Greetings from Gumbo! It has been a couple of weeks since I have blogged, but I'm back! For this blog entry, I'd like to give you a brief description of what a typical day looks like for me in South Sudan:
The day begins with waking up around 6:00, hitting the snooze button, and finally rising for morning meditation at 6:10. I usually read a Gospel passage and then reflect on its meaning what it is saying to me. Morning prayer follows at 6:30 and mass at 7:00. Starting each and every day rooted in prayer and the Eucharist has been such a big help for me and been a great source of energy and hope. We then have breakfast as a community before starting our work for the day. The morning work consists of a combination of teaching English in the secondary school, either one or two classes of about 45 minutes each, and some accounting and administrative work in the planning and development office.
After lunch at 1:00, we usually have a community building activity- ping pong! Almost everyone in the house plays and we have a lot of fun battling it out. In the afternoon, I usually go back to the office for a bit more work , have Arabic class once or twice a week, and then oratory begins. Oratory is a time for all of the children and youth to come out and play and have fun with their friends. This is when we play basketball, futbol, and volleyball with everyone, and play games with the young children. It is an opportunity to allow myself to be loved by the children, and to show them love in return. I have really enjoyed coaching basketball and the number of players continues to increase and they are all so hard working and have a passion for learning- all while a smile is on their face and laughter is in the air. After Oratory, we play the rosary with about 150-200 youth in 3 different languages- Arabic, Bari (the local tribal language), and English. It is one of my favorite times of the day as we all come together and pray as one. It is so special and beautiful when so many youth say "Hail Mary" in unison and their prayers lifted up. They pray directly from their hearts and fill my heart with joy seeing the faith and hope the young people have.
After cleaning up with a quick, cold shower, we have evening prayer at 7:30 and dinner around 8:00. By the time dinner is over with, I usually only have time to check email and get on-line real quick, finalize and review lesson plans for the following day, and do some light reading before it is time for bed and put an end to another beautiful and glorious day in Africa.
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