Author: AmerFriendSudan

Two South Sudan students from a former UN Protection of Civilian camp studying to be midwives thanks to a two-year scholarship from AFRECS.

by Steven Miles

AFRECS has been committed to supporting youth education among South Sudanese internal refugees since 2016 when it was the founding financial partner in establishing a school for up to 500 primary school children in the UN Protection of Civilians (POC) Camp No. 3 near Juba. The POCs were created when ethnic violence three years earlier caused tens of thousands of people, including many unaccompanied children, to flee their villages to the relative safety of refugee camps.

AFRECS’ current educational focus is on providing scholarships to secondary students (many of whom graduated from the primary school AFRECS helped found). In addition, AFRECS is creating post-secondary school educational opportunities by providing scholarships for two students to attend four-year degrees in theology or law from The Episcopal University and for two students to attend two-year certificate programs in Midwifery.

The midwifery students are Nyethak Yap and Nyakhan Majiok. They are currently performing clinical studies in midwifery at a large hospital six days a week. The young women are from Bentiu Diocese but live in a former POC, necessitating that they each take three different buses each direction just to get to the hospital each morning and return again each evening. Both young women plan to use their midwifery training when completed in the POCs to help their fellow residents, who now include not only South Sudanese refugees but increasingly also refugees fleeing violence from the north.

AFRECS relies on its long-term partner, Christ Mission Continuous Ministry (CMCM), headed by ECSS Bishop John Gatteck, to help supervise the scholarship program. CMCM is a non-governmental organization focused on youth education originally founded in 2001 by South Sudan refugees in Kenya.

We look forward to introducing our readers to the scholarship students attending The Episcopal University and the secondary schools in future E-Blast issues.

Steven Miles is a retired energy lawyer with experience in Saudi Arabia and a member of the Board of AFRECS.

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.

by Susan E. Bentley

It was around the year 2000, when the United Nations began relocating Sudanese people from its vast Kakuma Refugee Camp in the desert of Kenya to the United States and other western countries, that I read in the Roanoke Times about “Lost Boys” arriving in Virginia. Hearing in 2009 that South Sudanese Christians were looking for a place to hold indigenous worship services, I offered St. James Episcopal Church in Roanoke, where I was rector. On Trinity Sunday 2009, I began worshiping with the South Sudanese diaspora, in Arabic and English, on Sunday evenings.

 Over my years as chaplain to this diaspora in the Roanoke Valley, I have met many other Sudanese. I helped Sudanese citizens get to the polls for the 2011 referendum on separating South Sudan from Sudan. Whenever I meet a so-called Lost Boy, I ask, “Did you know Marc Nikkel?” Everyone has said with a broad smile, “Yes. I did.”

I felt that I was following in the footsteps of Marc Nikkel. They knew him affectionately as Achuor, “bull elephant.”  He was tall, big, and quick, with merry, piercing eyes. They remembered him as a painter, peacemaker, and teacher. He was a one-person seminary, teaching hundreds of Sudanese. Some became pastors, evangelists, and eventually bishops. What impressed them most was his learning the Dinka language, and he undertook a Dinka translation of the New Testament. Marc collected and translated inspired songs of lament and hope arising from the hearts of Dinka Christians enduring the war years beginning in 1983.

Marc died September 3, 2000, of stomach cancer at the age of 50. But through the power of Sudanese peoples’ prayer, Marc lived two years longer than doctors in London and Scotland predicted. Ever the peacemaker, this gift of time allowed Marc, true to his Mennonite heritage, to support a grassroots “People to People” peace process between Nuer and Dinka tribes. Marc died at his childhood home in Reedley, California, wrapped in a family quilt, buried in a wooden box crafted by friends. Marc is now an ancestor in the faith, resting in peace with the two million plus martyrs of the Sudan who have gone before him.

I did not know what a path Marc and the Sudanese were putting me on. My faith has been enriched by being in relationship with those who have suffered greatly and yet have a deeply personal and grounded faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Reverend Susan E. Bentley is the retired rector of St. James Church in Salem, Virginia, and a member of the Board of AFRECS.

One of the few bright spots in the civil war tearing Sudan apart since 2023 is the work of the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) – informal committees formed throughout much of Sudan to provide food to the starving, medical supplies, and counseling to the traumatized. In a recent article Elgar Hamid Abdulgadir explores the cultural roots of the ERRs in the concept of nafeer, a Sudanese tradition of collective voluntary action around a shared need. Originally these were Change and Services Committees, but they evolved during the war into ERRs. They have negotiated courageously with armed groups in order to carry out their missions, leading occasionally to killings and detention. The work of the ERRs demonstrates that the effective absence of the state does not leave a vacuum but generates networks that deal with human need in the direst circumstances.

