Healing the Wounds of War in Sudan

Happy New Year! We have been busy over the holidays, but we want to share in a few posts about some significant activities that we have been part of recently in Juba.

In April, 2023 a devastating civil war erupted in Khartoum, Sudan, that has spread to the whole country and is still ongoing. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from Khartoum and around Sudan because of the war and many have come to South Sudan to seek refuge. They have lost their homes, their jobs, and many have lost family members in the violence and upheaval.

A candle is passed while people affirm to each other,

“you are the light of the world. You are the hope

of your country. God believes in you.”

Our reconciliation team has been hoping and praying to be able to conduct a workshop for some of these refugees to help them find healing from the trauma of war and displacement. In November it finally happened! This was the first HHTN workshop that our team has conducted in Juba with all the teachings in Khartoum Arabic without translation, which helped the people from Sudan to be able to discuss freely and feel at home. Having a team able to teach completely in Sudanese Arabic was the fruit of several years of training facilitators, and we praise God for a diverse and capable team. 

A group discusses the physical and abstract

losses their community experienced

The losses for each group were listed, written in Arabic

Language is a real challenge in South Sudan, where the majority of people speak a simplified version of Arabic (Juba Arabic), but were educated in English and therefore read and write in English. However, there are also thousands of South Sudanese who were educated in Khartoum and speak and write Arabic better than English. The South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SSPEC) was based in Khartoum before South Sudan’s independence, so most of the members have spent time in Khartoum and many were educated in Arabic. For this workshop, we wanted to use Khartoum Arabic as the primary language, which means that writing on the flip charts was in Arabic, group work was in Arabic, etc. I helped to plan the workshop, but left all the facilitation to my colleagues because I do not speak the Khartoum version of Arabic.

 

Burning the papers representing our pain, giving them to God.

We had a diverse range of participants, including bishops and pastors, professors, people who are less educated, men, women, and youth and people from different regions. It was encouraging to see people actively discussing and sharing together despite the differences in background and education.

The session on confession of corporate harms was also meaningful, with several people acknowledging the ways that their group has contributed to conflict and harm against other groups. One woman shared through her tears about the discrimination and prejudice she felt in Khartoum by the dominant group, but said that now God has given her the grace to forgive them. One Muslim man attended the workshop at Bob’s invitation, and said that it was the first time he had ever entered a church and that he discovered that he had a lot of misconceptions about Christianity.

Group photo of participants and facilitators

On the last day, several people shared how God had worked in them to bring healing or forgiveness during the workshop. Mama Elizabeth shared that there have been many accidents in her family and several of her children have died. She had been consumed by a fear of accidents and a fear of death. But during the workshop she had given this fear over to God, and her heart felt at peace. She said that she had finally been able to sleep in peace.

We are grateful to God for opening this door to minister to people who have suffered so much. Please pray with us for continued healing and opportunities to share the message of God's invitation to forgiveness and reconciliation.