It is Tuesday, today is Tuesday, and I woke up this morning in Addis Ababa.  My email has been locked because I tried to log in from here, so this is the only avenue I have to express that I am here, I am safe, and that everything so far has gone according to our plans.  I am here with two men from the SSGMA (South Sudan Gospel Mission Alliance) out of Lincoln Nebraska.  I learned from David Casner, one of these two, that Lincoln boasts of having the second largest population of South Sudanese in the world.  The vision of the SSGMA is to build an orphanage and leadership training center in Gambela, an area very near to South Sudan.

 

I also realized this morning that the war which has broken out in South Sudan is different from previous wars there.  In the past, the Khartoum government forces from Sudan in the north have come to kill the Nuar and the Dinka people.  This most recent war is between the Nuar and the Dinka, and so it seems that the unification they found in resistance to the Khartoumi regimes has been, for now, forgotten.  War against an aggressive foreign state i.e. Japan and Germany of the 40s, can be a great unifier of the peoples of a nation.  Without a foreign enemy, we humans look to make enemies of the people living next door to us.  The Second Commandment, love thy neighbor as thyself, is as contrary to human nature as the First. 

 

We leave for Gambela tomorrow, and so I can not say that I will have access to the internet in any form there.  If I do, you can expect updates like these.  If I do not, you can expect nothing.