In Juba, South Sudan, my colleague Paul and I were getting sick of being cooped up in our “safe house”. We began to dream of climbing the small mountain we could see a few kilometres away to the south.
Anticipating heat, we set out early on Saturday morning and walked in the general direction, weaving through a sprawl of simple houses and gardens until we came to the foot of the mountain.
The climb was tougher than it looked from a distance. We had to work around huge boulders and push through thickets of elephant grass higher than our heads. At one point I pulled myself up a crevice between two boulders and found my head in the midst of a thorn bush that would not let me go. It took a bit to escape it and I left some blood behind.
I did not say anything to Paul, but all the way up I was nervous that we might run into soldiers who might not be happy that we were outside the city in the bush. There was also a thought of big animals when we came to areas where the elephant grass had been flattened. When we returned and told our tale we learned that what we should have feared was landmines!
But it was soldiers and animals that were in my mind when eventually we broke out of the bushes onto the summit. Instead there was a young Sudanese man sitting on a rock reading a Bible. I cannot tell you what a surprise it was.
He looked up to see the unlikely sight of two disheveled wazungu, lifted the book and appealed to us that he didn’t understand English. So we read together, and felt that God had just granted us a very special providence.
Emmanuel (his name) then took us a little higher to a peak where there was a huge steel cross. “Fire of God” he called the place, and as we reached it we were suddenly soaked with a downpour of the biggest raindrops I have ever known. It was the first rain we had seen here.
We sang and danced, and then Emmanuel showed us an easier way down the mountain. It was surreal. These people have suffered so much, and God is just so dear to them.
Bishop Gwynne College (BGC)
BGC used to be in Mundri. I gave two lectures there many years ago. Because of the war it moved to Juba. The facilities are rough, but the students are enthusiastic and their numbers are growing. It is a joy to be back.
Yesterday I had lunch with a man from Upper Nile State. He told me his wife and children have recently had to move to a camp in Ethiopia to escape the war in their state and the famine. They walked for two days to get there, carrying nothing, and sleeping in the bush on the way. Still, he says, they now are safe and are being fed by the UN.
This has been life for these people for the best part of 50 years, so they do not expect much. What a privilege to be training a new generation of Christian leaders for a new nation.
