Egypt: Sudanese communities

Please pray for our partner network TN as they seek to support and equip local churches to serve more than 3,000 Sudanese refugees across Egypt. Pray that the Sudanese communities experience God’s favour and provision in every area of their lives. The needs are great and the number of refugees has increased so prayer is requested for more labourers with a heart to serve the Sudanese people.

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Sudan: recent training, peace and stability

Give thanks for CMS-Africa’s recent training for church leaders. Bishop Hassan James, Bishop of Kadugli and the Nuba Mountains, describes the training as “truly encouraging and impactful.” Hassan asks for prayer for the Church and its mission in the midst of the ongoing challenges of war; that the message of the gospel and hope will reach all regions, proclaiming God’s love and care for humanity. Please also pray for peace and stability in Sudan.

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Sudan: hope in a desperate situation

Bishop Hassan James, who serves people in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, recently visited the CMS office in Oxford. He talked about the very difficult situation in Sudan, with war and hunger rife – but also shared of the hope and the support local churches are providing. Ministers have stood by their communities and are helping them through this incredibly hard time. Please pray for peace in Sudan, for the Church and its faithful witness, and for the hope of Christ to be known.

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Sudan: provision for displaced people

Pray for local partner Bishop Hassan James and the church in Kadugli as they serve a displaced community in great need amid ongoing conflict. As Hassan and the church give what they can in terms of spiritual and material support, pray for God to multiply their efforts and resources so that more people’s needs are met.

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Sudan: security situation

CMS-Africa ask for prayer for the security situation in Sudan. Along with Hassan James, assistant bishop of the Diocese of Kadugli and Nuba Mountains, we thank God for his care and protection in the midst of war, and praise him for the church and its perseverance in the midst of the harsh conditions they are living through. Pray for peace and stability in Sudan, especially in the areas experiencing fighting.

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For decades, violent conflict has tormented parts of eastern Africa. Joan Busolo, CMS manager for Africa, believes peace is possible. But to achieve it, she says, we need to follow Jesus and listen to women.

Interview with Naomi Rose Steinberg

Naomi: Joan, thank you for talking with me about this topic, which is timely given the continuing violence in Sudan, South Sudan and DR Congo. Can I ask, do you think that for the most part women have been left out of peace-making in those contexts?

Joan: Actually, it’s not they are left out of peacemaking; they are often left out of everything, even just making decisions about themselves. So, we have to start there.

Naomi: But it’s women who suffer most during war?

Joan: Yes, even apart from sexual violence which we know occurs…I’ve listened to many stories from women who were pregnant during times of war – imagine a pregnant woman having to run, to hide, to go without food for many days because of what’s going on around her that she never asked for. She may have children looking to her for help. They are the last people who want to see wars. Many of them say it would be easier to have peace and go hungry than to have plenty amid war. Women will be the ones to receive and care for the wounded, they will bear the brunt of those who are angry because they lost the battle. And it’s on that front where their peacemaking begins.

The key players in peace

Naomi: So, women in eastern Africa have a vested interest in bringing about peace – tell me how they can do this from a marginalised position?

Joan: It’s important to understand that many women are peacemaking. They are doing it already. They’re key players in peace. It may look small. It may be ignored. It may look like they are just doing their wifely or motherly duties. But they are peacekeepers.

Women spend 90 per cent of their time with the family, in community. Now that’s crucial. So, what they tell their children when they are fighting, goes beyond just a little fight. It’s a bigger thing. What they say even to their own husbands when there is a dispute with a neighbour or a complaint about one community or another – her voice may come in very quietly, but it can move and change a difficult situation. So, at a grassroots level, they are impacting. They are impacting right from the roots. Truth be told, they prepare the ground for the bigger decisions.

Give women more space!

Our cry in CMS is; give them more space to do that, allow them to come out even more strongly. So, when we run women empowerment programmes in conflict zones, or trauma healing programmes, women are given an opportunity to speak out and to recognise themselves as the peacemakers that they are and can be.

Naomi: Can you tell me about some women peacemakers you know?

