South Sudan: Part 1

Please note: This is Part One of a three-part series on my experiences with World Concern in South Sudan. The people of South Sudan are stunning in their beauty, inspiring in their resiliency, delightful in their kindness and convicting in their abundant courage, strength and fight for their freedom and their future. South Sudan is the world's newest nation. Much of South Sudan has been isolated from the rest of the world and violently oppressed for many years by its own countrymen in the North. They have fought fiercely for their freedom and the hope that echoes and sings throughout the country today is a testament to the human spirit. Their story, like other developing nations, is complicated and should not be reduced to any other African nation's story, history or experience. For further thoughts on this, read Pastor Eugene Cho's blog (who also traveled with World Concern to Kenya and Somalia.)

This first installment is markedly sad. However- please continue reading this week. I will highlight some beautiful stories, people and the incredible work World Concern is doing in the transformation of this new nation.

In the midst of the most extreme poverty the world has perhaps ever seen, hope is rising. Possibility is everywhere. And before our lifetime is over, I believe we will look at the country of South Sudan and marvel at where they have come from. 

Poverty

I was 15 years old when I first encountered true poverty.

It was on a trip to care for children with AIDS and work with immigrant families in Miami, Florida. It left an indelible impression on my soul. People starting over with nothing and children suffering the sins of their fathers and mothers. It pierced my soul and became the first of many encounters with "the least of these."

17 years later, I have seen suffering around the world. Inner-city kids in Houston and homeless men in Dallas, Texas. Isolated, malnourished children in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in Kentucky. Orphans in Bistrista, Romania. Street kids turned prostitutes in Budapest, Hungary. Families living on the side of trash heaps in Juarez, Mexico. Poverty stricken villages dotting the mountains of Slovakia.  I've seen a lot.

My frequent experiences with those suffering from profound physical poverty over the years has never mitigated the pain and shock I still experience each time I lock eyes with a fellow human being in pain.

South Sudan was no different.  Here are a few stories I will never forget:

A Give-Away

Three moms tried to give me their babies this week because they cannot feed them. One mom stood at the back of our vehicle, and in front of men, she pulled her shirt down to reveal her sagging, sickly breasts. "No milk. No milk," she said with pleading eyes as she tried to hold up the lifeless skin. Her sweet baby girl, only a few months old, smiled at me. "You. You. You" the mother motioned her head toward me and lifted her baby to my hands. She didn't speak any English. But I think the signal for giving your baby away because you cannot feed her is universal. I shook my head no. I can't. We closed the doors. And the tears that started in that moment broke something deep inside of me. When poverty is so intense that your only option is to give your child away to a complete stranger- or worse- leave your child for dead; you have truly reached rock bottom.

A Lost Boy

Through the work of World Concern, I am inviting my fans, friends and family to join me in helping transform the village of Lietnhom, South Sudan. It is a lovely village! Full of chickens and cows and kids with beautiful voices and hard-working families. While in Lietnhom, we were hosted by another Christian non-profit organization, ALARM. This was too much fun because my husband, Ryan, works for ALARM so I got to meet all the people on the ground that he works with. It was like one big family reunion! One night as we sat outside sipping coffee, one of Ryan's African co-workers, Peter began to tell his life story.

"There were so many times I wondered, as a little boy, if I would ever be free," he said with a sort of content remembrance, "I wondered if I would ever sit, like we do now, and sip coffee and talk with the men."

He was 11 years old when men kidnapped him and forced him to become a child-soldier. As the sun set, Peter very quietly unfolded the horrors of his childhood. Learning to kill at 11 years old, his job was to bury the other little boys who couldn't keep up. Tears streamed down my face as he described digging mass graves and throwing in four boys at a time. This, he said, was the hardest part. He recounted the last time he saw his dad before he was murdered and what it has been like to take in one of his brother's children as his own; his brother was also murdered.

He is the second "lost boy" I have personally had the honor to meet and spend time with. Talking to him, with every broken thing he has seen and every inhumane tragedy he has carried; yet radiating hope, peace, belief and deep love for God, made me think I might just be in the presence of God himself... who carries the broken.

"When I heard the sound of the helicopters, I wondered if it could be true. I wondered if I would really be free," Peter tells his story like it is common, "I laid my head down that night in a bed. The first bed I slept in since I was 11 years old. I went to sleep as a free man. I slept like I had eaten every good food- I slept full."

