You have never heard this perspective on the Sudan! Missionary Brady shares what Americans can learn from Sudanese Christians.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Missions in a War Torn Muslim Land with Missionary Brady – Part 1:
You’re listening to truth about Muslims podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here with us. And we’ve got a special guest in the studio today. Mr. Brady is what we’re gonna call him.
We’re not gonna give his last name because he’s doing a lot of his work in Africa. He has spent 20 years of his life in Africa. He spent more time in Africa than not and, he’s gonna be returning here soon and has graciously agreed to sit down with us and kinda help explain what’s happening on the continent of Africa. This is funny because every time I think about Africa, I think about, like, us being ignorant. You’re just, like, Africa, like, it’s like a small city, but it’s like it’s like an entire continent.
So people are like, oh, you’re you’re from Africa, but, like, they’re very there’s actually countries there. The diversity is quite insane. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the documentaries, like, where the guys drive their, dirt bikes from South Africa all over to Cairo. You just see that that continent has a huge amount of, you know, ecological diversity, geographical diversity, ethnic diversity, religious diversity. I mean, it is so complex that, Brady we are super excited to have you here to make it all make sense for us.
So, welcome welcome. Thank you very much. So, let’s let’s kinda kick it off. How exactly did you end up in Africa? I mean, you just don’t meet a whole lot of people that that spend their time in Northern Africa these days.
So how did that come to be? Actually, I grew up there. My dad is a doctor, missionary doctor. And so I when I was 4 years old, he moved our family over. And I grew up, in in Kenya.
And, during my years in Kenya, I actually met my wife over there. And, yeah. You know, good place to go shopping for a wife. No. Is it?
I’m just joking. The dowries are way too high. Now your your wife is actually American as well. She is. She is.
Her father and or her parents were working in Uganda in the country next door, and we both attended the same boarding school and started dating and, we’re married a few years later. So that that brings new meaning to missionary dating. That’s right. That’s that’s right. Yeah.
So, and I also hear you’re pretty good rugby player. Oh, I enjoy a good rugby game. Yeah. I’ve I’ve I’ve wanted to, try my my game of rugby, but I’m pretty sure I’d get hurt. Yeah.
You’re a triathlon person. You’re really small. You’re very, very small. I’ve seen rugby games, and they’re not small. Yeah.
I don’t know how I would do. Probably not well. So, help us understand a little bit of the complexity here. When we look at Africa, what we see in the news is chaos. I mean, in one word, we we think chaos.
We see Ebola. We see Boko Haram. We see Al Shabaab. We see kidnapped, girls. We see just, you know, killing, violence, chaos, darkness.
What is it what do you see in Africa? I appreciated your comments earlier. When you talk about Africa, you’re talking about an immense land. You’re talking about diversity beyond scale. And so I really wanna pull back from that and let’s not talk about Africa.
Let’s talk specifically about certain regions. Because we know when something happens, let me use the example of the United States. Something that happens here, you know, you don’t get all worried, about something that happened in California or in Seattle. Yeah. We don’t think about California.
No. No. So I I I let’s back off of, let’s say the United States of America. Let’s, you know, talk about our region and our people and the specific culture and the things that are going on in that region. It really helps.
But when you lump it all into one continent, how are you ever gonna It’s too much. Consolidate. Yeah. Yeah. You can’t.
So let’s back off of that and when you start looking at a region and how far these countries have gone in such a short amount of time, it’s mind boggling. Okay. Stop right there. What do you mean? Like, what have you seen that they’ve come so far?
Because, like, you know how Trevor had just said, like, it’s like you know, like, we we just see media bites. I want to hear what’s happening on the ground, like, what’s really going on. So you just said they’ve come a long way. So what does that mean? Like, explain that.
The majority of people in Kenya who have a bank account don’t have a brick and mortar bank account. It’s all on their phone. They have pioneered mobile banking. The United States is so far behind Kenya when it comes to mobile banking. Okay.
A little bit of mind blowing here. You’re suggesting that there are places in Africa that have superseded the technological connectivity that we have here in the United States. We are learning how Kenya is doing it. Nice. So I I mean, and we’re talking okay.
