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When the military closed Khartoum’s airport and disrupted their discipleship training, a generational odd couple from YFC Lebanon improvised and preached to hundreds of students.
At 6:30 a.m. last Monday, John Sagherian and Elie Heneine went down to the lobby of their three-star hotel in eastern Sudan and found a crowd gathered around a TV. Filtering in, they heard the news.
The military had staged a coup in the capital, Khartoum, 90 miles to the northwest.
“Instantly, everything we planned for that day was up in the air,” said Heneine, a 27-year-old staff worker with Youth for Christ (YFC) Lebanon. “Oh well, youth work is very organic.”
Sagherian, the 74-year-old YFC regional director, had long been “dying to visit” Sudan. Two years earlier, he had identified a promising country director named Sabet, who since then had recruited seven other volunteer staff members. Sabet even ignored the capital, concentrating instead on the poorer hinterland.
The Lebanese team of two were finally scheduled to meet their new Sudanese colleagues later that day. As malaria had been among their concerns, they had taken 100 mg of medication every day for two weeks prior. The visa had also been a complication, requiring multiple layers of bureaucracy. But it was the BBC app that now troubled Joy, Heneine’s American wife of five months, as Sudan increasingly filled her news feed.
Heneine himself was at peace. Not only was he used to instability as a Lebanese Christian, but Sabet and others assured them everything was fine—despite the political tumult between the once-cooperating military and civilian leaders.
In 2019, the Sudanese army backed massive protests to overthrow 30-year dictator Omar al-Bashir. A spate of religious freedom reformsreplaced his Islamist governance, normalization agreements were signed with the nation’s former enemy Israel, and the US removed Sudan ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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