A Sister

Ellen works for World Concern in South Sudan. Ellen is not her real name and I won't tell you where she works because she has recently left her husband who beat her until she miscarried. After hours of translating for us as we met villagers in corn fields, Ellen opened up and began to tell me about her life. She has a 2-year-old little boy. Her legs are the victims of her husband's machete. She left him, with her little boy. "I could be killed. But it is better to face that fate than to be beat." She tells me that she believes one day women in the rural villages of South Sudan will have basic human rights, but right now, she says, they do not.

"Look at these women," she says as we sit next to a cluster of traditional tukils, "They are shared by one husband. They are not happy. They have no voice. They do not yet know that there is any other way." She confides in me that she might be "A century ahead of my own people," because she knows that being shared by a man, polygamy and the often ensuing abuse, is not acceptable human behavior. She has taken her chances and left- knowing he very well may kill her and her son.

"I will go to university," she says with quiet dignity, "I have planted a crop of sorghum and in two years time, I will raise and sell enough crop to send myself to school. To have education is the only way out. I will go, but I do not have a proper outfit to wear when the time comes."

"Sister," she grabs my hand as we walk through cornfields with little children following in front of us and behind us, "Sister, would you offer me an outfit of clothes so that I might properly attend university in two years?"

In a place where the problems seemed so big and my answers seemed so few- I came home with only the clothes on my back. You would have done the same too.

You can join Christians all over the world who are investing in the lives of our brothers and sisters in South Sudan by donating generously to the work World Concern is doing on the ground. Please join me and Witness the Transformation. 

Give generously here: http://www.worldconcern.org/onevillage/jenny/ 

How I Learned Compassion

I was asked a question on twitter last week: How did you learn compassion?

This is my full answer. 

When I was a little girl, I loved to play frisbee with my grandpa.

He and grandma had three acres of land on the outskirts of Ellisville, Mississippi where my grandpa taught calculus, trigonometry, and electronics at the local junior college. He was the kind of professor who had the students over for a cook-out at the end of each semester.

Most weekends during my early childhood you could find me at their house, looking through Grandpa's voluminous collection of Readers Digest, watching Shirley Temple movies, raking leaves with garden gloves that swallowed my elbows, and playing frisbee with my mom, sister, and grandpa.

I wish I could paint a picture of my grandpa for you. Though it is not particularly pertinent to the story, he is a part of me. His laugh and his smile are the first things I think of. Followed by the distinct, South Dakota/second generation German accent, that most noticeably rings out when he is arguing with a political pundent on TV. He served two terms in Vietnam and retired from the Air Force, never completing the doctorate he worked so hard to almost, never finish. He is smart. Very smart. And yet he never felt rough or stoic or distant, like some men in the military do. He is soft around the edges. But opinionated. Loud when he's passionate. Funny when something tickles him. And most importantly, he's the kind of guy that can be every man's friend.

Did I mention he played for the Red Sox's farm league (later known as minor leagues) before he was drafted?

His tightly curled hair has been on his head for as long as I can remember. I didn't know that picks, the kind you use in your hair, were owned by any one other than Grandpa's. With his curly head of hair, knee-high socks, and shorts left over from the heyday of the 70's- he taught me how to play frisbee.

At night, I loved to sit at the table and hear him talk back to the news anchors. Somebody in Washington was always screwing up something. Then- someone on Wheel of Fortune was always stupid. "My God Jennifer. What are they teaching you kids? Can you believe this man- how does he not know the answer to the seven letter word?" He would laugh and sigh, almost simultaneously. When I was older and living three states away, I often had to call him for help with my math, and I could feel the same sigh. "What do you mean they haven't taught you how to divide fractions? How the hell are you supposed to graduate high school if you can't divide fractions? This education system has to be fixed Jennifer. Unbelievable. Really. Ok- well, tell me what you do know."

It was never much. What I did know. Still, he sat on the phone and taught me until he literally could not handle my stupidity anymore. He never called me stupid and I never felt that way. But I could hear his disappointment in public education every time another idiot drove the wrong way, passed the wrong bill in congress, or failed at dividing fractions.

I got the feeling that if he were in charge of things- well- we'd all be less stupid as a result from it.

***

With that in mind, 25 years later, I am even more struck by the beauty of what he did with his free time- for as long as I can remember.

Grandpa would go down to the Howard Industries plant in Laurel, Mississippi every week and teach grown men to read and write. To do basic math. To balance their check books. He never missed. And he always picked up extra volunteer shifts if a colleague couldn't make it. It was important to him- and he honored the men with his time for years and years and years.

To the uneducated factory worker- he became friend. Teacher. Mentor. And most importantly, advocate. He taught them as grown men should be taught. With dignity. Privacy. And respect.