Joan: The first person who comes to mind is CMS local partner Regina Lueth in South Sudan. This woman has gone beyond borders. Talk about ministry in hospitals, Regina is there. Talk about counselling, Regina is there. Talk about going to schools to say to young people, you don’t need to carry guns, you can relate and resolve issues by speaking to each other…she is there. She carries a lot. She is an example of how women are accelerating everything we are doing in terms of wanting to make disciples of Jesus in areas of armed conflict.

There is also Annette in DR Congo who leads the Graceful Warriors programme in Goma; their core business is trauma healing especially with children and young people. They also share the gospel and are supporting some Muslim-background believers who are facing persecution.

Those are just two examples of women who are helping bring about peace.

Shifting expectations

Naomi: Do you think more men will start listening to women and respecting their potential as peacemakers? Can the Church play a part in this?

Joan: It’s true that women are the majority in the Church, though there are very few in leadership. However, we recently helped run a consultation about bringing peace in Wau, South Sudan. There were women and men present, church leaders and their wives. We had lots of questions and discussion around how to best end violence and promote peace. I noticed that for the most part the women would just smile and go along with what was being said in the groups. The men were making the presentations; the women stayed seated. I spoke with my colleague Karobia at CMS-Africa and said, “Do you see what I’m seeing?”

So, in the afternoon we separated the women and men and I sat with the women and suddenly they felt freer to open up and share their own thoughts. They had very deep and moving things to say about being a woman in conflict contexts. About how women are often treated as children or viewed as property, more or less. How they are not expected to have a voice. How in church they are expected to be quiet and not challenge.

Naomi: Were those things shared with the men? How did they respond?

Joan: None of them objected or said there was anything untrue in what the women were saying. The men were looking at their wives with love and respect.

We have to understand that culture change is a journey. Bit by bit. We have a saying: “You can take a man out of his village, but you cannot take that village out of the man.”

But with Jesus, we can begin to see the miracle of change. It is only through Jesus that peace can come and so the Church has a vital, leading part to play as peacemakers. And listening to and including women is a big part of this.

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“Peace is the wish of everyone in Kadugli,” says Hassan James, assistant bishop of the Diocese of Kadugli and CMS local partner.

Yet from where Bishop Hassan stands, in the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan state, Sudan, peace has often been painfully elusive. The area was in the crosshairs of a violent civil war for decades and has also suffered from recurrent tribal violence: cattle theft, intimidation, displacement and murder.

Against this volatile backdrop, and despite the restraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, a symbol of hope for both the present and the future has risen and flourished – the Peace Episcopal Primary School, which is supported by the diocese.

“We started the school as the society needed more options for [affordable] children’s education… especially orphans, poor families and Christian children,” said Bishop Hassan. “We therefore came up with the idea and shared it with our friends in the country as well as across the world.”

He noted that it’s called The Peace School because, “We live in a war zone and so we need peace, and we must teach the children about peace….”

After almost a year of construction work, the doors to the Peace School opened in October 2019. Though conceived as a Christian school, the strong reputation for quality has garnered pupils from different tribes and religions and some of the teachers are Muslim. More than 480 children currently attend the school, ranging from ages 6 to 15. A separate kindergarten space has also been built to accommodate 80 children.

“We live in a war zone and so we need peace, and we must teach the children about peace…”

“The students live in peace and love even if they may differ in faith,” said Bishop Hassan, who was born into a Muslim family and turned to Jesus at age 11 while living in Khartoum.

In his time as suffragan bishop, he has worked hard to promote peaceful relationships between the Christian and Muslim communities. More than 90 per cent of the population of Sudan is Muslim. Bishop Hassan has been presented with multiple opportunities to leave the region and minister elsewhere in the world, yet he feels called to remain and be a voice for peace. He regularly speaks on the need for peace via local radio and often runs into people who have heard him and say things to him like: “Thank you, this is the need of the community.” He has also advocated for peace and reconciliation efforts with local authorities.

He remembers that during a visit to the Nuba Mountains in 2017, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby offered a prayer “that no child will live in war, but learn things such as peace, humility and love”. The Peace School is a brave step towards that vision.

Pray together

Unless violence is ended, communities in conflict zones have little hope of reaching their potential. CMS-Africa and CMS are focusing on such contexts: pray for people in mission working as peacemakers where people are crying out for an end to war.

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