A peek into my classroom

My first 2 months of lecturing have now come to a close and I can’t believe how fast the time has passed – it still feels like yesterday when I left Torit 2 months ago. I was given a course on Biblical Theology and was amazed and deeply touched by many of the class discussions with the students as various topics bring out their experiences with God during the war and some of the difficulties they still face in their spiritual walk due to the suffering they’ve experience. Contextualisation is often taken to a completely different level here when we for example discussed Israel’s exile and the students then asked whether God was punishing Sudan for their disobedience, too...? When forgiveness came up in one of the lectures, one of the students shared that the northern army completely wiped out his village and most of his family. Often when we talk about forgiveness in the West, we talk about hurtful words or other minor things – the experiences of my students here have put things into a new perspective for me. I have come to deeply respect those I am teaching here and can learn from them probably more than they learn from me (and I am not trying to be humble here).

Of Sheep and Evil Spirits

The time here has been marked by great joys and challenges at the same time. I am the only Westerner here at the moment, which was particularly difficult during the first 3 weeks of settling in and not knowing anybody. It seems that the longer I am here the better it gets as I have formed good relationships with the staff and also with the students, although sometimes it still hits me and I go to bed feeling rather lonely. At the same time, I see how God is moving in this place and how I am growing spiritually. I am learning much about spiritual warfare as I’ve had a few bad nights with weird stuff happening in my room - I had to ask somebody at 4 am to come and pray with me. I realise anew how important prayer is and also what a blessing it is to live in a community like this – where it is no trouble to ask somebody at 4 am to pray with you.

There are also those funny stories that you will only experience when being in a place like this. One afternoon I had left my door open and was just resting on my bed. Suddenly, when I heard a loud commotion in my room, I opened my eyes and found myself face to face with a big sheep! I was so startled that I let out a scream – the sheep was probably scared to death and bolted out of the door straight away. We seemed to have struck some kind of friendship in that moment though, because for the two weeks after that, it kept on following me around everywhere!