We’re talking a country that 60 years I mean, they just got their independence 60 years ago. I mean, the movement and the mass education that happened in these years, the way they have stood up and have created a flourishing democracy is amazing. Wow. It’s amazing. We have lessons to learn from Africa.
Alright. I’m I’m liking where this is going. What are some other lessons that we have to learn from Africa? I’m thinking particularly in the idea of missions in the church and theology. I’ve been doing a lot of reading with African theologians and finding great comfort in some of the things that are being said, some of the ways in which they view God.
How can we learn from the spiritual world views of Africans, as Americans and Westerners? That’s a really good question. You you don’t have to have an answer. It was just something I was wondering. I was gonna say, like, wow.
We just went really deep. I thought this wasn’t gonna be deep. Well, I I Yeah. I was just thinking spiritual worldview, you know. Brady, when you’re there, is there things that you see where you’re like, wow, I’m learning a lot from the ways in which the way Africans view the world that, Americans don’t, westerners don’t.
Right. Like, the church needs to pick up in the west. Well, I this has been harped on before, and so why not? I’ll jump on the bandwagon. But the issue of community, we talk about it.
But when it actually comes down to dollars and cents, when your friends in need in America, you’re not the one who’s going over and housing them and feeding them and, you know, doing life together. We have insurance. We have, you know, savings. We have figured it out so that we do not have to be dependent on one another. You know, none of my life is so intertwined with another that his success becomes mine.
We’ve it’s just who we are. We’ve created ourselves independent. I’ve never thought about insurance or savings or anything like that. I mean, independence doesn’t just mean, that we can, you know, do any everything on our own, but it means that we’re really separating ourselves from other people. That’s I’ve never thought about it that way.
That’s really cool. So thank you for jumping on that bandwagon bandwagon. Yeah. I’m I’m thinking just in the terms of retirement. I mean, we tend to do retirement so our kids don’t have to take care of us.
Yeah. Yeah. And that that that’s a very western kind of a new idea. When you think about it, the rest of the world is thinking, Why wouldn’t my kids want to take care of me? Is there something wrong between me and my kids in the future?
I remember telling my students one day that often when parents get old, they move into a home with other old people and, the children continue on with their lives and even the children often do not contribute to the care of their parents whether it be financially or socially, whatever it might be and just the jaws of the students just drop and it’s just it’s like you have shunned your relationship, your duty to your own parents. What sin could be greater than that? Wow. So here we are figuring life out and we’ve got it so that we can continue our lives and succeed financially in many ways. But they look at us and say you’ve lost it.
You’ve lost the true meaning of life, which is that dependence on one another that is that love and care and Cost that comes from community. So man, we have a lot to learn. Yeah from the African church, from the the idea of taking community to a whole new level and putting, putting meat on the words that we say. And I think it needs to come from within the church. Like we should be the ones that are really showing that first.
I I think so. It just makes sense. It’s kinda what we’ve been taught, but we don’t we don’t do that. That’s right. Yeah.
It needs to come from within the church first. Alright. I I have another question. I know this is kinda switching gears. Sorry for Trevor’s deep, deep, deep question.
I I I’m ignorant about most things when it comes to, you know, like, different regions in the world. I’ve traveled a lot, but there’s just so much. You know? And I don’t read all the news. But, like so this Sudanese conflict in northern southern Sudan, like, it just seems really confusing because, like, the the media is, like, throwing around around names of, you know, groups, and they’re fighting.
And it doesn’t really make clear why they’re fighting. Could you kind of explain all that stuff? Because I, you know, I don’t need to All that stuff. Just All of it. Just all of it.
Out right now. In, like, 2 minutes. Could you make it really pithy so you can still do the next question? Reader’s Digest version of what’s going on with all of the conflict. Okay.
Not all, but just your take on it. Okay? Thank you, Trevor. Mhmm. Wow.
Good friend. Wow. That’s that’s good. Little bit of history. So you’ve got a little strip along the Nile where we’re talking 2000 years ago.
You have Christianity spread down the Nile and into Ethiopia. So you have churches in Ethiopia that are 2 1000 years old. Alright. So they trace back their Christianity. They’re the oldest churches in the world.
