Our new facilitators arrived at the graduation joyful but tired after an intense two days of facilitating their first Healing Hearts, Transforming Nations workshop. It had been a challenging five weeks for them during the South Sudan School of Reconciliation – giving up their weekends to be in training all day and preparing lessons during the week in a way that was new for them. We all celebrated that God got us through and the amazing way that people experienced God’s love and healing through these new facilitators in their faltering first steps.
One of the graduates shared his own experience, emphatically telling the church leaders “the people who see today are not the same people that you sent to this training. I am completely changed.” He described that one woman in the workshop in which he and others had led was a widow and all of her children had died. In South Sudan this puts her in a very isolated and vulnerable position – she has no social credibility or connections. The loss, isolation, and rejection that she had experienced had led to her being full of bitterness and anger towards others. She faithfully went to church and studied the Bible but found no relief from the bitterness and anger until God touched her heart in the workshop and she was able to give it over to Jesus and let God heal her. She shared in the workshop that she was forgiving all the people who had rejected her and that she felt free to love others again.
Another graduate shared that he realized the unique format of this workshop had power to open people’s hearts. He said that the dramas help people to connect with their own experience and understand principles more deeply than just through teaching. He shared how surprised he was to see a respected elder in the church come in tears (which is shameful in this culture) during the practicum workshop he facilitated. During a session about prejudice and the ways that we wound each other, the man initially said “we are Christians and we do not want to say anything bad about people of other groups.” But later during the Standing in the Gap session, a woman confessed the ways that people from her group, the Nuer, have harmed and killed those of the Shilluk people group. The man was Shilluk, and her confession freed him to express the pent up hatred that he had towards the Nuer for a series of attacks on his village and the people who had been killed and displaced. He said “this is the first time I have ever spoken of this hatred. I want to forgive the Nuer people and be free of this hatred. I want us to live together in harmony.”
As Rev. Tut commissioned the new graduates, he exhorted them not to be limited by workshops, but to share this message at every opportunity. People in all sectors of society are traumatized and division and tensions between groups is an ongoing reality in South Sudan. We desperately need to experience God’s love and healing so that we can be freed to celebrate and embrace our differences rather than let them divide us.
This group of new facilitators are not experts – they are humble people who come from every profession and walk of life. We had a professor of agriculture, some university students, a journalist, and a few people living in camps for displaced people, among others. And none of them have English as their first language. But they humbly submitted to learning a new way of teaching and asked God to use them. Our amazing group of trainers also labored sacrificially through the 5 weeks, even when the obstacles we faced threatened to derail and compromise the training. I think this is a great example of the ways that God works through ordinary people in unexpected ways. This was certainly not a highly publicized or big budget training, and none of us are international experts. But when we do our part to be faithful and trust God to do the work of the heart, the Holy Spirit can truly bring transformation.
1 comment:
Kristi, thank you so much for your updates. They are inspiring. Your comments about how God uses each of us, common people, to share our faith and help others on their journey are so true. Blessings.
Post a Comment