Read letters from Sue Ellen Hall
March 1, 2006
July 2004
June 2003
September 18, 2001
March 2001
August 9, 2000
Sue Ellen Hall
Email: Sue Ellen Hall
Sue Ellen ended her last term of service in October 2009. She is available to speak as her schedule and time permit. Email her to extend an invitation to visit your congregation or organization.
Sue Ellen Hall had been under appointment as a mission worker with the PC(USA) since 1986. Sue Ellen served since 1998 in different capacities in Khartoum, Sudan, where she taught English and education courses at Nile Theological College as well as offering teacher-training workshops for English teachers with the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church evening community school. Beginning in early 2006, Sue Ellen was delighted to be asked to teach a course on music in the church.
Nile Theological College was founded in 1991 by the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) and the Presbyterian Church of Sudan to train pastors and Christian educators at the baccalaureate level.
Music has always been a big part of Sue Ellen’s life. “I joined my first church choir at the age of 4,” she says, “and I haven’t stopped singing since.” Throughout her years of ministry, she has always been blessed with many opportunities to share in music and worship, including being a regular pianist for Sunday morning worship at Khartoum SPEC (which meant she had to learn to read music from right to left) as well as serving as one of the pianists, worship leaders and choir directors at Khartoum International Church.
Sue Ellen’s first appointment as a PC(USA) mission worker was as an English teacher in Hangzhou, China. She served there with the Amity Foundation teaching English to young doctors at Zhejiang Medical University.
In 1990 Sue Ellen was reappointed and commissioned to Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. For six years she taught grammar, drama, literature, writing and crosscultural understanding to students majoring in English.
A fine arts graduate of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, Sue Ellen taught learning disabled children for two years before moving to Germany and later Scotland where she was housemother and teacher at an alternative boarding school. This variety of experiences proved invaluable during her work as a counselor for the challenging youth of the Forest Ventures program of Arkansas Presbytery.
In 1977 she was dramatist-in-residence in Tarboro, North Carolina, and became a member of Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church where there were also many opportunities to combine music, drama and worship. Sue Ellen taught English at Edgecombe Technical College and drama in Edgecombe County Schools before leaving to serve the Presbyterian Church in its mission work in China.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and raised in Texarkana, Arkansas, Sue Ellen is now a member of First Presbyterian Church (Texarkana) where the first seeds of mission service were planted in her mind and heart and nurtured by a special church family.
Looking back on a life filled with such rich and varied music, Sue Ellen feels the Holy Spirit at work. “Whether it is new hymns, new languages or new insights into God’s work in the world,” writes Sue Ellen, “God’s music is unending and as Isaac Watts so beautifully wrote, “blessings abound where’er He reigns.”
Birthday: September 19
