I don’t even really know where to begin. South Sudan has rocked my world and changed me in so many ways. This is a difficult place, so I now understand why not many foreign people have come here. To go to South Sudan…and stay here, you really have to want to be here. Some days you get hassled by the SPLA and other days you walk into your hut and there’s a chicken sitting on your bed (that was a first, haha). It’s much easier going to Kenya and Uganda, places where Americans and other western cultures have been for decades. But to come to South Sudan you have to understand that living in a hut in the middle of a village, deep in the overgrown bush that used to be booming coffee farmlands is far from easy. In fact, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Wadupe, South Sudan is a tiny village of 6,000 people that have endured some of the most difficult circumstances in the world. They have been through two civil wars, migrated to Uganda and D.R.C. and lived as refugees as a result, and come back to Wadupe after South Sudan gained independence only to find their once prosperous and lucrative coffee farms have now turned into overgrown bush that has soaked up blood from SPLA soldiers and people fighting in the war. And that’s just the beginning.
The spiritual atmosphere in this tiny little place is so heavy, so dark that words don’t adequately describe what it’s like. Every move I make here brings unprecedented waves of exhaustion. I have no passion, not even for Africa. All the dreams I have for my future seem impossible…why even try if I’m probably just going to fail? Most days seem gray and my thoughts turn from finding joy in every moment to longing for the comfortable life I left behind in America. And that’s not the worst part at all. There are so many stories I’ve heard that I don’t want to write down because I don’t want to exploit the people I’ve grown to love by telling their stories, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say no human being should go through what these men, women and children have endured. It’s inhumane. Unimaginable. What a perfect spiritual atmosphere Satan has created for the people of a country that just celebrated two years of independence…
Those are the lies spoken into my life every day that I have to fight against. Slowly, I’m realizing that it’s not just this place that makes my heart sink. The father of all lies uses discouragement everywhere to turn people away from God. Just think about it. God asks us to dream big, and to ask him to be a big God and use us to do great things, as long as what we are asking doesn’t contradict his peaceful nature. But Satan does everything he can to intercept our dreams about our futures and he tries to replace them with anxiety, depression and discouragement. And what does that do? It paralyzes us, right where we are. We can’t sleep, we can’t love our friends and families well, and we can’t lead joyful lives that bless other people. All we can do is wallow in an intoxicating spirit of brokenness.
Not once in the Bible does God call us to be broken. Instead, he tells us that we are his chosen people. He is the artist and we are his masterpieces, meant for greatness in his glorious name. We are called to be sanctified, to be made holy and to regain the beautiful image of our creator. We are called to be joyful. That is the destiny of every single person who walks on this earth. But how could there be a God who lets bad things happen to his people, you might ask? Believe me, with every story about suicides, rapes and war that I’ve heard along this journey, I have asked myself the same question, only to come finally to this answer: God doesn’t desire suffering for us, he desires holiness and he desires us to turn toward his love. But we have a choice, we can turn toward it or we can cloak ourselves in darkness. When God’s people cloak themselves in darkness instead of walking into His light, evil manifests itself in ways that are sometimes incomprehensible. A little bit of faith in times when you don’t understand anything that you are seeing or experiencing can sustain you for the darkness in our world, I can guarantee it.
Before I came on this journey, I thought I understood this continent. I was prideful, and people identified me as the girl who loves Africa. I was naive and immature in my understanding of mission work, and though there were hundreds of other people who are much more qualified than me to backpack around Africa for three months, God honored the life I was choosing and blessed my dreams and told me very clearly he would provide wherever I went. And that’s just it…we have free will. God designed us to choose what we do with our life. I could have followed God in the United States, or here to Africa. Neither choice is more pleasing to God. What’s pleasing to Him is that we love Him above all else, and then we love our neighbor as ourselves. It doesn’t matter if our neighbor is Sudanese or if he is from Texas!