I hope some of you listened to the September 16 AFRECS webinar I moderated on the Episcopal Parish Network: “The Intersecting Crises of the Sudans.” It featured Hala AlKarib, a Sudanese who heads the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa; Susan Stigant, former Africa chief at the US Institute of Peace and now with the Dialogue Advisory Group in the Netherlands; Amb. Peter Pham, Senior Advisor with the Atlantic Council; and Joe Tucker, AFRECS Board member and senior analyst for the Horn of Africa at the International Crisis Group. We tried to keep the focus on successful advocacy for an end to the Sudan conflict and a reduction of chronic violence in South Sudan.

On September 22 President Salva Kiir dissolved the transitional government in South Sudan, leaving only a “caretaker” government in place until the December 22 elections. Then he headed off on an African trip. President Ruto of Kenya advised Kiir to pursue dialogue ahead of the elections. South African President Ramaphosa urged him to implement faithfully the 2018 peace agreement that temporarily ended the 2013-2018 civil war in that country. Would that Kiir might heed them.

Executive Director

Recipients of the newly translated Bible with Archbishop Joseph Garang Atem Zorial, former Bishop of Renk, who played a major role in the Dinka Cam translation project.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Virginia rejoiced to learn that 300 copies of a new translation of the Bible – decades in the making — into the Dinka Cam language were received by Bishop Simon Chuang at St. Mathew’s Cathedral in Renk, South Sudan, just before Pentecost this year, allowing thousands of people to hear of God’s saving acts in their own language.

Among the 60 indigenous language groups of South Sudan, speakers of Dinka (also known as Jieng) are the most numerous, and Cam is an important dialect of the Dinka language. St. Mary’s, along with St. Paul’s Church in Alexandria, Virginia has prayed for these Bible translators since 2002, when the rector, Andrew Merrow, and Russell Randle, a lawyer, visited them at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. The visitors saw translators carefully checking portions of their work with speakers of various Dinka dialects. Persevering until 2023 through relocations and the deaths of some translators, receiving publication assistance from Wycliffe Bible Translators, in the fall of 2025 a total of 30,000 copies of the complete Dinka Cam Bible were delivered to Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Elsewhere, an ongoing effort to put the Bible into the Burun language suffered a setback. Russ Hersman of Wycliffe Bible Translators has worked for many years with Canon Nabil Abdalla, Director of the ECS Translation Department. Most recently they have been laboring to complete the Bible in Burun.  The Burun are a Nilotic people numbering about 50,000, who live primarily in the Blue Nile State of Sudan with some elements residing in South Sudan. Working under the auspices of Bishop Simon Farajalla Mahdi of Wad Medani Diocese in Sudan, they were within six months of finishing the Burun New Testament, when civil war broke out in 2023.  The translation team was recently obliged to regroup in Juba, South Sudan, to finish the task.  At the end of June, Canon Nabil reported that US $8,500 just withdrawn from the bank to fund the Burun and other translation projects was lost when a team member’s bag was snatched by a thief, possibly an inside job. Nabil just heard that his son in Cairo, married in January, has been taken to prison. Another son in Cairo has disappeared.  Nabil thinks he and some other friends may have tried to escape to another country. The situation in Egypt is no longer safe for Sudanese refugees.

Russ Herman prays, “Heavy burdens. Lord God of the universe, you know all things. Please make things right for our dear brothers and sisters who are suffering.”

Gabriel Ismail Abudigin, senior among the Episcopal bishops of Sudan (L), is in danger of inheriting the title given nine months ago to his son, Daramili Abudigin (R), as “Last Pastor left Standing” in El-Fasher.

Food is scarce in El-Obeid, a city of 500,000 people in the dusty central Sudan region of Kordofan, but bank transfers of donated US dollars, including those from AFRECS, allowed the Rt. Rev. Ismail Gabriel Abudigin, the senior bishop in the Episcopal Church of Sudan, to deliver modest amounts of foodstuffs and cash in June to needy households through the parishioners of his one continuing congregation. (Our friend John Poole of Bradford, England, pronounces the name ah-boo-DI-jn, putting the stress on the next-to-last syllable, like the English word “pigeon”.)

Bags of much needed food are readied by parishioners for distribution to inhabitants of the besieged city of El-Obeid.

Violent disorder was already being reported in December 2025, when the Roman Catholic bishop of El-Obeid, Yunan Tombe, returning home from a meeting in Juba, encountered—in separate incidents—the Sudan Armed Forces and, immediately afterward, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. “Guns (were) given to the lads and (they were) instructed to carry out their usual business, which clearly was execution,” the bishop said in a message. Despite suffering heavy blows on his neck, face, and sides of the head, he added, “Thanks to the prayers of the church, I was saved. A leader of the paramilitary emerged from his office and ordered the gunmen to free the church people.”

AFRECS believes that the wife and children of the bishop’s son, Daramali Abudigin, remain in El-Obeid, alongside Bishop Abudigin and other members of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan. Fr. Daramali, an Episcopal priest known as “the last pastor left standing in El-Fasher” in 2025, is believed to remain 300 miles to the west in Darfur, assisting homeless residents of El-Fasher who fled that massacre.

