Our family friends from Sudan — that I have written about in my writersmommusings blog http://writermommusings.blogspot.com/2009/07/week-6-adventure-helping-others-summer.html
over the past years, the family whom we have had the amazing opportunity to reach out to for the past 3 years and I have a page called “Africa came to me” http://www.corneliaseigneur.com/sudan-refugees/
that highlights the brief history of that relationship with Jima’s family from Sudan — are on my heart so much these days.
So many friends of ours from church and from our community of friends have met Jima’s family. Jima has come to Bible study with our kids and the entire family of 9 has been over for Christmas and Easter and we have gone to the beach and the mountains together. And we have tried to help them find jobs. And we believed that they were seeking after the Lord and they were going to church.
But then we hear of a cultural situation that the family is in that is not Christian and I wonder and ponder and question.
The general question on my heart regarding people is how to get someone out of a certain situation for good. For the long haul. Beyond just the temporary.
You try to give people a chance. You try to help them. To provide for them. To assist them with the basics.
To give them fish, yes, but to also teach them how to fish.
You think God is using you and you think you are making a difference and you pray to God to show you how to continue to help you make a difference.
Then, there is a back slide. Or, is it a cultural situation, you ask yourself.
It is like they do not want to be helped anymore. It is the question of how to get people to move beyond. To believe beyond.
I am speaking in riddles as I cannot go into detail here right now.
You hear of Oprah and Francis Chan the pastor of Cornerstone Church and so many others who have overcome amazing odds and made a life on their own and you know it can be done, and you want to help others overcome and when you see progress you are happy . . . but, then when you see regression and sadness and hopelessness and people reverting. And you ask questions.
But, I do not want to lose hope and this may be a time for networking and praying and continuing to get the word out to help the wonderful Sudan family that we befriended 3 years ago.
When I attended the Donald Miller talk a couple of weeks ago, I spoke to him about our Sudan friends and related it to the mentoring project he is starting, and I think it is good, yet the question of my heart related to the Sudan family is how do you get people, young men in particular, to get out of bad habits, to know they can be the change. They can be different than their fathers and uncles. And in the situation of our Sudan friends, than their culture.
I read an article in Christianity Today about this very issue of the church in certain parts of Africa, how they were reverting to pagan rituals. Burning children. It is not of God, yet they claim to be believers.
It is hard. And it is painful.
But, God can do anything.
We pray and persevere and ask God for wisdom.
And sometimes, we are just called to be their friends.
