I am writing to you all from Hadjer Hadiid, where I am away from the family this week and will be for most of the next month, as we start our Enhanced English and Teacher Training course for the English teachers of Breidjing and Treguine. Sonja has been a great help in designing the training for these seminars and I am excited to be teaching it. Please pray that the course is received well and benefits these teachers, while clearly demonstrating our love for God and our love for them (by the work we have poured into it).
Last week, I was walking through a major sandstorm in Hadjer Hadiid. I had to throw a shirt over my face and close my eyes, as the wind carried loads of sand in straight-line gusts for about 45 minutes. I couldn’t stop it or ask it to pause until I was safely inside a building. It reminded me of Jesus’ words: “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
The wind was blowing with one teacher I spent time with last week, though I am not sure where it will go. He really believes education is the answer for his people. He repeatedly stated that the white people have helped them with many things while others do nothing. I shared with him that it is not our whiteness of our skin that leads us to help, but the conviction of our beliefs. I read Isaiah 58 with him and talked about the fasting (actions) that is pleasing to God and that the “light breaking forth” was what he was seeing and testifying about. I told him that while I believed education is one of the ways God blesses us and something he calls us to apply ourselves in. The foremost answer for Darfurians is not just any learning, but the learning of the true way of God. We talked about many other things and read Isaiah 49 and Revelation 5 together as well.