Okay. So this is one of those moments where you’re like, what? We we don’t think of Christianity in its sort of cradle of having any association with Africa, but we have to remember, you know, Augustine Augustine North Africa. Right. Yep.
Egypt. Yeah. This is this is sort of one of the cradles Yeah. Of the spread of Christianity. Largest libraries, that where the real thought came where the Septuagint was translated.
I mean, you just, man, you just have so much history there. And then that spread down into Sudan, and started the Nubian Kingdom. Basically, the kings converted to Christ, from missionaries and held on to that. And we’re actually a very well developed kingdom called the Meroe Kingdom. Well, when the spread of Islam happened, it came by storm.
And it took over Sudan and it student Northern Sudan has been Islamic ever since. Wait. Wait. Ever since then? Ever since.
Yeah. So we’re talking the 900 around there. Wow. Okay. So the and the the type of Islam that it is, is related to Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia.
So they take a lot of their cues from Saudi Arabia. Look up to them, and are very, very conservative. So if you’re wondering right now, like, Wahhabism, like, what is that? That would be the ultra conservative strictest interpretations of law strictest, way of dress strictest way of dealing with, you know, stoning for adultery, removal of a hand for stealing. Don’t think of Sharia law as being this one sort of way of looking at life.
There are different interpretations and that Wahhabism is by far the most, strict and often violent. Mhmm. So so for example, when Saudi Arabia actually expelled Osama bin Laden, in 95, where did he go? Sudan. Sudan.
Yes, he did. I’ve, actually driven through his farms where he had started farming, sorghum there. But that just shows you how conservative it is and then how welcoming it is to very conservative Muslims. So right now it the label, we don’t use Wahabiism or Wahhabism, but Salafist is the name that they give themselves. A very conservative.
I would walk into a store in Khartoum and into a solophist store and they would greet me but they wouldn’t shake my hand. They would not look at my wife or ever shake her hand. They’re very very conservative. So when you’re thinking of Salafist, you’re thinking of, current ISIS, Al Qaeda, all of the people that we talked about in the history of Islamic fundamentalism all with that stream of thought with the Salafism. So, the most radical sects that we see today that are very theologically minded, they are coming from that same stream.
So just queuing people in as we go. Go ahead. That’s good. And and the the goal really of a of a solophist is that the kingdom of God is here. That it is the duty and the responsibility of Muslims to spread Islam.
And they’re given many different ways to do that. And in Sudan, the goal the southern part of Sudan was largely ignored, undeveloped. It, the people themselves are black. They’re non religious well, they’re not non religious. They’re pantheist.
They’re animist. They believe in the spirits, in the rocks and trees. And so Islam tried to spread south and it did that economically. It did that by sending imams down and planting mosques, but then it did it militarily. Quick question before we hit that.
You said that, the southern Sudanese were black. What does that mean for the Northern Sudanese? Think, think Arab. Think, brown. Think Egyptian.
So they they’re not the same? No. No. No. No.
Okay. It’s very different. I think this is one of those times where we are we just remember that the idea of drawing nation states and geographical boundaries oftentimes didn’t take any consideration of tribal and ethnic identities. And so just because you have a country doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire country will be the same group of people. So you’re saying in the north, we primarily have Arabs and in the south, primarily black Africans.
That’s correct. Alright. So the the strategy is to go promote, Islam through planning mosque, giving some, you know, financial incentive taking care of people, providing food, education, all of those things and it didn’t take so much? Right. So often a soliphist will often support a Koranic school and that’s, you know, you go and you memorize the Quran over several years.
Well, the southerners were not interested in this. Southerners live in a very fertile land. Some people say that if you were to plant, say wheat in South Sudan, you could feed the entire continent of Africa. It’s that fertile. I I never thought of it that way.
Like, I was thought, you know, it’s like desert or something. You know, like I don’t know. I just, you know, me, American minded, but just No. Okay. Keep going.
So that’s Northern Sudan. So Northern Sudan is very dry. It is fertile along the Nile, but then you have large areas where they don’t have fertile land. And so the South beckoned them and then Chevron found oil. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors.
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Woah. Everything changes. Yes. It does. So that gold Texas tea.
