Author: AmerFriendSudan

Webinar

Sudan: War, Challenge, and the Church

The Episcopal Parish Network featured AFRECS in a June 18 Webinar – Sudan: War, Challenge and the Church.  Archbishop Samuel Peni Enosa, Chair of the Episcopal Mediation Advisory Team, Brian D’Silva, longtime expert on both Sudans, and Dr. Jacqueline Wilson, Policy Advisor to the State Department, joined AFRECS President Anita Sanborn and Executive Director Dane Smith in exploring the challenges of peacebuilding in these violence-torn countries.  Please tune in to the EPN video.

Webinar

Sudan: War, Challenge, and the Church

Tuesday, June 18th | 3:00pm EDT

While not headline news in the United States, our brothers & sisters in the Sudans are suffering.

Since April 2023 Sudan has been ripped apart by nation-wide fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces militia. This conflict follows a 2021 military coup which upended a transition to democratic rule.

In the past year 15,000 have died. Almost 9 million people have been displaced, the largest number in the world. Khartoum, its capital, has been largely destroyed. Almost 40% of the population is food insecure. And, through all of this, faithful Christians are working to make conditions livable. The Episcopal Church in Sudan has regrouped after ouster from its headquarters in Khartoum, is promoting recovery of its scattered churches & is providing relief where possible with international support.

In South Sudan the civil war which erupted two years after independence in 2011 ended with an uneasy 2018 peace promising a transition to elections. That peace agreement has largely been unimplemented, leaving elections uncertain. The South Sudanese Government is corrupt & dysfunctional. The dynamic Episcopal Church has nevertheless been effectively promoting literacy, livelihood creation, trauma healing & peace.

Join us to learn about the genesis of the crises in the Sudans, the unhelpful involvement of some outside powers & the inspiring role of both national churches. You will leave with ideas on how you & your church can help and where you can learn more.

Panelists include:

• Joseph Bilal – Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Church Relations, Episcopal University of South Sudan; Juba
• Jacqueline H. Wilson – Policy Analyst, Office of Sudan/South Sudan; Arlington, Virginia
• Brian D’Silva – Economic and Political Expert on the Sudans; Reston, Virginia
• Anita Sanborn – President, AFRECS; Angola, Indiana
• Dane Smith – Executive Director, AFRECS, ret. US Ambassador, Washington, District of Columbia

We hope to see you in Louisville!

AFRECS is eager to meet you at our Table #1225 in the Exhibit Hall during the 81^st General Convention of The Episcopal Church at the International Conference Center in Louisville, Kentucky, June 21-27.

New Diocese in Nuba Mountains

Heiban, a new diocese of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, has been inaugurated in the Nuba Mountains. Elsir Hassan Kuku was consecrated as the first bishop by Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo on Sunday, February 18th. Read more from the Church Association of Sudan and South Sudan.

A Death in the Diaspora

by Kwathi Akol Ajawin

I was in Memphis, Tennessee, April 6 for the burial of my friend and co-worker Reverend Canon Ismail Badur Kunda. About a thousand people showed up from all over the country, plus two pastors from Sydney,  Australia, and Bishop Andudu el-Nail  from Sudan representing Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo.

I served for over fifteen years in Cairo with this great servant who hailed from Nuba Mountains. I didn’t know Rev. Ismail was an Episcopalian, since our focus was on the kingdom of God and spreading the gospel among the Sudanese immigrants. Denomination rarely comes up in our discussions.

[Ed. Note:  Rev. Ismail attended one of AFRECS’s past annual conferences.]

World Council of Churches Visits Sudan

In the Anglican cathedral in Port Sudan on April 21, His Holiness Most Rev. Dr. Rufus Okikiola Ositelu of the Church of the Lord (Prayer Fellowship) Worldwide preached as a member of a delegation from the World Council of Churches. The visitors also met with President Abdul-Fatah al Burhan, Vice-President Malik Agar, and the Minister of Religious Affairs – all displaced from their capital city Khartoum. “I informed him,” said Ositelu “about how we have been engaged in peace missions in the past and present, including Cuba, Colombia, Palestine, and Sudan. I also expressed our concern about the situation in Sudan and shared how we are also involved in humanitarian assistance.” Among the delegates were two Roman Catholic clergy, Fr. James Oyet Latansio, secretary of the South Sudan Council of Churches, and Bishop Santo Loku Pio, auxiliary bishop of Juba, as well as Panti Filibus Musa, archbishop of the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria.

