For the last two weeks of August the Zande villagers were feverishly preparing for a week of uninterrupted celebrations, that the first week of September had in store. The Youth Convention, was to be held in the first week of September brought youth from all over Nzara, and other neighboring villages to the Nzara Cathedral to participate in celebrations of greater magnitude then they have ever before experienced. These youth took part in a week long program coordinated by the Flame International Organization from England, and also a personal friend of mine from the USA, Timothy Smith. Flame International was founded by Jan Ransom, and is a Christian ministry with a passion to reach out with God's love to broken and hurting people, particularly those in the poorest countries of the world, and to see nations healed and walking in forgiveness and reconciliation.
However, for all this to happen a surplus of arduous tasks needed to be completed prior to the arrival of our guest such as, general cleaning of the land, and also five new houses needed to be build to accommodate our visitors. It was indeed a time of great anxist, but with the help of all the youth who volunteered their assistance the houses were complete and everything was only uphill from there.
Timothy Smith is a recent graduate of Yale University and is a family friend of mine whom I met many years back through my Mother's church, St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in West Des Moines IA, he arrived a few days before the Flame International group and stayed a few days longer as well. While here Timothy will have the opportunity to witness for himself life in Nzara and what that means. Inspired by everything he saw and observed Timothy was determined to contribute. Once he returned to America, Timothy would raise enough money for the medical clinic in Nzara to hire a midwife and give her a salary for three years.
The Youth Convention was a gathering of great magnitude in fellowship fore not only had villagers from far and near come to part take in this event, but never before in Nzara has there been so many foreigners come together at one time to help better life of the Zande's. And for that, the Sudanese were extraordinarily gratified.
As part of the program lead by Flame International each morning began with a teaching from the Gospel. To surpass the language barrier there was a translator to assist in the teachings. Not only was each lesson taught very well, but to insure the audience understood everything that was taught, the Flame International group also had skits that correlated with each teaching. And after each teaching each member of the Flame organization went around the room and prayed with each individual present. Looking around at the unfolding events I could see the self-defense barriers protecting the Sudanese's emotions melt away like butter and they began to open up. The Flame group had succeeded in gaining the trust of the participates and could now address bigger issues and then start the healing process. Each morning a new lesson was taught to the youth followed by a skit and prayers, and leading in to small group time. Within these groups the Flame leaders main target was have the youth share their past traumas to the group, and then each member of the group would say a prayer for the individual sharing. The aim was for the youth to open up to the group, telling them all the horrible things that has happened in their lives, so then as a group, we could help them began their own healing process.
Within the group I choose to be apart of, I realized all my group members were from foreign villages and I was not familiar with any of them. In view of the fact, that as a group we all were not very acquainted with each other, I knew it would take some time to get to the comfortability level we needed with each other to the point of sharing our saddest stories, and time was something we did not have much of, thus I shared my story. I used myself as an example to show the process our group leader, Frank outlined. I shared my story of growing up in a broken home, going through foster care and being adopted into the Cole-Duvall's family. I spoke of the hardships I endured, traumas I experienced and how I found God. With the feeling that we, as leaders, are here to help the youth, pray for them and help them on their healing process, they began to open up.
The magnitude of the stories shared were enough to make even the Tin-Man feel compassion. The horrors these young men have faced thus far in their lives seemed like more trauma than one person would ever experience in the course of their life.
After going around the circle and hearing these stories there was one common denominator, and that was past involvement with a witchdoctor. Whether it was the individual whom had the experience with the witchdoctor or one of their family members, any involvement with a witchdoctor may bring temporary contentment but also brings long-term suffering.
When we had completed our first session in small groups, we as team leaders gathered together to discuss the success of each group. One of the Flame leaders, Frank stated, “I can't imagine what these youth have gone through in their lives, I feel blessed for having the only trauma of my grandfather passing when I was young.”
Each Evening there was a sporting activity set up for the male participants of the Youth Convention as well as arts and crafts for the females. The younger male leaders of Flame Nick, Pete and frank as well as Timothy and myself taught the youth games such as, ultimate frisbee, rounders, rounders, basketball, and participating in relay races. Because ultimate frisbee was a sport I enjoyed through high school and participated in a ultimate frisbee club organized by fellow peers that met every wednesday after school, I was very interested in assisting in teaching the youth how to play this game.
With the intent of teaching these youth how to play ultimate frisbee we, as the sport leaders, knew it would be to difficult explaining the physics of throwing a frisbee, so instead we designed a more demanding method of learning basic throws of the frisbee. This method was a basic drill with two lines of men facing each other roughly 20 yards apart. The idea was for the youth to throw the frisbee to each other and if they failed to catch it or throw it properly then they would have to run a 50 yard suicide. For to early stages of learning the frisbee throws, it seems as if we had began teaching the youth of to how because they all failed to throw properly at first and consequently had to do their 50 yard suicide sprint. However, when they seemed to grasp the concept of throwing to a certain degree, we spread them wider. Because in a game of Ultimate frisbee longer throws occur frequently, and we wanted the youth to become accustom to throwing longer distances. It was very interesting to see how different participants figured out the right angels and the right amount of force, in the Zande language the moment of figuring something of importance out one will boldly say “Iowa.” To see these youth going through trial and error for being fluent in the throws, allowed me to gather that: the Sudanese are very clever people, once one takes time to observe.
One they got the youth got the hand of throwing we were able to put them into a heavily structured game of Ultimate frisbee, with sport leaders coaching the youth on what to do once they have received the frisbee from a fellow teammate. But soon they were on they own and just about playing as if frisbee is second nature to them.
Games such has basketball and grounders are a lot more complicated so teaching the participants this game was a tad challenging, but nonetheless we taught the youth and they very much appreciated it. The other option available for those whom did not want to participant in sports, which seemed to be the majority of the females, enjoyed arts and crafts lead by the remaining Flame International members, Jan, Sarah, Gariff, Charite, and Karenza. Things that were being taught within this group were of the arts. Gary left the crowd in awe as he sketched a draft of a mango tree just in the distance onto a notepad. Among having art lessons available to the participants there was also sculpting lessons happening simultaneously.
That coming Sunday was a very interesting one with the goal of spreading the message of forgiveness and salvation to as many people as possible. For this to happen we, as leaders, split up into paris of two's and traveled to different churches to spread this message. At each church the Flame International member preached these messages to the people along with a skit to ensure understanding.
Pete Douglas and I traveled to the church of Nakiri, which was only two kilometers from the Nzara Cathedral. Once there we were warmly welcomed with rings of flowers made by the people of the church. Once Pete began preaching the Word-of-God and then the skit caught everyones attention, Pete invited every member of the congregation to come up and receive prayer. With that, Pete invited me to the front of the church where he and I listened to what each person requested prayer for and prayed for more than one hundred church members individually. Praying for the people in the manner in which we did was something I had never before done and I am very glad I had the opportunity to do so. Having each person stand before me recite their problem and ask for prayer was a powerful experience I could never forget. Lines of people flowed outside the church to the outskirts of the streets. For the hours that passed of Pete and I praying for these people, the only thing we thought of was, how we could ask Jesus to help each person. That has been one of the most powerful experiences I have had while in Africa, and I am glad to have had it.
One the day the Flame International missioners departed from Zara was a sad day for the youth of The Youth Convention; but nonetheless they were more then grateful for the time Flame spent here, for not only had they taught the youth many things, they also help heal them. And that above all was the main goal of this organization and they achieved it.