That’s in Texas, man. Well, Sudanese tea. We actually call oil the black snake because there’s one I haven’t heard before. It is okay. There’s so much benefit that comes from oil, but there’s such a high cost to it that the southerners have started calling it a black snake Because of the pain that it has caused them.
Yeah. So give it go into detail there. What is what do you mean? So North Sudan decides we want that oil. We want that land.
So what they’ve done now is what they do is they outfit Antonovs which are Russian airplanes and they have a large bay door in the back. So mid flight, they’ll open that door and they fill 55 gallon drums full of explosives and push them out on markets. So that what they’re doing is they’re chasing away the people from that land. Now it sounds like you’re saying, these northern Muslims, Arab Muslims, brown Muslims are flying, strangely enough, Russian aircraft and bombing southern black Muslims. So you have Muslims killing Muslims.
This isn’t necessarily theological as much as it is about skin color. Is that a fair assessment? In some areas, for the example Darfur, you have Arab Muslims killing black Muslims. Now in South Sudan, you would just have Muslims killing non Muslims So it depends on the region that you go and the I mean economics religion, tribe is really a driver in all of this and it’s hard to overstate the identity that comes from tribe. Yeah.
You had mentioned before we started this interview, we were I was asking you about, Northern Sudan and Southern Sudan. Like, it’s the same country. So if the Northern Sudan Sudanese are, you know, the actual government, why the the Southern Sudan would be their land. So why wouldn’t they just go over and and take what they want? Because it’s their country.
And then you had mentioned it was different tribes and how that was totally totally different. So kinda can can you kind of explain that? Because I think as Americans, we don’t get that except for loosely because of our states, you know, in in the US. But could you kind of explain that? Texas might get it.
Texas might get it. Texas definitely. I think they do get that. Yeah. They’re definitely a tribe.
And isn’t that interesting that Texas has its own identity and I it’s kind of it’s socially drilled into them from when they’re a kid. You are from Texas. Don’t mess with Texas. That’s right. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s actually part of their culture, their upbringing, and that’s exactly how it is in South Sudan.
So that you we meet people along the road, and I know exactly which tribe they’re from because they have scars on their face. Each tribe has unique scars. So, for example, the Dinka tribe has 6 lateral scars across their forehead. Woah. When they’re 9, 10, 11 years old, they are sat down and they’re not allowed to cry while this happens.
But a razor blade or a piece of grass is used and they slice 6 lines from ear all the way across your forehead to the other ear. Do 6 lines. Child doesn’t make a sound and then ash is rubbed in there so that the wound doesn’t heal. It heals into a bump. So I can, from a good distance, see these 6 lines across this man’s head, and I know exactly what he is a dinka.
So I can greet him according to his tribe. But when you’re 9 years old, you’re given this identity, and you’re told you are a dinka. You will marry a dinka. You will protect the dinka. You will, you know, be a Dinka forever.
You can’t hide those scars. It is on your forehead, and that’s your identity. Just the thought of the process of creating that identity in a visual way that is so, in some ways, seemingly traumatic, you know? And then to think of it in terms of that identity, it sounds like you’re saying, supersedes all other identities. Nationalistic identity, religious identity, political identity, you you name it.
Right. The the ethnic or tribal identity is the the the top. That’s that is yeah. It’s the foundation of your identity, and you wear it wherever you go. So it influences all of your decisions, who you’re gonna stay with.
You know, the idea of community that we talked about earlier, so deep. So you can be a Dinka man and literally walk across the country. And every town you go in, you simply walk up to a man with the same scars on his head. He will house you. He will feed you.
He will take care of you until you need to go. Okay. So this brings to light that documentary if we’ll we’ll put it in the show notes, the, children of Darfur that that come to, the The Lost Boys of Sudan is what it’s called. National Geographic did it. And they come, and when they ask them about what it’s like in America, he says, Americans are not friendly.
You you cannot go up to somebody’s house even though you’re all Americans. Mhmm. And he said, but in Sudan, if you are lost, you can ask somebody, can you show me the way? Do you need someone to walk with you? And he said, but in America, call the police and say, who is this man?
