by Graham Buttanshaw
I met Franco Kenyi Enosa in the town of Yei, South Sudan, in March 2026. He is soft spoken with excellent English. Licensed as a Lay Reader in 2016 with only 4 weeks of formal training, he is now a new student at Bishop Allison Theological College. Sudan’s 1985-2005 civil war had forced him to cut short his education after 2 years in secondary school. In exile in Uganda, he married Mary Kadi in 1993. They had 8 children, of whom 3 sons and 2 daughters survived. He told me he survived in Uganda, and paid his children’s school fees, by farming land he was allocated.
When I asked him how he survived as a refugee, he began, “Because of God’s love, I just planted okra ….” And about his children’s school fees: “I paid my students – that’s the wonderful thing God has done in my life, because I have no job … because of God’s grace I just survived. Little by little by God’s grace.”
To visit most places in Sudan or South Sudan is to meet people who know all about walking in the valley of the shadow of death. It is also to meet people who know that God is with them in that valley, and it is he who comforts and strengthens them, as the words of Psalm 23 proclaim. Franco knows this. And through him God lightens our darkness.
The Rev. Graham Buttanshaw is a former missionary in Koboko and Arua, Uganda and a trustee of the Church Association for Sudan and South Sudan, UK. Bishop Allison Theological College returned from its exile in Uganda in 2022 and is now affiliated with the Episcopal University of South Sudan.