"Sioux Center Sudan" worship drama

The Drama Ministry Ensemble (DME) of Northwestern College will perform Sioux Center Sudan , written by Northwestern theatre professor Jeff Barker. The original worship drama tells the true story of Arlene Schuiteman, an Iowa school teacher turned African missionary nurse in the 1950s.

One of the first people Schuiteman met during her boat ride to the village of Nasir was a young man with tuberculosis. He taught her the Nuer language while she nursed him back to health and shared Christ’s love.

Schuiteman’s ministry touched many members of the young man’s tribe before she was thrown out of the country in 1963, just as the civil war began. She served as a nurse in Ethiopia and Zambia, but “Her heart was and still is in Nasir,” says Barker. “She refers to it as home.”

Schuiteman never returned to her Sudanese home, instead retiring in Iowa in the late 1980s. In God’s mysterious ways, though, he brought Sudan to her through a reunion that spanned miles and years.

Barker has also written original worship dramas about AIDs and September 11. Like Sioux Center Sudan , those plays told true stories—of a mother whose son had AIDS and a schoolteacher whose teddy bear ministry brought comfort to over 60,000 NYC children after 9/11. Barker's plays have been performed Off-Broadway in New York and at the Crystal Cathedral in California.

The DME also performs ancient Israelite dramas and enacted prayer.