I would venture to say that not a single man who spent time as a student under my grandpa ever felt less than. I would say they felt empowered. Stronger. Smarter. More capable. And accepted.

This man who yelled at the idiots on T.V. and constantly worried about the state of public education, did more than rant against the problems he saw in the world. He was- instead- a man of compassion. 

He saw a problem. Over 1,000 grown men and fathers down the street couldn't read. The problem stirred something deep within him. And he acted upon it- hoping to play a small role in bringing about change.

And this is my first memory of seeing compassion.

***

Merriam-Webster says compassion is the sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

Wikipedia defines it as a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy (for the suffering of others) are regarded as a part of love itself.

The Christian Bible records Jesus telling several stories in which a person showing compassion to another, is a reflection of God's own character. An act of love that trumps social mores or even what one deserves- compassion- is said by Christ himself to be the way to inherit eternal life. (Luke 10:25-37; Luke 15: 20-32; 1 Corinthians 13:13)

***

Compassion.

I know it deep within me better than I know myself; I understand it more clearly than I understand my closest friends, my husband, my own daughter. When I have failed at everything else, stained my conscience, lost my way, or absorbed myself in utter selfishness- compassion still seems to be there, at work inside of me. Despite me. A rusty compass, sometimes covered up under heaps of dirt, but still working, still pointing to true north; compassion has been my ever constant companion. With me since I was a little girl.

***

It did not come through osmosis. I was not born compassionate. I did not take a class that taught me to deeply empathize and act on behalf of someone else who was suffering.

No.

I learned compassion, by watching compassion. 

Through my grandpa. My mom. My dad. My papaw. People in the church and people outside of the church. I could write a book on the acts of compassion I have seen during my life time. And the book would be at least 1,000 pages long.

***

I see it everyday with Annie. She says something that completely surprises me. Like, "Mom, when I grow up. Someday I'm gonna drive a car. And I'm gonna drive fast." Or, "Mom, I'm a nice doctor, you don't have to worry, but you do have to obey." Or, "Mom, was I a good friend to him, because I tried to be a good friend?"

I find myself asking Annie nearly everyday, "WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT?!?"

She absorbs everything. And I am a firm believer that what you absorb, you become- or at least become to a degree. Somebody is teaching Annie the way that somebody taught me. We are all being taught. And we are all teachers.

And I believe that somewhere in the process of seeing compassion lived out- we learn it. And it lingers within us.

So be it compassion, grace, forgiveness, anger, hate, idolatry, laziness, etc. we are all learning from one another. We either teach one another love and beauty or we teach one another hate and selfishness.

I am grateful to have watched- and learned- compassion from so many, many people.

***

As I began thinking about this entry, I tried to remember the first time I saw compassion in my life. My grandpa came to my mind first. And my second memory of seeing compassion was with him too.

As my sister and I would play frisbee with grandpa, I would inevitably step in a huge antbed and be covered within seconds. And he would inevitably scream at my grandma, "Dammit Ellie the ants got Jennifer again, I need the gas can!" and at that my grandma magically appeared with an old rusty can of gasoline and a new sweat band for grandpa. We stopped the game and he would go on a hunt for new antbeds that needed to be destroyed. I sat on the swing with mom and rested. Grandma fixed us drinks. But my sister Melissa- with every ounce of angst in her body, threw herself at the antbeds to protect them from the gasoline.

When that didn't work- she stuck sticks in and let the ants crawl all the way up the sticks to her fingers and moved them to a new home. No ants were going to be poisoned to death on her watch. And I watched her thinking- she is so weird. 

Now, when I think about "compassion" I smile as I remember that "weird" sister.

I didn't know it then, but she was teaching me what compassion looks like.

Even if it was with ants.

The Way it Should Be

They started off as strangers. Two sets of friends who had never played with one another. They kept their distance and reluctantly accepted the invitation to join.

They decided. They would stay. All four of them, sharing the same space. Strangers with a common goal. Playdoh. Play.

Still, they each operated in their own orbit.

But pretty soon, they forgot their own rules. And there were no walls. It's kind of hard to make Playdoh cupcakes with only one color.

At the end of the day, they left friends.

The Playdoh was mostly unusable, covered with dirt and gravel and mashed together by twenty sticky fingers. And Annie wasn't even playing with them anymore; she was uninterested in all this boy-cupcake business; but that didn't matter to me. Three boys and a little girl shared space together, laughed, played, created, smiled. No division because of politics or religion or money or ethnicity or country or agenda...

Just kids being kids. 

The world...

the way it should be.