Tuesday Nov. 17

The First Rocket Stove in Boma

Boys in their School Uniforms

Going to school on Monday was a great start to the week. Teachers Iris and Carol collect all the uniforms on Friday and wash them over the weekend. Monday morning they are handed out before school and everyone scurries around changing clothes. The uniforms are then left in their desks after school to be worn on the following day. The kids look so sharp and they are so darn cute! It was cool on Monday so the girls got to wear their sweaters. The boys have no sweaters and are quite jealous, but Iris just reminds them they are big strong men and don't need sweaters. Hopefully we will be able to provide sweaters for the boys at the start of next school year in January. To the people of Boma, any temperature below 75 degress becomes a "sweater required" day. This is exam week, next week will be a grading/play week and then school is out until January. I am doing devotions with the kids each morning which is very fun. Monday morning I did the story of Peter and John healing the crippled man at The Gate Beautiful. I called some boys up to help me by acting the story out and the boys I had play Peter and John were actually named Peter and John. I did not know their names when I called them and the kids thought this was pretty funny. It's a pretty safe bet that a boy's name in Boma will be either one of the disciples or an OT prophet.

One of the things I am doing on this trip is introducing the Rocket Stove to Boma. For more information, just google "Rocket Stove" and you will find pictures and videos. My friends Jon and Flip Anderson in Corvallis, OR invested a couple of afternoons instructing me on making the Rocket Stove and then Flip cooked some amazing lunches on them. If we can get the idea going here, I know they will be a huge blessing. They cook very efficiently using little fuel and generating almost no smoke. There are so many respiratory problems here because the cooking is done inside the tukals with all the smoke, and there is also the danger of children being burned with the open cooking fires. Basically, all you need are two 5 gal. buckets and a two foot section of 4" PVC pipe. The stove is made from clay soil mixed with some type of organic material and about a quart of juice from some type of over-ripe fruit that binds it all together. We have lots of clay soil down about 10 inches below the fertile topsoil here and we have lots of over ripe mangoes for the juice, but I was struggling to find a source for the organic material. I tried chopping up dried savannah grass with a machete but it was a bit too labor intensive and took too much time. So, I just went out on Monday afternoon with my bucket and asked the Lord to show me what I could use. About 10 minutes into my meandering about, I came upon a weird kind of grass that had a top not unlike a cat tail. When I removed the fluffy seeds from the stem, it turned out to be a perfect material for the stoves. Everyone here thinks I am a very crazy American; walking by on the trail they ask why I am pruning the grass and then back at the compound having the women that work for us laugh at me for squishing mushy mangoes into a container. But they were all amazed that afternoon as I made a Rocket Stove and they could see what I had been trying very unsuccessfully to tell them. I built a fire in it today to begin drying it out as I am going to begin teaching the pastors that are here for the training how to make these stoves in the afternoons.

The pastor training began today. Dr. Nandi is a very gracious man and an outstanding teacher. He is doing his sessions on Christian Family Life. Pastor Godfrey is teaching on the first 12 chapters of Acts focusing on the Holy Spirit and the early church. He is a great teacher as well and I enjoyed both sessions today very much. There are about 20 pastors at the training. Another "only in Sudan" moment today - we were in the unfinished school room and as Pastor Godfrey was teaching someone yelled out and jumped up for a stick. A snake about 2 feet long was up on a rafter above Pastor Godfrey. The snake was killed and class continued, no big deal.

I am going to show the Jesus Film tonight even though it rained a bit this afternoon. I had promised the kids in school and they were very excited so the show will go on. I got all the equipment out this afternoon and it worked fine. I had said in my last email that our staff had showed the film every weekend since April - that is what I thought they told me. In reality they have shown it about once a month. Still, I am very happy they are showing it at all. I want to show it here in our village a few times and take it to both Bien and Kiawa while I am here.

Rosemary leaves for Nairobi tomorrow so it will get decidedly quieter from that time on. The amount of energy she has always amazes me. Today was her birthday and I told her that to guess her age I would say somewhere between 30 and 80 - she has the vitality of a 30 year old and is the kind of woman that just does not age. So, I don't really have any idea how old she is and she wouldn't tell me.

Unless something happens that needs your immediate attention, I won't send out another update until the end of the week.

Blessings from Boma;

Micheal