Last night I was able to attend a meeting for ALARM (African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries) at Watermark church led by Pastor Celestin. This was a meeting to update the public on the work that ALARM is doing and the current situation directly affecting Sudan. Pastor Celestin is originally from Rwanda but has lived most of his adult life in Sudan as the President of ALARM. His basic mission is to help reconcile Africa after all the many civil wars and call Africans into leadership.
During the meeting, I learned that Sudan will have an election this weekend that will decide whether it will stay one country or split between the north and south. Basically, Sudan has become the gateway for the spread of Islam into the rest of Africa. Northern Sudan is pushing to make Islam the national religion while Southern Sudan is holding to Christianity and open to others. Currently, many southern Sudanese people are living in the north and trying to stand against the spread of Islam into schools, but this election may call for a split.
Pastor Celestin talked about the current crisis and explained how this can affect the rest of Africa, especially if things were to get violent. When he was asked about the stance of the countries surrounding Sudan, he said an African saying that I haven’t stopped thinking about; “If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you cannot stand there with arms crossed because one gust of wind can burn the whole village to the ground.” How often do we stand with arms crossed because something like this could never affect us? Granted, we don’t live in grass huts and we do have a fire department, so maybe that’s the reason.
We were also able to meet Michael. He is Sudanese, but he has been living in Dallas for a season now. He is currently a pastor of a Sudanese church here and was able to help shed a lot of light on what we can do to help while here in America. Seeing as how he is also “all the way over here” now, he still wants to help his country. He has many prayer meetings coming up this weekend, but he has also become a huge advocate for those Sudanese that are here in the States in helping them register to vote in the election as well as getting them to the voting sites.
To say this weekend is a huge fork in the road for African politics and religion is an understatement. However, I didn’t know anything about it until last night after meeting these two men. There are crises all over the world popping up that we don’t even know about. When someone asked what we could do to help, I just wanted to shout out, “REJECT APATHY!” It’s too easy for us to live a life with no clue of what’s happening outside of our own bubble and that scares me.
On the other side of this, there are so many crises all over the world and what good does it do when you know all about them but can’t do anything? It gets exhausting to hear about every country’s situations over time and there’s only so much you can give your heart to. Again, that scares me. It scares me because that shouldn’t burden one person or a group of people. I feel like I should hear about a crisis and then immediately hear about what someone is doing about it. This may sound crazy, but I almost wish the mission field was a little more competitive. Competitive in the sense that it’s actually interesting to see who will respond first.
Pray for Sudan this weekend and continuing on to next week as the votes come in. Sudan is a gateway country into the rest of Africa and holds a very powerful position. The last thing they need is another civil war and more needs for reconciliation.
