sudan – Karla Jo Wasion

I am prone to forgetting so I want to memorialize my very first mission trip. I want to put my memories in writing for my grandchildren and their children, but also for me. Because remembering is sweet.

(Ignore the dates on the photos. They were all taken in March, 2007.)

Sudan – Part 3

The final days of my trip to Sudan were spent in Bor, the birthplace of the second Sudanese civil war. We were there to host a retreat for church leaders and the local church. We stayed at the church “compound”, made up of numerous huts.

My first sights of the compound can really only be described through the pictures.

She captured me, but I could never get her to not be afraid of me

The women looked so tired, and they were very shy. But they served us so graciously, and when we were leaving, they seemed genuinely sad to see us go, and kept thanking us for coming.

We were there for two days. The first day started with everyone gathering in the church for worship, and then the teaching we had prepared to encourage them.

Inside the church, gathering for the retreat

Yes, it was hot inside the church, but not as bad as you would think.

The look on this woman’s face says so much to me. Life is hard for her, and she has endured much. It is etched into her. One of the most difficult things for me to realize was that, though they are part of the Body of Christ, they rarely received encouragement from the rest of the Body.

And I thought of how accessible it is to me. How much I take for granted the fact that at any given time I can go to my computer and have dozens of people praying for me if need be. How much encouragement I receive just from the Christians in social media. I thought of how I never feel alone, or forgotten by the rest of the Body of Christ. But they do. They told us more than once that it meant so much to them to have us come because it let them know someone else cared about them, that they had not been completely forgotten.

The worship has to be one of my favorite parts of the trip. I did not understand their songs, but I knew Who they were singing about, Who they were worshiping.

It was beautiful to watch, beautiful to be a part of these brothers and sisters as they bowed before God.

On the second day, after the teachings, we all went outside. The temperature that day was 103 degrees (F). For three hours we all stood outside, taking communion together and praying. What were we praying? That God would forgive the bloodshed of war, and heal their nation. They felt it was time to take back the land for the purposes of God. The civil war that began right there in Bor, lasted 22 years and cost the lives of millions of people, and displaced millions more.

But they loved their country, just like I love mine. And this confronts my pride head on. Because I, like the majority of Americans, have believed my country to be the greatest on earth. In my own arrogant patriotism, I believed that, if given the chance, anyone would want to live here. But on that day, I witnessed a people who didn’t want to live somewhere else. They loved their country, and they wanted to see it healed. I saw men and women spend three hours in prayer, intense prayer, in intense heat, because they believed God could redeem their nation. I saw them weep in the dirt over the sins of war and the lives that had been lost. I saw them do the only thing they knew to do for a nation that had been ravaged, both physically and spiritually. They fervently prayed. I want to be like them when I grow up.

To start us off, Pastor Dave read from the scriptures — Pastor Dave led us off

The sound of her weeping and praying filled the air

And in the end, God is worshipped — And in the end, God is worshiped

That night, we all sat around a fire. Well, our team sat around a fire with the men of the church. The women stayed with the children. At some point, I saw them preparing mats outside, and then they, the women and children, all laid down to go to sleep.

But before that, we had an impromptu worship service, as all of a sudden one of the men began clapping and singing, and soon others had joined in. It was a joyous sound and soon they were dancing and laughing and singing praises. I remember sitting there watching and listening and thanking God for this gift. It was beautiful.

The next day, we began the long journey home. Back to Uganda, then to England, and finally landing in Chicago. The very next day I was driving to Kansas to my mother’s funeral.

Putting this trip into words and photos has been good, as I let God speak what He wanted to speak to me through my memories. It has also been sad, as I look at some of the faces and remember their painful stories. But mostly, it has reminded me that God’s world is big and I am small and He is the same on one side of the earth as He is on the other. His Spirit is at work in His people, and in the nations and right here in me.

One last look…

We had brought bottles of bubbles with us for the children, much to their delight

(Ignore the dates on the photos. They were all taken in March, 2007.)

Sudan – Part 1

After we left Uganda, we headed for Sudan, to a town called Bor. On our way, we stopped to stay in tent city. It was a ‘hotel’ made up of what looked like army tents with two cots in each tent. Quite nice, really. It was in tent city that I first came to appreciate the headlamp. The headlamp was a small flashlight that sat on your forehead, held in place by an elastic band around your head. When my team leader first stressed the importance of bringing one, I really didn’t understand why. Besides, I looked every bit as silly as I felt wearing it. But the first time I had to go to the bathroom in the dark, I discovered what really mattered. I needed that flashlight on my head because my hands would be busy holding onto the pole that would keep me from falling into the hole in the ground that was the toilet. Awesome.

Uganda tent city — Salvation. I think I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this moment.

It was in tent city that I would meet a most beautiful girl from Kenya (I can’t for the life of me remember her name). She worked at tent city and was our hostess, more or less. She liked us and hung around our team a lot. She told me she missed Kenya. She missed her home and her family. I don’t know what brought her to Sudan, but I got the impression she couldn’t afford to leave. The day before we left, she was sitting with us in the meal tent and someone led her, weeping, to Jesus. Later, she came to a couple of us, with her small bible, and asked if we would show her what to do. We showed her where she should begin reading and we prayed for her. My heart has always remembered her, even if my mind cannot recall her name.

Once lost, now found, in a tent in Sudan.

Our first night in tent city, our team sat at an outdoor table by a group of trees, planning and yawning. There was a group of people not far from us, sitting around talking. One of them was a young man who, upon realizing we were American, came over to us to say hello. His story was stunning. He was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan and was among those who had been allowed to resettle in the United States. Almost all of his family members had been killed in the war, and his village had been destroyed. He was one of the boys who escaped on foot into the bush, finally ending up in Kenya. After relocating to the U.S., he finished his schooling and got a good job. But Sudan was his home, and he had returned because he wanted to rebuild his village and look for members of his family. That day was his first day back in Sudan since fleeing for his life.

It is these things, these stories of people longing for their home, that pushed against the walls of my heart, trying to make room for something bigger than my own life. There is something so powerful about ‘home’, that a lost boy from poverty would grow into a man surrounded by wealth, and return to poverty, because it’s home, and it matters to him. And a girl from Kenya so lonely you could see it on her face, and for whatever reason, she was there, in Sudan in a tent city, when a group of missionaries needed a place to stay. To be present at that moment that had been arranged by God, watching a young woman cry as Jesus entered her heart, was so surreal to me. I don’t think it was that I suddenly felt very small so much as it was that the moment seemed suddenly so very big. As though nothing else in all the earth mattered at that moment, except that God had arranged a meeting.

As all of this comes to me at this moment, I know what I want…what I’ve been wanting since I returned. I want something to push against my heart. Something bigger than me and my life to push its way in. I want moments that are so much bigger than me, moments where nothing else matters except what God is doing.