Welcome to Jordan

The Jordan border crossing was my first border crossing without backup in the form of Nato. He was always really good at negotiating with officials; his favorite game was giving away as little information as possible and seeing if he could still get through. They literally had to prise his passport from his hands sometimes. The countries we’ve visited have become more and more progressive as we have continued and Jordan was no exception. At the immigration office they even had fingerprint scanners!!! Made a difference to India where everything was just recorded in a book.

Bedouin
The first stop in Jordan was with a couple - Roger and Elsie - I had met while in Syria. These guys’ specific ministry is with the Bedouin people of Jordan. The Bedoiun are the original nomads of the desert. Families that spend their time shepherding their flocks of sheep and goats in the vast expanses of the Jordanian countryside. In the more sparse areas of the desert these family live in large tents and move around from season to season pitching their camps in areas more likely to provide food for their animals. Roger’s approach to reaching the Bedouin is both simple and technical at the same time. He simply goes out to where they are living and spends time with them building relationships. On the technical aside Bedouin can be notoriously difficult to track down as the are constantly moving around the desert. But with the help of his cellphone (the Bedouin aren’t the backward people they once were) and his GPS he soon tracks them down.

Jordan is pretty much a motorbike free zone; motorbike ownership had only been legalised in the last six months so motorbike sightings in Jordan are rarer than hen’s teeth. Roger had a brilliant idea to see if we could scare the living daylight out of the Bedouin by riding the motorbike around in the desert to meet some. I was champing at the bit to get out in the desert so he didn’t have to ask me twice. The desert in the North East of Jordan is covered in small sharp rocks, when riding a motorbike over it is akin to sitting on a jackhammer. As we pounded along Roger, not having ridden on a bike since he was about 10 years old, was having second thoughts while I was wondering how long it was until the tyres would disintegrate. The first man we met came out to greet us looking rather confused. Roger and he engaged in a little back and forward but the man didn’t seem very keen to invite us in (very surprising, the Bedouin pride themselves on their hospitality) Roger mused that the man was probably wonder ing why we were on a motorbike in the desert wearing helmets? What were we afraid we would hit? We were obviously crazy.

Strike one for the motorbike.

The next Bedouin we met was a young bloke shepherding a flock of about 400 sheep with himself and two dogs. He seemed much more favourable towards the motorbike and repeatedly asked us to stay for some tea which we obliged. Before we left Roger presented the man with a nifty gadget that played back a gospel presentation in the form of a role play in Arabic. The man was very excited about this especially when noise started coming out of the gadget and he realised he understood it, Roger told him to check it out and we promised to return at a later date.
After spending the night camped in the desert we set off to find a friend Roger had already met previously. After sitting around for a couple of hours sipping tea and Arabic coffee the ladies finished preparing lunch and the men sat around the massive dish that was brought out. For lunch we were served the traditional Bedouin dish of mansaf. It consists of cook lamb piled onto of a bed or rice. No part of the sheep is left and the pile of lamb includes liver, kidneys, tripe and spleen as well as the head replete with brain tongue and eyes. Being the guest we were offered all the ‘juicy’ bits like the tongue and liver. I spent some time poking my tongue portion deep into the rice to hide them while no one was looking. After another couple of rounds of tea, our work was done and we took off again, promising to return soon.

Anoor Sanatorium
After bashing around in the desert I about-faced and headed back up north to a hospital that had made it’s name looking after Bedouin that have tuberculosis. Now I’m not a TB expert but I was told that TB is the type of disease that requires longish term care like 6 months or 1 year or even more. So these patients (mostly from poorer Bedouin backgrounds) check in at the hospital, get some good value treatment and have the opportunity to be exposed to the gospel. The hospital was established by a dynamic Australian from Bundaberg (there’s hope for you Jazz). This lady, Aileen Coleman, is well into her 70’s now and still running the place. The staff are ready to admit she’s not short of energy and runs rings around most of them. She is back in Australia at the moment doing some speaking rounds so if you get a chance to see her take it; I won’t get a chance to see her neither here nor there.

I went to visit the hospital and was immediately put to work. I wasn’t exactly doing ward rounds although Dr Julian does have a nice ring to it. Instead I mentioned that maybe I knew a thing or two about computers and ended up being inundated with IT repairs. Starting with the machines at the hospital then staff personal machines then after that others who had heard there was a ‘computer guy’ here.  The hospital doesn’t have any IT staff although it has a number of computers. They rely completely on locals who tend have proven to be less than reliable.

I didn’t know it, but after a few days there were rumours spreading I was going to be staying for a year or so whether I wanted to or not - rumours about letting down my tyres or hiding my bike and saying it was stolen. What was going to be a two day visit turned into a ten day one, largely because of the opportunity to serve there but also because of the great family I was staying with. They had been working in Chad for many years beforehand at another hospital that had started on excellent terms, fallen into the wrong hands, been stripped of much of it’s equipment and left, breaking many workers who had poured so much into it.

Anoor Sanatorium has survived where others have failed because it always comes back to it’s core focus which is reaching the Bedouin people. It hasn’t fallen in the the trap of other Christian hospitals that have tried to expand to compete with the ‘big boys’ and found themselves having to compromise on their principles. Aileen’s steadfast focus on reaching a largely neglected sector of society and her friendships with those in the Jordanian royal family have allowed Anoor to carve itself out a little niche and ensured it future rest’s largely in it’s own hands.

Like many ministries in the Middle East Anoor really requires two things: more prayer and more staff. There are vacancies for doctors and nurses who want to be part of a team that is there to reach people for the Lord. I think they may well be looking for and IT person too :o) Any people out there looking for a seachange where they could really make a difference, this is the place to be.

Time to leave
Time had gone so quickly I realised it has almost been a month since I arrived in Jordan so I headed south for the border. I stopped one day in Amman to hook up with some YWAM-mers who were kicking around at their base in the capital. There were a team from America and some from Egypt working at ways of getting the word out on the streets of Amman. I gained some good contacts for the trail through Egypt that should take me all the way to Libya.

I have just reached the port of Aqaba and am waiting for a ferry to cross the Red Sea. Looking back on the past month I’ve realised again the thing that really makes a place feel like home isn’t the view out the window but the people that surround you. Everywhere you go in Jordan the Arabs greet you with a smile and a big ‘Welcome to Jordan’ and if you ask me, I really think they mean it.

Stuff for the prayer diary:
- Bedouins in Jordan will come to the truth through the guys who are working here
- Anoor Sanatorium will continue to have support from the government and from extra staff coming (this could mean you)
- Encouragement for the many who are working for the good Lord in Jordan
- I will continue to encourage people in Egypt as the temperature begins to soar and desert stretches long.

If you feel like dropping me an email hit me at motomish@gmail.com

Love to hear from you

Julio