Why are they at my house? And, eventually, they’re told by the community that shopkeepers are intimidated by them traveling in groups, and so they’re not allowed to walk together anymore. And, of course, we’re thinking they have such freedom now here in America, but in some ways, they feel like they’re completely trapped. They don’t have a sense of identity anymore. They can’t even walk with their brothers.
We don’t even think about that. Right. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you want to partner with us, we would put your ad.
So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. So so you’re saying that these Sudanese, in the South, they’re they’re not gonna be watching TV wondering what’s happening or they will, but, not to the degree of they’re wondering what’s happening with the nationalistic government. They’re they’re really identified with that tribe. So when the national national government comes down and says, you know, we’re we’re trying to push you guys off the land so that we can take this land, they’re just like, no way. Like, that’s just no.
I don’t have any allegiance to you really. You know, that like, that’s not gonna happen. Is that what you’re saying? Absolutely. Yeah.
If you try and take Adinkas land from him. Oh, man. You’re ready for a fight. Now these are men who they’re like Davids. Like they protect their cows from lying.
You know they these are serious warriors. Lions. Lions. You know, so this is this is stuff that you don’t fool around with. These are men.
Warriors. So I mean the North tried and tried. They they even labeled it a jihad. So they recruited people. After you graduated high school, you then need to go and serve with the military although it’s not the formal military.
You join the jihad and you go and fight against the Southerners to move them off their land. This is by law. Yes. You can’t get into university unless you showed that you had fought. Oh, my gosh.
So you have people in North Sudan, they’re like, I don’t wanna fight. They, you know, they don’t have any vendetta against these people in the south, but they can’t get into university unless they do. And so you’re saying that this is economically driven. They want they want the oil. Yeah.
They want the fertile land, but they’re labeling it religious. Absolutely. I think it’s crazy just to think it’s not just economics. It’s it’s ecologically driven. They want they want grazing land.
Mhmm. We don’t even think in those terms anymore, but we’re I think if you were in even the United States years back, that might make a little more sense where grazing was an issue. But in in the Sudan, that is the major issue that there’s no grazing land up north. It’s in the desert. They gotta go south, and they’re grazing on land that’s not theirs, and it causes a lot of, conflict.
That’s right. So how do the for thinking of Darfur, for instance, you said it was Muslim killing Muslim. How do the black Muslims respond when they see their northern supposed brothers bombing them? And this is this is where you see God opening up and working in ways that we could never anticipate or plan for or create ourselves. But Darfur, 10, 15 years ago, was one of the least reached places on the earth, just a 100% Muslim.
And now because of this, the the poor people and different tribes are fleeing to the south, those that are black and being persecuted. And what we’re finding is they are extremely open to the gospel. They’ve just lost everything physically, but then also spiritually. Their own brothers have just tried to kill them. And so they’re they’re spiritually hungry, and when we show them the gospel, they stand up and they say, this is truth.
Wow. This is life. And so we’re seeing seeing for the first time in history a for church. This is exciting. What what happens with that tribal identity, though, Brady?
That’s what comes to my mind immediately is does the gospel supersede does the Christian identity, the identity of the global Church, supersede that ethnic identity? I mean, even coming from an American perspective, I think that we have not quite figured that out yet. As long as people have been Christian and multiple generations of Christians, people sometimes don’t see themselves as Christian first, American second. And that’s just for a nationalistic identity, which I don’t think in this sense is as strong as maybe this tribal ethnic identity. Do you see the gospel penetrating, changing that identity where they really could see tribes loving each other that historically have not?
Yeah. I, you know, I’ve struggled with this thinking, you know, how how would Americans relate to this? But I I we do have something. That’s denominationalism. What have you done, Brady?
Don’t go there. No. Don’t go there, please. I know. But that hey.
These are brothers and sisters in Christ, but they automatically judge one another. Right. Will either relate or socialize or not socialize with one another based on their denomination. Right. And when it comes down to actually working together, oh, don’t worry.
Gonna happen. I know. Isn’t that crazy? Or it happens, but just really limitedly. You know, like, they’re just not really willing to, you know, give themselves over to one another, you know, in community.
Yeah. And so then we look, oh, those Africans, that’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s called just being deceived, I think. Well, it’s it’s we’re a little bit blind to that until you get to come here and point it out to us. But, especially with that word denominationalism.