For more details, click:

www.oikoumene.org/news/in-solidarity-visit-to-sudan-wcc-strengthens-foundations-for-peace

https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/world-council-of-churches-al-burhan-discuss-peace-in-sudan

AFRECS Announces New President

Anita Sanborn of Angola, Indiana, has been elected to succeed Philip Darrow of Denver, Colorado, who has served as president for the past eight years.

Anita retired as President of the Colorado Episcopal Foundation in 2018 after serving in that capacity for 15 years. She was actively engaged with the Sudanese community in Colorado between 2000-2023. She was instrumental in founding the Leadership Institute of the New Sudan which conducted several leadership training sessions in Denver and in Juba while it operated. In 2004, she joined the Board of AFRECS. During her first season on the Board, she traveled to Darfur and in the following years made several trips to South Sudan and Sudan and to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. During a hiatus from AFRECS, she served as the Chair of the Board of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver from 2017-2019. Having completed 3 terms on the Iliff Board, she was elected an Honorary Trustee and remains active with the Iliff Women’s Alliance. She rejoined the AFRECS Board in 2019 and was elected President of the Board in May,2024. Anita earned her Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Illinois – Chicago and later a Master’s in Public Administration from the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State. Her early career focused on health planning, long term care and maternal and child health. She held executive and senior management positions with the Alzheimer’s Association in Denver and at the national office in Chicago. She now resides in Indiana where she is engaged in community issues.

The Crossing

Smoke, smoke all over the sky. Chaos and confusion.

I become a man at the age of ten.

Desperate to protect my sisters and my Mother, I become a child soldier.

But I said to myself, wait a minute! Something is not right; I am not

wrecking my dreams and abolishing my 1, 2, 3s and A,B,C’s, which I

learned in my school under the tree.

I am going to cross the river. I thought I was looking for Mother,

not knowing that she had been taken away by the smoke.

Yo Mamma, where are you ??????

[Ed. note: Still all too apt in 2024, this voice of a boy from the war years of 1983-2005 is excerpted from a poem by Linda Peter Tartisio. Born in Wau, South Sudan, she lived as a refugee in Cairo. Since 2004 she has been, with her husband and children, an active member of the South Sudanese community in Roanoke, Virginia.]

Question: Who leads the Mothers’ Union in the Episcopal Church of South Sudan?

Answer: The Reverend Awatif Ali, President of the Provincial  Mothers’ Union, shown here at a training session for trauma healing facilitators. She also served in April as Acting Provincial Secretary while Canon Peter Garang was away from Juba visiting his family in Nairobi.

Director’s Update

Things go from bad to worse in Sudan.

This past week the New York Times devoted more than four pages to a road trip from Port Sudan to Khartoum by a Western journalist/photojournalist team. In the nearly destroyed capital, shelling and bombing continue between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), who control Omdurman, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), dug into Khartoum.  There are no current prospects of an end to fighting, which has been spreading in Sudan’s agricultural heartland in Gezira and Wad Medani. 

In South Sudan the continued absence of steps deemed necessary for minimally free and fair elections in December caused the US to announce it would not provide election funding.  Devastating floods appear imminent in Jonglei, Upper Nile, and Warrap because Lake Victoria in Uganda is at a record high. Refugee flows from Sudan have not ceased. 

In these lands of conflict and dysfunction, the Episcopal churches remain faithful. Primate Ezekiel Kondo and Provincial Secretary Musa Abujam, operating out of Port Sudan, do what they can to support their flock in the Diocese of Wad Medani, now on the war’s frontline. Churches in Kadugli Diocese and the new sister Heiban Diocese, both clustered around the Nuba mountains, expand under the protection of the forces of SPLM-North General Abdelaziz Al-Hilu, a staunch supporter of religious freedom. Sudanese Anglicans fleeing to Egypt now outnumber their parish hosts.   The Episcopal Church of South Sudan pursues its work in literacy, livelihood creation and trauma healing in additional dioceses. It now operates 39 schools. Primate Justin Badi Arama has mandated the new Episcopal Mediation Advisory Committee (EMAC) to work diligently with civil society and other church groups to press the government on election preparations.