The year was 2009, the place was Yei in what is now South Sudan, the newest country in the world. I was a mission co-worker serving as the first principal of RECONCILE Peace Institute, and our first class of students had arrived. The student body included about 45 church and community leaders from a dozen or more ethnic groups on opposing sides of a two- decades-long civil war. They had come to Yei to take courses in community-based trauma healing, peace studies and conflict transformation.
Validating loss and understanding our feelings is a concept not difficult to grasp during a global pandemic. But for mission co-workers the Revs. Nancy and Shelvis Smith-Mather, their seven-year-old son Jordan reminded them that sometimes you have to find the courage to lean into the pain to get through it.
On the surface, things seemed calm. Professors came and left every two weeks, teaching courses to adult South Sudanese students on various aspects of peacebuilding. The students sang together during morning devotions, laughed while acting out dramas in class, and played boisterous volleyball matches before dinner. The staff enjoyed the liveliness of a campus brimming with activity. Yet underneath, we were all aware of the country’s instability. At any time, a spark might fly, igniting a rapidly spreading flame of violence.
For the Rev. Shelvis Smith-Mather, the road to the majestic halls of Oxford University took a journey of nine years and three continents. But it is, he says, a “crazy, wonderful, beautiful story.”
“And… a long story, but the details of the many stops and starts along the way speaks to how it has come together now in God’s time,” he said.
“Your story is our story.”
That’s what a group of visitors from global partners Nile Theological College (NTC) and RECONCILE (Resource Center for Civil Leadership) in South Sudan told members of the staff at Protestant Institute of Arts and Social Sciences (PIASS) when they visited Rwanda recently. Rwanda had just marked the 25th anniversary of the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 Tutsi at the hands of the majority Hutu population.
Each year, Emory University and many other organizations around the country name a class of leaders who have made a significant impact in business, research, leadership, public service or philanthropic endeavors. This year, PC(USA) mission co-workers the Revs. Shelvis and Nancy Smith-Mather were named to Emory’s 2018 class of “Forty Under Forty.”
When soldiers are seeking to reclaim lost territory they have little regard for the peace agreements signed by their national leaders. That’s why the grassroots work of the Rev. Peter Tibi and PC(USA) partner RECONCILE is a critical component of South Sudan’s fragile peace process.
Last Wednesday rival factions in South Sudan signed a peace agreement to end the country’s devastating civil war. The world is holding its breath. Sharon Kandel, Presbyterian World Mission regional liaison for South Sudan, along with her husband Lynn, who have been living in the war-torn country as mission co-workers for more than four years, are praying fervently for a lasting peace.