Thank you. Well, I I I think that’s the closest I can relate to it. No. That’s spot on. Keep going.
So the church, yes, the church in Africa struggles with this because they do they have a tribal identity that is literally scarred across their head. So when it comes to the church, they worship in a different language. They worship to a different style of music. Alright, so that that is a barrier. It is there.
I’m not gonna lie. It’s a reality in the churches that we work with. Okay. Wait. So you’re saying, like, for instance, you you mentioned the Dinka people.
Right? So they would have their own church and they would worship in a certain way that another people group wouldn’t? Yeah, fascinatingly enough we work with, 2 tribes and you know different missionaries actually both with the same organization, but different missionaries came to those people. So the one tribe that worked among the Uduk completely banned any sort of instruments including the drum. And they did this because they saw drums being used to call up the spirits.
And so they made a hard and fast line. There will be no drum beating in the church just so that they could separate themselves from the tribes. Well, other missionaries went to another tribe called the Maban. And they brought extra drums. Basically, yeah.
So they came in the different approach of let’s redeem the drum beating and the Mabon are unbelievable drum beaters. And so now they’re both actually the same denomination called the Sudan Interior Church. But one beats drums and one doesn’t because of the history of the missionaries that came. Wow. So it’s exciting because one of my students actually from the Uduk tribe wrote his thesis, his bachelor’s thesis on should Uduk beat drums now?
Because he’s thinking over this issue. He’s reading scripture. Right. Scripture says you can use instruments. Right.
Make a joyful noise. Exactly. So he’s coming at it. Okay. I see the point that the missionaries brought but this is our faith and we’re we need to rethink this issue.
I think that puts a lot of pressure, I think, sometimes on the the missionary. Have you ever felt like, man, I I wanna be certain that I’m not exporting my Christianity to Africa. I mean, granted, you’ve spent more of your life in Africa than America so that you’ve got a little bit of a leg up there, I think. But for for some listeners that are thinking I’ve wanted to missionary in Africa. I’m sure right now they’re going, I’d be afraid I’d export my own, you know, way of doing Christianity.
It’s, Trevor, it is a miracle that Christianity has taken on such, that that the let me speak for the Kenyan and Sudanese church has taken on such an identity of their own with Christianity for how much missionaries brought culture with their Christianity. I I’m just so impressed that Kenyans have been able to shed the culture more and more and grab on to the heart of the gospel, which is exciting. That’s fantastic. So as far as identity goes with the with the 6, you know, scars, in some of these tribes, they have all these different types of markings. When they come together, do you find that there is still this, acceptance that, that would be foreign to the US, like with Baptist getting together with Episcopalians and vice versa and Methodists?
And would you find that that that they’re more accepting than than even we are as denominations? That’s a good question, and I would say as long as things are going well They’ll kind of keep operating in their own domains. Does that make sense? So here if, you know, everything is going well in the church, the church just kinda does its own thing. It doesn’t need anybody else.
So it’s gonna operate. It’s gonna have its own youth group, and it’s gonna have its own outreach, and it’s not gonna work with other denominations because things are going well. But when things get rough, that’s when you start stripping away. You start stripping away denomination. You start stripping away tribe.
And it goes back to those people who have been touched by the gospel. The scars of Christ overcome the scars on your forehead. Just thinking about those terms, that idea of being able to present the gospel looking at the scars of Christ as being your identity marker, I mean, when you said that, I literally felt a little bit of chills because that doesn’t mean a lot to me. I’ve never thought of scars as an identity marker. But to someone in Sudan, they could see the scars of Christ as being this is your new identity in Christ.
That would be powerful. It is. It is. And it’s powerful. We had 2 old guys.
They’re the oldest guys in our class sitting in the front seat. I’m sorry, the front desk of the class. Gabriel and Zachariah. And Gabriel’s from the New Era tribe and Zachariah is from the Dinka tribe. So these are actually the 2 largest tribes in Sudan, and they are they’re basically brothers, but they’re enemies of one another.
They steal cattle from each other. They kill each other’s people. What? In in some of the Nuwer tribe areas, in order to kind of become a man, you go steal cattle and kill a Dinka man. No.
