Author: AmerFriendSudan

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.

Mama Harriet Baka, close friend of AFRECS, is National Coordinator of the Mothers’ Union.

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. 

Hebrew in the Dust

by the Rev. Shirley Smith Graham, AFRECS board member

It was not hard to teach Hebrew in South Sudan in 2006.  Crowds gathered at the Bible College in Renk, hungry to learn what Jesus said in his own words.

“We want to know what the Bible says, not what someone says it says,” students would tell us. They had grown up speaking at least two languages, their tribal  mother tongue and Arabic. They understood the importance of learning the Bible’s original language. Often they, and their families, had made great sacrifices to attend the college. I had come at the invitation of Dr. Ellen Davis to work alongside two students from Duke Divinity School. We were impressed at the Sudanese students’ staying power.

One day, after a long and hot two hours of instruction, students were ready for a break — at least I was. Everyone exited the building made of local brick and sought refuge outside in the shade. I needed a few minutes to organize my papers and books, and arrived outside last.

What’s this crowd? Is something happening? Coming closer, I could see women and men leaning over another student, looking at something in the red earth. What was going on?

The student had taken a stick and was writing letters in Hebrew on the ground. But the other students weren’t just watching. One corrected another’s letters or spelling. They discussed the proper shapes for making meaningful words.

Didn’t Jesus once write in the dust to give a crowd the chance to let his words sink in and transform their hearts (John 8: 6, the woman caught in adultery)? These students were doing the same thing. Writing in the red earth of South Sudan. Letting the words of Jesus sink into their hearts — just as they were praying his words would bring peace to their land.

“It’s typical of those times and conditions in Sudan, that I don’t have a photograph of the students writing in the dust. On a different day, they found chairs to make the learning easier.”

How Homelike is the Episcopal Church for South Sudanese Americans?

by Richard J. Jones, AFRECS board member

Ronald C. Byrd, director of African Descent Ministries ( formerly Office of Black Ministries) in The Episcopal Church, has added South Sudanese Americans to his constituencies.

When our Episcopal Convention meets in Louisville this June, Byrd along with bishops and deputies will be discussing how South Sudanese communities have evolved since the time depicted in the comic film The Good Lie, starring Reese Witherspoon and Emmanuel Jal, when refugees were plucked from Kakuma refugee camp and dropped into life in America. In 2022 15 clerics and 14 lay South Sudanese American congregational leaders were heartily welcomed at a Kansas City hotel– with some apology for things we had previously left undone  — by Presiding Bishop Curry and House of Delegates President Julia Ayala Harris. For two days these leaders shared two decades of frustrations and aspirations. Later that year a smaller group wrote up their desires for full acceptance of their clergy and their congregations. In spite of uneven educations and limited finances, they committed to support dioceses that would give them recognition.

South Sudanese American congregations in Iowa, Michigan, Texas, Washington state, and Atlanta have become centers of community life. Others, including Portland, Maine and Baltimore, Maryland, have made their way without remaining connected to The Episcopal Church. As Ron Byrd and other chief pastors focus on newer, alongside older, congregations with links to Africa, they will  welcome photos and facts, reports and rosters, to depict the health of these households of God. Please send your news to your bishops and deputies, the United Thank Offering of the Women of the Church — and to AFRECS at anitasanborn@gmail.com. We want to know!

Read more at: Report of the Task Force on the South Sudanese Diaspora and The Episcopal Church

A Prayer for Holy Week

Lord Jesus, as we walk beside you in this holiest of weeks, make us mindful of those who are our companions on the road:

As we join the triumphal march of palms, we salute all who march or demonstrate for peace and justice, even at the risk of their own lives and freedom;

As we watch you betrayed and arrested, we place our hearts with all prisoners of conscience;

As you receive the wounds of whips and crown of thorns, we feel the pain of all who are ridiculed, demonized, raped, and tortured;

As you stumble with exhaustion, we acknowledge the weariness of  refugees, migrants, and all who long for a place to call home;

As you are comforted by Veronica’s soft cloth, we praise you for all who are moved by the Spirit to comfort the suffering, whether by shelter from the United Nations, a sandwich on the road through Mexico, or a friend in court for the legally defenseless;

As you comfort dying thieves with the promise of paradise, open our hearts to child soldiers, unwilling conscripts, and all who feel trapped in violence they neither want nor understand;

As you speak from the cross to comfort Mary and John, teach us to remember, even in our own struggles, there are ways in which we can strengthen others;

As you await your death on the cross, may we be with all who await the great transition, and with those who keep vigil with them;.

And as we, far beyond our deserving and our imagining, share with our companions in your Easter victory, we praise you for ever and ever.

AMEN

• by Frederick L. Houghton, AFRECS board member

Crown of Thorns (Dinka: Göl de kuoth). This image of Christ suffering for and with us was created in 2000 by Hilary Garang Deng Awer, retired bishop of Malakal now living in Juba.

Director’s Update

The US Government appears to be moving more actively to find a solution to the ongoing violence and humanitarian horror in Sudan.  U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, has been traveling, talking to Arab and African leaders.  US Permanent  Representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, published a major statement March 6 in the New York Times, calling for a humanitarian surge in Sudan led by a new UN coordinator.  She denounced “a handful of regional powers” (i.e. UAE and Iran)  sending arms to both sides.  She said, “The United States is working to persuade relevant players to coalesce around the shared goal of preventing the breakup of Sudan, which would fuel instability across the Horn of Africa and Red Sea region.” She restated a number of these points in remarks to the Security Council March 20.

The Troika – US, UK, Norway — guarantors of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that set the stage for South Sudan’s independence, stated March 19 that  South Sudan was not on a path toward fair elections.  President Kiir recently proposed that elections go ahead in December for President and governors but not for the legislature.  Opposition leader and Vice President Riek Machar has called for “a mediated dialogue” among the political parties on the elections.  Schools were closed last week because of soaring temperatures but have reopened.

AFRECS Board member Richard Jones and I greeted friends of AFRECS at the Episcopal Parish Network Conference in Houston March 7 to 9. Now my wife Judy and I are looking forward to our visit to South Sudan April 7-15.

Tom Perriello, US Special Envoy for Sudan, Seeks Peace Negotiations After Ramadan

Travelling between several Red Sea countries on March 21st, U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello described to journalists a woman who had escaped from fighting in Darfur: “Women go out to the fields to find food for their family and often are raped, come home, and have to go back to that same field the next day.  These abuses need to end. We need accountability for those who have had command-and-control structure over the people committing the atrocities.” Perriello hopes to see the rival Sudanese generals Burhan and Hemedti, who have been at war since September 2023, as well as political parties and “all voices”, including foreign supporters,  return to serious peace negotiations after the Muslim month of fasting ends on April 10^th.

More at: https://www.state.gov/special-online-briefing-with-special-envoy-for-sudan-tom-perriello

Praying for Daily Bread and Meaning It

• by Samuel Enosa Peni, Bishop of Yambio, graduate of Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, addressing on March 20^th conference of the Global Episcopal Mission Network. More at https://www.gemn.org/2024-conference/

“When we in South Sudan pray ‘Give us today our daily bread’, many of us do not know where we will find food that day. We have seen prayers answered, so when we pray, we mean what we say to God.  We have received and believe the Good News of Christ’s death for us and his Resurrection to bring us life eternal. We have seen the power of God to heal us from illness. We have seen feuding communities confess their aggressions and be reconciled. Teams from our Board for Justice, Peace and Reconciliation have intervened in many locations in 2023 and 2024.”