The week before going to Sudan Cindy and I attended a 5 day Training of Trainers for Community Health Evangelism. We learned some excellent principles which we were able to incorporate into our presentations in Sudan. 
We used the River Crossing lesson to communicate the differences between relief and development. This is really key for them to understand at this time because for so many years everything in Sudan has been in a relief mode. That is normal given the ugly history of many years of civil war, of people fleeing to Ethiopia for refuge and then only returning during the last several years. This living in relief 
mode is also predicated by the preponderance of NGOs and UN groups everywhere. Truly there has been much relief that needed to be provided. But now we need to move into the development mode of relationship.
The river crossing role play went well. Curt has a hilarious video me doing it with them. Then we broke up into small groups, something that I think was new for everyone. We had women in separate groups so they would not feel intimidated. We gave them simple questions to work on: what was relief and development in the skit? Where have you seen that in your community? They went right at it and were really animated. We had to have someone help the women write their answers on the poster paper. 
Overall we were pleased with how they grasped things and with their answers. The women actually did the best. One of the 3 men’s groups spiritualized the answer to every question, not quite what we were looking for. As we wrapped it up we were able to point out that relief is when you are carrying someone who needs help, but you can’t keep doing that forever. You need to move into the development mode in which you demonstrate how to do things and then the person takes it up on their own. You can tell when development has really caught on when the person passes on what they learned to someone else. We did this early in our meetings and then over the next 5 days were able to make numerous references back to what we had seen and learned together. Thanks Lord for the timely training from CHE.
