I received an SMS from Taylor letting me know he arrived safe and sound! Thanks for your continued prayers for his travels!

In less than 15 hours Taylor will be flying back into Sudan! He is currently busy finishing up a video and putting it on dvd’s to help promote BELCs….anyone interested in teaching in Southern Sudan?
We are so excited that Taylor will be able to help out Aid Sudan with some filming as well as being able to learn more about photography from a great teacher on the field!
Please be praying for a safe trip, good health, good teaching from a great photographer also on the trip, and for wrapping up a million little details before he leaves. Oh, and please also pray for him as he will be spending possibly all 12 days of his trip without internet! That might be the hardest part of the trip for him!
As always thanks for your partnership that allows us to be here!

BELC stands for Basic Education Learning Center. In short, these are schools which mainly provide primary eduction for adults who never got any education during the war. Sometimes these are village elders, church leaders, soldiers and many more from all walks of life. The purpose of this video was to inspire new missionaries to come and serve as teachers in these schools. This is the short version. A longer version with teacher interviews will be coming shortly…

Taylor is officially going to be going to Sudan for about two weeks to work with a group called Aid Sudan. They are installing a radio tower at the southern edge of the same state where SIM does all of their work in Sudan. A friend of mine, Austin Mann, will be coming along on the trip to document it with his rad skillz in photography. I have been invited to come along and shoot video, but the reason I’m coming along is to really learn from Austin and try to absorb as much of his knowledge of photography. In a short exposure trip like this, the goal is not really to learn specific ways of doing photography so much as expanding my general knowledge and philosophy of photography. I’m sure I’ll learn a few tricks of the trade, but please just pray that I can expand my knowledge of photography in general.

Next update: We had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with Dave Bremner, SIM’s East & South Africa Deputy International Director. He’s a very hands off guy, as SIM is very much a ‘field lead’ type organization, but he is my boss’ boss, 2nd to the International Director of all of SIM. Dave is from South Africa and served in South America for about 15 years before being called to a the current leadership position which has lead his family to now live in S. Carolina where SIM’s International office is located. Dave really poured a lot of wisdom on us and shared some about his life through the years with SIM. We really appreciated the fact that he would take the time to visit with us and are better for it. Thank you Dave!

Avery: Every day Avery shows us something new she’s learned. We’ve used our large plastic footlockers to block off an area for her to play in. A few days ago we found her standing on top of one!!!!! It freaked us out. So we now have to stack them two high for her barrier. She’s almost a confident walker now. There are more kids around to play with and she always enjoys seeing the Killoren’s boy, Liam. I wonder sometimes if they associate each other with ‘home’ as they played a bit while we still lived in the states. She’s officially moved up a size in shoes. She closed her bedroom door a few days ago so she could play by herself. Allison went to check on her and Avery just closed the door again. She’s learned to flip the light switch, though I’m not sure she’s made the connection yet that it actually operates the light. The power sockets have switches on them, so hopefully that will save us from a baby getting shocked soon. She will say more words like ‘baby’, ’shoes’ etc. She tries to mimic Taylor when he knocks. When we ask what a dog says, she says ‘fufff’. She’s learned to irritate Taylor by constantly turning the printer on and off.

Prayer:
We hope to be living in Malakal, sooner or later, and the housing problems there continue. We were hoping to be able to build out an area to house some large safari tents to put a lot of single folk in and free up the houses for families. We’re not picky about where we live, just anxious to see the extra housing built. Unfortunately many issues persist in the area that are out of our control and keep us from being able to move forward. Labor and material costs continue to shoot through the roof. Please pray for God to do His thing and find a way around or through these issues. We need housing for our people to live in Sudan!

Taylor continues to work on a video to help raise up new missionary teachers for the basic schools SIM is building throughout the areas we serve in. This is really the backbone of a lot of the work we do. We look forward to showing you the final product very soon.

Taylor here: One of my favorite things to do when I was home was to go on a solo mini sabbatical (3 days) every 4-6 months. Usually, I’d just pick up and go when my freelance business would allow it and leave my electronics at home and take my Bible, bikes and camping gear. Sometimes I’d camp, sometimes not, but the constant was that I would either head South or West into the country. I always seemed to connect very close with God when out on these outings, away from city life and all that bogs(ed) me down.

A friend recently sent me an article CNN published about life in West Texas, in particular the triangle formed by Marfa, Alpine and Marathon. Some of you know that I’ve spent a good bit of my life around Ozona, our old hunting lease (south of this area, out of the mountains) and North of this area, close to Carlsbad, on a friend’s ranch.

These times away and my mini sabbaticals were my recharge times. I know I will miss them sorely, but God has something better for me. Perhaps my new sabbaticals will be in the bush visiting a new tribe of which I cannot communicate with at all, but experiencing new things, and expanding my world-view of God and his creation.