Today marks عيد الفطر ‘Īdu l-Fiṭr or ‘the festival to break fast.’ For the last month Muslims have been fasting during the day to celebrate Ramadan. On this first day of breaking fast, they are to constantly recite Allāhu Akbar (God is great).

From our home in Malakal we occasionally hear a faint call to prayer occasionally. Sometimes, usually in the morning, it is very loud. This morning was one of those exceptional days. So far I think I’ve heard Allāhu Akbar recited a few hundred times. We’ll have church in a few hours and it will be interesting to see if they continue this through the day and we listen to it during the entire church service.

The call to prayer we often hear is a constant reminder to pray for those in our community who are in bondage to Islam. Will you pray today for the Muslims in your community.

God truly is great!

Allison and I are serving on a small committee of SIM Sudan missionaries who are planning Sudan’s 2010 Spiritual Life Conference to be held this coming January. SIM Sudan is sending out a flyer soon with all the details that I thought I’d share below…

Every January, SIM Sudan holds a Spiritual Life Conference where the entire Sudan team comes together for a time of spiritual renewal for the new year. They also have the opportunity to interface with the newest missionaries and share stories from the field, encourage each other and plan for the coming year.

In the past, we were squeezed for time and forced meetings into the spiritual retreat, as there was no other time for business. However, this year we have extended the time so that the first few days can be completely devoted to team building and spiritual renewal without the disruption of business needs drawing us away. The last few days will be a structured workshop time for new business practices and reminders on how best to work with the Sudanese culture. It will also provide time to plan for each ministry’s upcoming year of work. This time is especially important for new missionaries who have recently come to Sudan.

SIM Sudan is unique in that we have many missionaries from African countries. Some of their financial support comes from outside of their own country. The SLC is an extra expense for them that we would ask you to consider helping cover. Because this year’s SLC is a few days longer, this has also extended the expense to the rest of the team. Would you consider supporting an individual or subsidizing the cost of the entire event so that everyone’s costs can be lowered?

– $50 – pays for one night’s stay
– $300 – covers whole individual
– $600 – covers whole Family
– $2500 – covers 10% reduction of entire SLC

Click to donate online here. Please be sure to note the Project ‘Sudan SLC #SD98022′. We thank you for your continued support prayerfully and financially.

Avery is already having significant diarrhea. We ask that you pray for her health. Her samples in Nairobi showed that she still had giardia, and we had begun a 3wk cycle of drugs. We pray that this will clean out her body. Please pray for her strength. Through all of this she always keeps very high spirits. We all slept well last night and hope that that helps in our healing.

So we took care of one mouse in our first minutes home yesterday. Last night we captured one more mouse and 1 large rat. These guys are getting into all our food, making for a daily cleanup and making a mess in my media cabinet. We think there are still more. Please pray we can rid our house of these guys. So far nothing valuable as been found destroyed, but they did walk on Taylor’s laptop last night

After of month of recovering from illness in Nairobi, we are back home in Malakal. In the first hour I’d already killed a mouse who had made his home in my media cupboard. So far no wires or electronics damaged, but let’s just say it’s dirty. That’s tomorrow’s project.

We are happy to be back with our teammates and Avery has taken to Sudan again quite well.

It’s hot. Our taxi driver told us that the last two days were very cold. During the rainy season, a hot day indicates rain is soon to come. So we’re looking forward to the first ‘real’ rain (+3hr down pour) in Sudan.

Unfortunately with the rain brings some not so fun realities. Our latrines are totally full of water. So using the bathroom is an new challenge and our shower drains are backed up. But the big plus is that with the water catchment system we built a while back, we never have to worry about water supply. Even with the massive amount of visitors (while we were gone) they never ran out of water.

We plan to be here for about two months this time around. Taylor’s sister, Allison, will be joining us for a week in November and then we’ll head back to Nairobi for a little more family time before she heads to South Africa for a bit.

Please pray that we are able to maintain good health. We want to get back to learning Arabic and do so without distractions as much as possible.

A new book in missions is soon to be released. Written by my name sake and missions mentor, Dr. William ‘Bill’ Taylor, the original edition was the standard manual for new missionaries. The new version titled “Global Mission Handbook: A Guide for Crosscultural Service” is just that, a guide for those entering the mission field. Dr. Taylor has used some of my photography from my first year in Africa as well as a story I wrote about my journey into missions, of which he was a large part.

Read more about it at InterVarsity Press or prepurchase it on Amazon.com. Alternatively, contact us and we can get you single copies or bulk copies direct from the publisher for an even steeper discount.