AFRECS is grateful for the report from the Port Sudan office of the Episcopal Church of Sudan that our transfer ofUS $65,000 was received in December 2025 and January 2026 has been distributed among 5 of the 6 dioceses in the province, with most funds going to Khartoum and Wad Medeni, cities with the largest populations. Approximately 10% was distributed in El-Obeid, where since 2023 the church has shared relief supplies with Muslim as well as Christian inhabitants.

Read more: The Times of London article “They fled a massacre. Now the city that gave them refuge may be next.” July 1, 2026

HUMANITARIAN APPEAL LETTER

To send a letter to your senator or representative:

Use the following links to find the relevant contact information (email, mailing address, phone, etc.).

• Contacting US Senators
• Find Your Representative

Copy the text to your letter or email or create the talking points you will use for your telephone call.

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Dear Senator /Dear Representative

American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans (AFRECS) has watched with ever increasing distress the unfolding catastrophe in Sudan. That catastrophe began with the military intervention of October 2021, which derailed a transition to democratic rule, and has been rapidly expanding in scope since April 2023, when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) went to war with each other.  The RSF has received massive arms supplies from the United Arab Emirates (denied by the UAE). The SAF has been amply supplied by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

Death toll estimates range from 150,00 to 400,000, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Fourteen million have been displaced. Two-thirds of the population – over 30 million – need humanitarian support. For well over a year Sudan has been recognized by the United Nations and the U.S. Government as the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.

Thus far Sudanese and international efforts to end the crisis have failed. That is in part because there has been a lack of attention to the Sudan crisis in a world of multiple conflicts. Recently the United States, the United Nations, the African Union, the League of Arab States, the European Union, numerous European states, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD – the regional group for the Horn of Africa) affirmed their commitment to the Sudanese people, to a peaceful and democratic future, and to the territorial integrity of the Sudan. Following consultations with Sudanese political stakeholders, that group reaffirmed the urgent need for “a humanitarian truce, leading to a permanent cease-fire,” and the beginning of “a comprehensive and inclusive civilian-led dialogue process.”

Accordingly, we urge Congress to:

1. Insist that the U.S. Government give high priority to promoting a solution to the Sudan crisis;
2. Urge the U.S. Government:

• to put pressure on those governments providing arms to the RSF, the SAF and other militia groups to cease arms transfers immediately, including arms-supplying governments which deny such transfers;
• to find additional measures, together with international partners, to pressure the RSF and the SAF to reach a humanitarian truce;
• to exercise leadership in a vast humanitarian effort, when a truce is realized.

Anita Sanborn, President

Dane F Smith, Executive Director

In a hard-hitting July 12 op-ed in the New York Times, prominent journalist Nicholas Kristof noted that national governments speak out against the horrific violence in Sudan but refrain from talking about the role of the United Arab Emirates, chief armorer of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces.  Kristof hints that the present may be a good time to spotlight the Emirates. Abu Dhabi wants to avoid unfavorable publicity because it has its own candidate to succeed UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the end of this year.

The President of AFRECS, Anita Sanborn, and I, urge Episcopalians, other Christians, and people of good will everywhere to sign our letter (or write your own) and send it to your Congressional representatives in support of two pending bills which would limit US sales of weapons to the UAE as long as it arms the RSF.

AFRECS Humanitarian Letter

Senate Bill: S.935 – A bill to prohibit sales and the issuance of licenses for the export of certain defense articles to the United Arab Emirates, and for other purposes.

House Bill: H.R.2059 – To prohibit the issuance of licenses for the exportation of certain defense articles to the United Arab Emirates, and for other purposes.

A UN fact-finding mission has concluded a careful and massively detailed investigation of the massacres in El Fasher last September, stating that material crimes of genocide by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against Zaghawa and Fur people were “overwhelmingly present.” Tens of thousands are still unaccounted for.

A London Times reporter describes the agony of displaced residents of Darfur fleeing the massacres in El Fasher only to face the possibility of the same today in El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan. In El Obeid, families are starving while dodging indiscriminate drone attacks just to stay alive,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council on July 7th. “The world has been warned about this crisis and let it happen anyway.”

Agencies including Christian Aid, Catholic Relief Services, and Pax Christi have pleaded, “El-Obeid must not be allowed to become the site of further grave violations and preventable humanitarian catastrophe.”

Executive Director

Dr. Edward Eremugo Kenyi reports from Baltimore, Maryland: “Again this year we celebrated at St. Matthew Catholic Church, 5401 Loch Raven Boulevard. The event was well attended, with over 120 participants from Northern Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, and even Pennsylvania, including women and children. Yes, I sang some of the Easter songs in Arabic, and Mr. Emmanuel Hakim led on the keyboard. Pastor Kwathi Ajawin gave the homily, centered on I Corinthians 15:19-26. I have the homily on YouTube.” Mother Margaret Yar Deng, leader of the Dinka-language congregation at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia reports good participation on the Sunday after Easter.