A letter from Ingrid Reneau in Sudan
December 2011
“True Peace, blessed By God…”
Graduation Celebration
It's been a whirlwind trip to YTTC’s fifth graduation: seated now at Juba International airport, awaiting my 4:00 pm Jet Link flight to Nairobi, time flies slowly in South Sudan! As I sit here, I keep thinking about the difference that one person can make to change the quality of time or to change people’s perception of a whole group of people…This is why, I say to myself, it is OK to make a big deal sometimes about one person…Anyhow, this time I was armed for the ever-bouncing-up-and-down, dancing road trip to and from Juba to Yei: with my motion sickness tabs, I slept most of the journey, and even more blessed, the 115-mile trip takes only about three and half hours now! I’d come to witness Elijah Kengen graduate:
Elijah is a Murle from Pibor who has completed YTTC’s two-year teacher training program. When his fellow classmate returned to Pibor after one year due to his father’s illness, Kengen persevered; he’s been rewarded with his teaching certificate and a reputation for being a natural teacher by his teachers. Captain of YTTC’s football team and an aspiring artist, Kengen crosses tribal barriers to create peaceful relationships with his fellow students. He’s been a wonder to his teachers! While not doing as previous pastoralists (livestock keepers) have—he didn’t immediately become prefect or readily assume sanctioned organizational leadership; he didn’t shine as others before him had done, yet he’s been a star; he shone beyond others' expectations of him and his place of origin! No one expected Kengen to be such an ambassador for peaceful coexistence between tribes; yet that is what he was, and in being this, his living attests to what is possible for future inter- and intra-tribal relationships in South Sudan, especially among the young pastoralists.
Peace has come, is coming again and again each Advent season, yet never leaves us, and must still come again as we anticipate anew this year its gifts in the new Republic of South Sudan. Hungrily, our souls as fertile, planted soil, we feast our hearts on the harvest from seeds we did not plant, which have been watered by the Holy Spirit.
Kengen final school practice.
True Peace, blessed by God, has come, and the fruit of His being with/in the South Sudanese is reflected in the overcoming lives of young men and women like Kengen, whose new beginnings are the reality of what True Peace is in the flesh: access to basic, quality education for all; renewed perceptions of ethnic identity and coexistence and dismantling distortions about being and identity; leadership in ways other than those sanctioned by the status quo and in places away from the political and religious environments; recognition and appreciation of gifts by others that blesses the possessor and those with whom he creates relationships… This list can extend, especially as is needed in South Sudan, for while war continues to moan along its borders, and within cattle-raiding tribes, the interior, the souls of South Sudanese youths keep emerging: a horizon of possibilities for long-lasting changes in human relationship and development.
It is this and other realities of True Peace, blessed by Jah, that we want to continue supporting in prayer, in financial giving, and in giving of y/our time, energy, skills—y/our bodies, so that this True Peace must take root and become long-lasting and sustaining.
As the year closes, it is literacy as a fruit of True Peace that's on my mind: literacy and the changing worlds it makes possible within the heart and mind of one like Elijah, who has begun and will continue to both experience and reflect this new way of being as a literate, well trained teacher and learner. He and others who’ve graduated from YTTC have begun to taste this Life to the full that is True Peace.
As we continue serving together, embodying True Peace, I give thanks for those like Prof Mac of Trinity Presbytery and his colleagues, with whom we’ve been working to coordinate their impending January 2012 Juba trip to introduce Across teacher training staff to the Big Book early literacy method in the hope that it would be adopted as an official part of the South Sudan Teacher Training curricula; I give thanks also to all of my Across colleagues who submitted travel pieces for the Across Travel Journal that I’ve been working on and am still hoping to publish early in January as a fund-raising project to finance other literacy projects. And thanks too to Miriam Gwin and others of Shenango Presbytery for their financial support toward the journal’s publication and a motorcycle for Children’s Ministry.
Even as we give of ourselves in these and so many other ways—the cards of support I receive, emails and prayers—it seems to me that we live daily the reality of Advent—Immanuel! So, as we exist to change from glory to glory into Christ’s image, I give thanks for the many changes this year, the most important being that which will result from the Across Research Framework I submitted to Across’ Leadership Team: it will affect how I continue to serve in South Sudan with Across.
I thank Jehovah, our most loving God, Savior and partner, for each of you for your timeless giving of yourselves, always…wishing you each and all a lasting, day-to-day, enjoyment of JESUS, our True Peace during Advent and forever…
In the Kingdom in our midst,
Ingrid
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 94
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Editor's note: YTTC is an institution established by ACROSS (now Across) in 2002 to address the issue of shortage of teachers for basic education in South Sudan. The goal is “to improve the quality of education for the church and the community as a whole.”
