Home from Sudan:
Now I Know Why I Am a Deaconess
By Pat Nuffer

On a hot evening in Sudan, I wrote in my journal:

I held the hands today of a leprous woman — rather I held the stumps of the hands of a leprous woman. Now I know why I am a deaconess. Now I know why God opened the door to Sudan: to open my eyes to see what He has in store for me to do.

God’s Word through Jeremiah of planting passionate faith (Jeremiah 29:11-13) — or through Paul in Ephesians 2:10 that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do — could well have come to mind as I wrote in my journal, but perhaps I was even too much a part of the moment to reflect on God’s Word.

I was in Sudan with a team of missionaries for training and serving. We had “journeyed far,” as they say in Sudan, to get to Maria’s home. A young boy guided us to her hut as there are no markers on these footpaths that connect people’s huts in the bush — just single dirt walking paths. So we walked and sweated in the hot afternoon humidity, through the maze of footpaths, everywhere greeted by toddlers clad only with a string of beads around their waists, or a tee shirt — no worry about diapers filling up landfills here.

F rom a wonderful young man, Pascal, my companion and I had our Zande language lessons several nights, so the familiar greeting of guineapai came off my lips easily.

We finally made it to Maria’s family compound and found Maria sitting on a mat, rubbing ground nuts (peanuts) from the roots on which they grow. When she understood we had come to visit her, she hobbled off to change into her best dress. It did not take long to recognize her spirit, despite her disfiguring condition. She wobbled on stumps where feet had been and still used her one distorted hand with finger stumps to sort out what work there was to be done. There was a “survivor” mentality — and a faith — that has sustained her through unimaginable pain, isolation, and stigma. Her smile told me volumes that did not need translation.

Maria related her story — of contracting the disease, of being put out of the village but not forsaken by her family, of her eventual return when the disease had taken its toll, leaving her extremities gone but healed. Now her family takes care of her. She is the oldest, respected once again, but still seen as an outcast by others.

Then it was my turn. Still holding her arms, as I could not let go of touching her, I told her she was beautiful in Jesus’ eyes — and mine; that He sees her disfigurement and cries with her in her pain and humiliation. And there will be a day when Jesus will come to take her home, where she will not have stumps for hands and feet, pain, or suffering. And that until then, Jesus bathes her through her family, feeds and helps her through the hands and feet of her fellow Christians.

Words tumbled out of my mouth, stopping only long enough for Ketura to translate. I gave her a wooden cross we had made that morning, decorated perhaps gaudily to our Western taste — with plastic jewels and foam stickers — but precious and beautiful in a culture that knows little decoration. She clutched that cross as if it were gold and diamonds, and — with tears dropping shamelessly from my face — I told her that her hope was in Jesus who died on a cross to bring her to be with Him forever.

As we walked home to our compound, I knew I had experienced in that brief afternoon the culmination of many years of preparation by the Lord for His work: a simple message of hope and encouragement from God’s Word to a fellow woman who had suffered greatly in this life. I wish I could have also brought her necessities for life, but I brought her “the one thing needful” — Jesus Christ.