a senior editor (also the religious editor) writes on how Biblical scripture supports gay marriage. An excellent rebuttal can be found at getreligion.org

As a child I began to consume the news at a much younger age than those
around me. I would read the front page section of the local paper from front
to back every morning before school, while most of my friends, if they read
the paper at all, were skimming the sports section. Soon after, I got my own
subscription to Newsweek and had it for many years into high school. Around
this time the internet came into view and I began consuming my news through
the WWW. For many years my mother offered to get me subscriptions to World
Magazine (as an alternative to NW), a global news source with a
worldview/bent toward the evangelical side of things. At the time, I felt
this World Mag leaned to hard so as to skew the real news behind the story
being told.

While I held Newsweek up as being a liberal publication, I still viewed it
overall as a publication that told things for the sake of news, not to push
some worldview or bent on the public. It is this week that I have decided
that it has gone the way of the World Magazine (obviously in the opposite
direction), and perhaps much stronger in it’s lack of newsworthiness. Your
preconceived opinions have taken precedence over reporting the news as it
is.

After reading this month’s cover article, Our Mutual Joy, by a senior editor
no less, and very misinformed religious writer, I am discussed that a
publication such as yours would hold up such an ill-informed, uneducated,
one-sided, God-bashing article (and the writer behind it) as newsworthy.

Your publication is no longer worthy of the status of a news magazine.

With a heart hurting for those discussed with the church,
Taylor

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Avery turned 11 months old on Saturday. Hard to believe how fast this past year has flown by us.

Who me? It wasn’t me…

Watch out now, I am on the move!

Erik of whiteafrican.com and ushahidi.com paid us a generous visit today. He grew up as a missionary kid in Sudan and Kenya, attended RVA and now lives with his family in Orlando. Every few months he makes a visit to Nairobi for various meetings, developments and conferences. His specialty could probably be wrapped up in the title of a panel he took part in at SXSW, Africa 2.0. He is plugged into the Africa blogsphere and tech landscape. With a keen understanding of Africa, his first home, and western business models, he is able to understand ‘best practices’ of meshing the two together in this new world of ours mixed up in the technology of communication and business in a very unconnected world, that is Africa.

(Erik, I hope I got that about right)

A poster I saw near the main center of town… Dec. 1 was World AIDS day.

This is just behind the mosque in the main part of town. The taxis congregate here for people who need rides. The markets surround this area.

The South Sudan (or New Sudan) flag. It was painted on the side of a small boat at the port.

Yesterday we spent the better part of the morning preparing the SIM team in Atar to take materials to Atar to build their BELC (Basic Eduction Learning Center). They also carried some recently donated blankets to a church along the way. This is packing 10 bails into the back of the Land Cruiser SP (Samaritan’s Purse) has kindly let us borrow while they are not operating in Malakal at the moment.

Some of the school children on our compound.

A woman and her two young children were sitting on the edge of the banks where we were loading the boats to head to Atar.

Shoving off! It was really heavy and the boat was completely on the bank.

Very little of this is ministry related, but I thought I’d give you a little glimpse into what a day in Malakal might look like.

Seeing off some teammates as they head off to Atar, a three hour boat ride away.

I am not very familiar with many parts of town still. I took mid-morning to amble about the market near the port. A young guy asked me to sit in his broken english. We didn’t carry on much of a conversation, but I found out he owned a little portrait studio, which he showed me. Another man there was having his shoes shined. He was a police man and I asked him about restrictions on taking photos around town. He was very happy and told me to do whatever I like. He went on to describe his tribe and how any Shuluk would be happy to have their photo taken.

The local Catholic diocese just opened up a new guest house. I had been hoping that this could possibly be a location where we might be able to live. It turned out to not be a good situation for us, and it is also very expensive. This is a photo of the bishop cutting the ribbon during his blessing ceremony.

The Catholic GH was on the far end of town next to the airport from where we live and work. Instead of taking a taxi back, we decided to walk it. This put us through many parts of town where I have never walked. We saw many kids and had some fun interactions with them.

This little guy was my favorite of the day. He was quite scared of the camera. One of the guys was shooting at us with his toy pistol, but this little guy would run away each time I lifted my camera up at him. Finally before we left he became much friendlier and I snapped this shot of him.

This evening a procession of church choirs made their way past our compound and I captured a few images. They were celebrating the first day of December, the month of Christmas.

A photo of our Sudan Director, Chris Crowder, with a new French missionary working on water projects, Thomas.