It was a hot, forgettable day—the kind that blended into the rhythm of village life. We had walked to the hospital so many times that no one particular trip was memorable. In the bush of South Sudan, the hospital meant one thing to us.

WiFi.

Not enough for much of anything—maybe an email or WhatsApp message—but enough to briefly reconnect to home.

We piled three deep on the motorcycle—also a forgettable event in village life, except that I keenly remember that it was Simon who accompanied us on this trip. We had barely left the school and our huts when we met another motorcycle on the road.

Simon recognized the motorcycle passenger and slowed down.

“I’m on my way to Uganda to finish a few things,” the man shouted.

As I hadn’t planned to remember the conversation, I’m not sure how in depth this was. Did he say he would be back tomorrow? Did he say what he was doing in Uganda? Did Simon even reply to him at all before they sped away, opposite of the direction of the hospital and the village?

We continued on our way, but Simon was uneasy. Constantly looking back over his shoulder as though he expected to see the man again, he quickly became a distracted driver.

He pulled over to make a phone call, but there was no signal.

“I wonder if…” he’d think out loud.

“What’s going on?” one of us would ask.

“I just need to check if…” he’d follow up. Sort of.

Finally, Simon made a decision.

“Do you two mind continuing to walk to town? I need to turn around and tell Hector something,” he asked, but more like informed what he was doing.

“Uhhh… sure?” Douglas agreed. Sort of.

“Great—I’ll be back very soon,” Simon said. We hopped off the motorcycle and he spun around, soon leaving us on the deserted muddy road to the hospital.

We walked and walked. The further we got, the more anxious we got. Would Simon return? Were we safe? My job was easy, though: Don’t think about danger because that’s Douglas’ job. I’ll just sit here and fret about avoiding sunburn instead.

After enduring what I can only describe as the second time in history that God made the sun stand still in the sky, we heard the faint drone of a motorcycle approaching us. It was Simon.

As I mentioned, a forgettable day. I don’t remember if we trekked to the hospital or if we all turned around. But we did finally get an explanation from Simon.

“You remember that man we saw going the other way?” He asked. Of course we remembered.

“I had to come back here to send Hector after him,” he filled in. “I am concerned he will reach Uganda before Hector meets him on the road.” That was, apparently, all we needed to know.

It was hours before we heard from Hector again. But there was a buzz in the air that he had returned.

“Hector is back!” Simon exclaimed.

“Did he catch the guy?” Douglas asked.

Simon laughed. “You are going to have to ask Hector for the full story,” he teased.

When we saw Hector, it was hard to understand what to expect from the story. He was laughing. His eyes were angry. His hands flailed with drama.

 “That man was a very, very bad man,” he started. Most important information first, naturally.

“I told him that he was stealing from orphans! Orphans!” His angry eyes overcame his wide smile.

“Stealing from orphans!” I reiterated. Indeed, that sounded terrible.

“He was hired by a local NGO here to build latrines for the community,” Hector began with a timeline. It clicked—I had seen a campaign on t-shirts everywhere that had bluntly said, “End Open Defecation.”

“He hired local people to help him with the latrines, and the people came out and helped,” he continued. “They waited and waited for their pay, very patiently.”

“Now this man has received $2,000 to pay the laborers. He took that money and ran to Uganda!” Hector laughed at the man’s foolishness but quickly contained his laughter with the anger painted on his face.

“So when Simon saw him on the road to Uganda—you remember that man that you saw?” He asked, drawing us into the story.

“Yes, yes of course,” we replied.

“He knew that he had just been paid. The man was a fool! If he had just said he was visiting someone close by, no one would have suspected anything. But that fool said he was going to Uganda. And Simon—he is very, very smart,” Hector added, in contrast to the very, very bad man.

“Simon knew that, if he made it to Uganda, we would never see him again. So that’s why he sent me to chase him down.”

“So… did you catch the guy?” We had to know.

“You know, let me tell you something,” the laughter and the anger faded briefly from Hector. “As we chased after him, I realized there was no way we would catch him. It was impossible. So, I prayed a prayer. I said, ‘God, if you’re real… Catch this thief!’”

Would we get to learn now if God is, indeed, real? It seemed the balance of a deeply existential question was hanging by the thread of a Ugandan thief.

He continued. “We were getting very close to the border. So close that I became disheartened. I thought, surely he has already escaped to Uganda by now. But just then, I saw someone on the side of the road.

“Let me tell you something,” Hector paused, dramatically. “It was the thief! The chain had broken on the motorcycle, and there he was, stranded!” Hector’s laughter returned. “So I said, thank you, Jesus! You are real, you are real!”

A chain became a miracle.

“I told the man to come back to the village with me and to pay the workers what he owed them, but he refused. So I said, well then, fine… and I left him there! He couldn’t go anywhere with that broken chain!” Hector laughed at the self-imposed arrest by the motorcycle—and, certainly, by God Almighty.

“I went to the border myself. You know, those people know us very well. They know us. They know the good work we do in the community. And I told those police there, ‘I need your help.’ So they came running quickly, and when they saw the man, they stripped him naked!”

I was not expecting that part. Much less, what happened next.

“Soon, the people in the nearby village came out to see what was going on. And everyone started screaming at him that he was a thief. Everyone was so angry at him.

“Then the police pointed a gun at his head and asked me, ‘Shall we shoot him?’”

This stopped being a funny story about catching a thief. I don’t know if Hector paused for dramatic effect, or to take a drink of tea, or if just my mind slowed down time to think of everything at stake here.

I pictured a man lying tied up, naked, on the ground, surrounded by an angry community. His life in the hands of a single person—Hector—who had been given the authority by the police to command the death penalty.

What if Hector was a corrupt man? What if he was a liar? What if he was just vengeful toward a man he knew had cash on him? Of course, I personally knew that none of those were true of Hector. But how would others know? Would this man lose his life that quickly? Could that happen to any of us?

The thief had to have been terrified. Did he think of his loved ones at home who would never know what happened to him? Just another soul that somehow disappeared in chaos of South Sudan? Did he regret it? Did he cry out to God, “If you’re real… save this thief!”?

Perhaps, once again, God’s existence would be proved on the road to Uganda.

“So I made the decision,” Hector interrupted my thoughts.

“I told the police to put the gun down.

“I told them didn’t want him to be killed. I just wanted him to return to the village and pay the people he owes.” Hector’s voice had softened.

“And then never, ever, return again,” he hardened.

Just as they would have listened to his command for execution by firing squad, they listened to his command to march him back to the village, police escort and all. They called the workers. They received their pay.

Then they booted the man out of South Sudan.

Come to think of it, I guess it wasn’t a forgettable day.