God desires first for us to seek His kingdom and to live righteously. If we do that and commit ourselves to turning toward our creator instead of from him, then the possibilities for joy and for hope are infinitely greater as we make this pilgrimage called life. So lay down your anxiety about the future. Lay you’re your discouragement and your worry. Walk in the promise that the Creator has made to us as he says:
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of theses. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying ‘what will we eat?’ or ‘what will we drink?’ or ‘what will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” – Matthew 6:25-34
Wadupe, South Sudan is a tiny village of 6,000 people that have endured some of the most difficult circumstances in the world. They have been through two civil wars, migrated to Uganda and D.R.C. and lived as refugees as a result, and come back to Wadupe after South Sudan gained independence only to find their once prosperous and lucrative coffee farms have now turned into overgrown bush that has soaked up blood from SPLA soldiers and people fighting in the war. And that’s just the beginning.
The spiritual atmosphere in this tiny little place is so heavy, so dark that words don’t adequately describe what it’s like. Every move I make here brings unprecedented waves of exhaustion. I have no passion, not even for Africa. All the dreams I have for my future seem impossible…why even try if I’m probably just going to fail? Most days seem gray and my thoughts turn from finding joy in every moment to longing for the comfortable life I left behind in America. And that’s not the worst part at all. There are so many stories I’ve heard that I don’t want to write down because I don’t want to exploit the people I’ve grown to love by telling their stories, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say no human being should go through what these men, women and children have endured. It’s inhumane. Unimaginable. What a perfect spiritual atmosphere Satan has created for the people of a country that just celebrated two years of independence…
Those are the lies spoken into my life every day that I have to fight against. Slowly, I’m realizing that it’s not just this place that makes my heart sink. The father of all lies uses discouragement everywhere to turn people away from God. Just think about it. God asks us to dream big, and to ask him to be a big God and use us to do great things, as long as what we are asking doesn’t contradict his peaceful nature. But Satan does everything he can to intercept our dreams about our futures and he tries to replace them with anxiety, depression and discouragement. And what does that do? It paralyzes us, right where we are. We can’t sleep, we can’t love our friends and families well, and we can’t lead joyful lives that bless other people. All we can do is wallow in an intoxicating spirit of brokenness.
Not once in the Bible does God call us to be broken. Instead, he tells us that we are his chosen people. He is the artist and we are his masterpieces, meant for greatness in his glorious name. We are called to be sanctified, to be made holy and to regain the beautiful image of our creator. We are called to be joyful. That is the destiny of every single person who walks on this earth. But how could there be a God who lets bad things happen to his people, you might ask? Believe me, with every story about suicides, rapes and war that I’ve heard along this journey, I have asked myself the same question, only to come finally to this answer: God doesn’t desire suffering for us, he desires holiness and he desires us to turn toward his love. But we have a choice, we can turn toward it or we can cloak ourselves in darkness. When God’s people cloak themselves in darkness instead of walking into His light, evil manifests itself in ways that are sometimes incomprehensible. A little bit of faith in times when you don’t understand anything that you are seeing or experiencing can sustain you for the darkness in our world, I can guarantee it.
Before I came on this journey, I thought I understood this continent. I was prideful, and people identified me as the girl who loves Africa. I was naive and immature in my understanding of mission work, and though there were hundreds of other people who are much more qualified than me to backpack around Africa for three months, God honored the life I was choosing and blessed my dreams and told me very clearly he would provide wherever I went. And that’s just it…we have free will. God designed us to choose what we do with our life. I could have followed God in the United States, or here to Africa. Neither choice is more pleasing to God. What’s pleasing to Him is that we love Him above all else, and then we love our neighbor as ourselves. It doesn’t matter if our neighbor is Sudanese or if he is from Texas!
God desires first for us to seek His kingdom and to live righteously. If we do that and commit ourselves to turning toward our creator instead of from him, then the possibilities for joy and for hope are infinitely greater as we make this pilgrimage called life. So lay down your anxiety about the future. Lay you’re your discouragement and your worry. Walk in the promise that the Creator has made to us as he says:
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of theses. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying ‘what will we eat?’ or ‘what will we drink?’ or ‘what will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” – Matthew 6:25-34
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