Rebuilding Hope in South Sudan - November 2021 Update
Training Facilitators for Healing and Reconciliation Workshops
South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church
Years of war and ethnic conflict in South Sudan have had a huge impact on the spiritual, emotional, and mental health of South Sudanese citizens. War and conflict have resulted in broken families, displacement, and tensions between groups or tribes. Many people have become soldiers or war prostitutes. Many have seen their parents or family members killed or raped. How does one heal from such wounds? How do you forgive your many enemies when the pain is deep and the list of atrocities so long? What is the role of the church in promoting healing?
The South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SSPEC) has been conducting workshops for four years that help people to experience God’s love and healing from the wounds in their hearts and help them to forgive those who have wounded them. This workshop is called Healing Hearts, Transforming Nations and is a biblically-based approach to promoting healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This is not about teaching conflict resolution or techniques for reconciliation, but about helping people experience true reconciliation with God, and then being able to identify and repent of their own wrongs against others and forgive others who have wronged them.
Workshop participants shared experiencing freedom from hate and bitterness, and sometimes physical healing as a result of the release of emotional burdens. Many people were able to forgive and seek reconciliation for conflicts within their families that had estranged people for many years. During the Standing in the Gap session, many people boldly and humbly took the opportunity to confess wrongs done by their people that have harmed those of another group. Many people who have been carrying grief and hatred have been able to forgive and experience freedom from these corporate confessions.
In Malakal, one woman from the Nuer ethnic group testified that she had been taught as a child to fear and hate the Anywaa people because they had attacked her village. She was told that the Anywaa transformed into snakes and crocodiles at night in order to kill her people. After going through the workshop and being ministered to by a facilitator from the Anywaa ethnic group she shared that she recognized her fear and hatred were wrong and that she was asking God to heal her from it. One woman whose family members had been killed during the war shared that she had been struggling with body pain and undiagnosed sickness for years. After taking her pain to God during the workshop, she experienced freedom from the physical pain and a renewed sense of hope.
There have been many requests for this workshop from churches in South Sudan and community leaders. SSPEC would like to have small teams of facilitators based in different regions of the country to enable workshops to be organized more easily and with less travel required for facilitators. SSPEC is working with the Episcopal Church of South Sudan (ECSS) and Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) to organize training for facilitators for the HHTN workshop to be held in March 2022. This is a strategic event that will bring together people from different tribes and denominations across South Sudan to come together to be trained to help others experience God’s healing and forgiveness through these workshops.
Read more about Rebuilding Hope in South Sudan HERE.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The Outreach Foundation is seeking gifts to support the mission and ministry of Rebuilding Hope in South Sudan. All gifts of any size are welcomed to help address the needs requested by the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan, including Bibles in the Nuer language, hymnals, education, trauma healing, leadership development, Nasir church construction, and emergency relief. You may make a gift HERE or by sending a check to our office.