I have been home from Sudan for 7 weeks now…which seems crazy to me! Anyway, before I went to Sudan, Blaise and I attended a Sudanese church service in Louisville, Kentucky and I promised that I would bring pictures to them once I returned home.
A few Sundays ago, Blaise and I drove back down to Louisville and shared in another wonderful church service with the beautiful Sudanese men and women of Resurrection Episcopal Church. I remembered several of the members from last time, and they all remembered us. It was SO wonderful to see them again post-Sudan! It felt so much different to be there after I had been to Sudan and had experienced a little taste of the lives they once knew as children. They had many questions, and I gave them the best answers that I could. I also shared my photographs with them, and I felt SO blessed to be able to spend that time of fellowship with them.
Among the many questions, the one that stood out to me the most was, What were the good and the bad things that you saw while you were in Sudan?
The question caught me off guard, because it’s hard to sum up such a life-changing trip into a couple of sentences; however, I answered this: The good was definitely that the people had so much joy and happiness with so little. They shared with us such love and kindness that I will never forget. The bad, or sad, was the day that I realized our Bible school students, and most of the Sudanese around us, get only one meal a day. That was really hard to sit there knowing that the people are hungry and they are merely surviving on the food they have.
The trip to Louisville was such an immense blessing because for the first time since returning home, I was among people who truly understood the differences between Sudan and America. One man said to me, You will never be the same person again. You will never feel the same things as your white friends, and you will always understand that there is so much need out there in the world. Sudan…Africa…it changes you. You will never be the same.
That pretty much sums up exactly how I have been feeling! I will never be the same person again, and I am really thankful for that! I was selfish and I was way too caught up in long-term planning and safety nets. I don’t ever want to be that person again…I want to be the person who takes action when there is a need whether here at home or abroad, the person who puts all of my faith in God, the person who follows His call into the wilds of Africa and never looks back, the person who truly lives out a life of faith.
I don’t want to be the same person I was before Sudan.
Nhialic pieth…God is good (Dinka).
Kwoth goa…God is good (Nuer).