A letter from the Rev. Debbie Blane in Sudan
May 14, 2010
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Khartoum! These past few weeks at Nile Theological College (NTC) and in Khartoum and surrounding towns have been amazing.
I have preached at two church services. I was invited to three services, but I did not discover until the second one that being invited to “encourage” actually means being invited to preach. At one service I gave a very long prayer, at the next service I prepared the sermon as I waited to preach and for the last service I finally knew what was expected and I showed up with my outline.
One of the services was held in the evening in the city of Omdurman. Omdurman is across a bridge, over the Nile River, from Khartoum 2/Bahri, where I live. The service was in an Episcopal church that has pews, a place for the choir and soaring ceilings. This service consisted of all young people. In Africa the church is literally young. Eighty percent of the congregation are young women who are from traditional African religions and have come to Khartoum to find work. The pastor of this church goes out and finds the young people and encourages them to come to the Christian church. There they find community and engage in Bible study and are prepared for baptism. The night that I preached five young women were baptized. I was given the extraordinary joy of baptizing three of them. These were my first baptisms.
Before the pastor and I baptized the young women, I preached. I talked about the importance of education. Baptism is a step that takes us into a deeper place in our Christian journey. We go from drinking spiritual milk to being ready for solid food, entering a new phase in our Christian education. Education is also learning about the world and the global community.
Christian Church Wedding in Bahri (photo by Debbie Blane’s student, Hakim).
A week ago I attended a Sudanese Christian church wedding. Three of my students accompanied me, so I had someone to translate some of the Arabic for me as we sat together in the pews. The church is a traditional one with pews and a large cross in the background, which was draped in celebratory cloth for the wedding.
Because issues such as polygamy are a current reality in many Arab and African countries, I was very glad to hear the minister say in his sermon that one man is to be married to one woman in a Christian marriage. He called for not only the bride to be a virgin, but also the groom.
In speaking outdoors with students at the college on a hot afternoon this week, I realized with great clarity that Jesus was truly an Eastern man. The Old Testament is Semitic, just as Arab and Hebrew cultures are Semitic. The two languages, Arab and Hebrew, are very close in vocabulary and grammar. We were discussing the issue of bride price, or dowry, in Sudan. In the Old Testament polygamy was practiced and dowries were paid. This is a worldview that I cannot fathom, and yet it is a reality here in much of Sudan. Sudan is Eastern, as is the Old Testament. Our New Testament is Greek with a language that is much closer to English, and yet has a different worldview in many ways. I pray often for a deeper understanding of the culture in which I am living and serving here in Sudan.
This morning I was invited to speak with a group of women at the Spouse’s Program of NTC. The wives of several of my students were present, and it was a delight to meet them. The piece of information that was very important for me to learn was that the husbands of two of the women, who were illiterate when they were married, taught them to read. One of the women said in Arabic (it was translated for me) that every year for five years her husband took her through the school curriculum in order to give her an education. I was truly touched by this loving act on the part of these men.
In the History of Missions class that I taught this past semester we learned that in the past centuries there were male missionaries who had illiterate wives. My question to my students was, “If this made the woman an ill-suited partner, as was implied, why did the husband not educate his wife to bring her into full partnership with him?” The men teaching their wives in Sudan does not in and of itself bring complete change to society, but I certainly accept it as a blessing that God is giving to these woman and their children.
Blessings,
The Reverend Debbie Blane
The 2010 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 47