What? So that’s part of Wait now. Yeah. You’re not talking about centuries ago. You’re talking about now.
Well, I’m sure it happened centuries ago too. This is Oh my gosh. Wait there in the and what are they sitting in class for? So okay. So I I teach at a Bible college, and these are are 2 pastors sitting next to each other.
See, some I I also teach at a Bible college, but I don’t think I’ve ever had any students sitting next to each other that I think would probably have come from this sort of, history. This tension. This is a serious tension. Okay. I’m dying to hear.
Keep going. Tell us okay. You’re in a Bible college. You’re teaching. There’s 2 students in the front.
They traditionally, like 2 gray beards. These are older guys. Right. And they, you know, have killed okay. Okay.
Keep going. Keep going. So it okay. December 15, 2013, the vice president and the president of South Sudan, president Adinkha, vice president is a new heir. Same tribes as these students that are sitting in this front row.
Okay. There is a massive disagreement that turns violent, and the Dinka soldiers in Juba go and begin to slaughter men who are Nuer. Nuer find about this. They’ll find out in their homeland, round up any Dinkas there, and begin to slaughter them. No.
This so since This is last year. 2013. Well, it’s 2015, but yeah. So over the last 14 months, we’ve seen well over 10,000 people killed simply because of their identity. Oh, my goodness.
So when this fighting broke out, Gabriel is in town. Gabriel lives in Dinka Land. The place where the college is is Dinka Land. Gabriel’s a new air. This is not good.
Okay. The police police come to his home, grab him, and take him to the police station. Wait. The Dinka police. The Dinka police.
Which at this point police is relative to I’m Dinka. The tribe. Right. Okay. So this is where people disappear.
Yeah. Oh, gosh. So you wanna talk about police corruption all of a sudden, throw some tribal identity in the mix, and it gets real shady real quick. Okay. So give me a So Gabriel goes Oh, Gabriel.
Yep. Gabriel goes to prison, and his classmates find out about it. They come to their Dinka brothers who are the policemen Mhmm. And say, we know this man. Mhmm.
This is a man of God. His identity in Christ supersedes his identity as a tribe. So we are willing to stand for this man. Please let him go. Wow.
And based on their testimony, Gabriel was released, and they helped to get him out of Dinka Land in a sense to escort him out so that he would not be put in this situation again. Oh my gosh. So the gospel does. It gives you an identity that supersedes Christ. Okay.
A quick quick question about Gabriel. What what kind of marks, would he have? That would people just be able to tell on the street that he wasn’t Dinka? Yeah. Yeah.
Actually, you know, I mentioned that Dinka and the Nuer are brothers. What do you mean? Historically. So they are very similar in their tribes. So actually, a lot of the new air have 6 scars too.
But they also, depending on your region, what Gabriel’s face is covered in is they look like dots. And what has happened there is they take a thorn, and they put it into the skin and lift it up, slice it a little bit, and then put ash in there. So he’s got raised dots all over his cheeks and his chin, all over as long as well as the 6 lines across his forehead. So they know? Yes.
Yeah. Wow. That’s, I mean, I think that’s Wow. That’s, I mean, I think that’s a demonstration of the earlier question is, do you have hope or see that that identity can be, yeah, that Christ identity can supersede? But But I think it’s also a clear demonstration of a love for an enemy because that enemy, it doesn’t have to be your enemy because they specifically did something to you.
I think that’s the way we think of enemy because we can be very individualistic. But enemies can be just entire tribes or entire families, feuds, and to show that amount of love for the enemy. What did that what kind of effect did that have on the rest of the students in the Bible school? I I haven’t been able to be in contact with a lot of them. Since the war, we’ve been out of the country and haven’t actually had contact with a lot of the students.
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So that was, our interview with Brady. We decided to make this into 2 parts because the stories and he’s about to just unleash a storm, a store a visceral storm of stories. I don’t think we had any idea what we were getting into at the beginning, and we just seeing all the stuff about identity and what God is doing in Sudan has been so good that we said, alright, we have to stop here and make this a 2 parter. And so, we ended with, he hasn’t been, back, and so they had to leave the country. And so, we’re gonna pick up there with what ministry they were doing and what caused them to leave and what they’re expecting to see when they come back.