Photo: The Rev. Mary Bol celebrates Christmas with members of her congregation in Seattle.
“Seattle” may evoke for older Americans a yacht harbor and a 1993 movie directed by the late Rob Reiner, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. For a strong contingent of Sudanese Christians resettled in the Diocese of Olympia, however, Seattle has become home. Christmas Day saw Vicar Mary Bol of St. Michael’s South Sudanese Episcopal Church gather 130 worshippers to celebrate this most holy day.
Photo: Kamal Elsadig broadcasting on Radio Dabanga to the Sudanese diaspora around the world.
The Sudanese diaspora, scattered across Africa and the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Australia, depends on the radio for news of fighting, food scarcity, disease in refugee camps, or atrocities in their homeland. Kamal Elsadig, the editor of Radio Dabanga in Amsterdam, arrived from El-Fasher in 2008 and states the mission of Radio Dabanga is “to be a public service media house for all Sudanese that enables people in all states and regions to participate in the exchange of knowledge, news, and information.”
MORE AT: www.dabangasudan.org
Photo: Students at the Episcopal University in Juba, South Sudan, cultivate theology, law, and vegetables.
Graham Buttanshaw, a former missionary teacher in Uganda, used the month of November to go back to school in South Sudan. His tour of Episcopal theological schools included the former Bishop Gwynne College, now the theology department of the Episcopal University of South Sudan in Juba which includes the well-equipped library and the equally necessary vegetable gardens, allowing students to work both their hands and their minds.
Photo: The University Library has well-stocked shelves, plus a few laptops.
Graham promises good communication with friends who wish to explore investing in leadership training and entering into a partnership with Bishop Allison Theological College (BATC). CONTACT: g.buttanshaw@gmail.com
For three decades, the Diocese of Virginia has sustained friendships with the dioceses of Ezo, Renk, and Ayod in South Sudan. Continuing a relationship with the Diocese of Ezo, Rector Weston Matthews together with Jack Mathias and Leslie Siegmund of St. Francis, Great Falls, plan to meet in February in the Diocese of Salisbury, England with Bishop Isaac and Mama Nora of the Diocese of Ezo. Through the Rev. Joy Warburton, the Mothers’ Union Branch of Trinity Episcopal Church in Arlington, contributes resources for internally displaced persons in Ezo. St. Mary’s, Arlington lay leaders Russell Randle and Diane and Ed Wright have sent funds to Renk Diocese to support refugees arriving from Sudan and train new evangelists. After the November visit of Bishop Thomas Tut Gany, Anne and Jon Spear of St. Thomas, McLean, have provided resources for a school in Diocese of Ayod, exploring a new relationship. St. Paul’s, Alexandria, has supported a primary school in Renk for 30 years with “Pennies from Heaven,” contributed by their pre-school students. Other Virginia parishes support Hope and Resurrection Secondary School near Rumbek.
Photo: Principal Michael Kiju Paul (in coat and tie) conducts a tour of newly built, still unfurnished, women’s dormitory.
The Kajo-Keji Christian College was established by the Episcopal Church of South Sudan in 1993 and offers programs in theology, education, business, and information communication technology.
CONTACT: www.kcuc.info
by Tom Staal
Photo: ERR volunteers distributing food to those in dire need of assistance.
With the war in Sudan raging now for two and a half years, the suffering of the local population continues to increase. The United Nations estimates that 12 million people have been displaced, 25 million are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, and over 400,000 people have been killed. This is the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today. The intensity of the fighting and violence, and the bureaucratic restrictions imposed by both sides, have severely limited international humanitarian assistance.
Out of this death and dust, the Sudanese themselves have stepped up. The Sudanese have a long-standing tradition of communities coming together as volunteers to help people in need. They have now taken that model to another level. Immediately after the fighting began in April 2023, local community groups set up communal kitchens to provide food to people displaced from their homes, and basic emergency first aid to people who were injured. These are staffed entirely by volunteers and use whatever local resources they have. They called themselves “Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs)”.
The ERRs have quickly spread across the country, in both Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) controlled areas and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) controlled areas. They have expanded their services – based on the need and the resources they have – to include psychosocial support (especially to rape victims), childcare centers, shelter, emergency evacuations. and even some basic infrastructure repair. These volunteers are often targeted by the military groups, their money (what little they have) sometimes stolen, and put in prison or even killed. Yet they continue to work and have organized themselves nationwide. They are often the only source of humanitarian assistance to the people in need. These ERRs are still very limited and not nearly enough to meet all the needs, but being community-led, they meet the people where they are, in a very personal manner. There are now hundreds – maybe thousands – of ERRs throughout the country, with the bigger towns/cities having dozens of them, so they really have a broad reach to the neediest people.
READ MORE: www.mutualaidsudan.org
As 2026 begins, the situation in both Sudan and South Sudan is deteriorating further.
Sudan remains divided militarily between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), in which Islamist elements appear lately to have gained strength, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which massacred thousands of civilians in December, when it overran El Fasher, largest city in Darfur. The RSF appears to have been gaining ground in Kordofan Nothing more has been heard from President Trump’s and Secretary of State Rubio’s efforts to persuade the Gulf arms suppliers to cease their lethal contribution to the conflict.
In South Sudan, the SPLM/IO (the military element associated with imprisoned former Vice President Riek Machar) appears to have gained ground with defection in Jonglei by the commander and forces from the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA). One report indicates fighting going on in 10 states.
Meanwhile, courageous civilians are displaying astounding courage and resourcefulness]by staffing Emergency Response Rooms and saving lives in all parts of conflict-ravaged Sudan. Take a look below, where our Board member Tom Staal, a retired Counselor of the U.S. Agency for International Development, describes these ERRs.
AFRECS will do what we can in 2026 to promote a peaceful solution in Sudan, providing emergency assistance to the Episcopal Church there, as it attempts to meet food and shelter needs of the myriad displaced. In South Sudan we hope to reinforce our engagement with the Episcopal University and to expand our program of trauma healing with the Episcopal Mothers’ Union and Five Talents. We will continue emergency aid to Episcopal dioceses in Northern Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile, which serve destitute refugees still pouring south across the border from Sudan.
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Executive Director
Let the rivers flow, the river of life too.
Heaven and earth will testify
That God has taken us into his bosom.
The birds, the creatures in nature testify
That up in the heavens God reigns supreme.
On earth the Sudanese will sing to His praise.
God has been with us for a hundred years!
by Abe Enosa, in Samuel E. Kayanga and Andrew C. Wheeler, “But God is Not Defeated!” Celebrating the Centenary of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, 1899-1999
He stands 6’7″ tall. In the passenger seat of a Honda Fit, his knees rest on the glove compartment. He is married and the father of seven children, but Bishop Thomas Tut Gany introduces himself by asking, “Have you heard of the Lost Boys of Sudan from the 1990s? I am one of them.”
Tut admired seeing Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde on the internet with her charge to President Donald Trump on the day after his second inauguration: “God requires mercy.” Invited to dinner at her home In Washington, D.C., Tut sought to learn what underlies the split between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of North America. He does not wish to see his own Episcopal Church of South Sudan separate itself from the worldwide Anglican Communion. He seeks friends – individuals, parishes, or a diocese – who might be companions to the people of the Episcopal Diocese of Ayod in South Sudan. Children in Ayod go to school under trees, learn to write using charcoal on cowskins, with teachers who are untrained and unpaid. Seven years of unusual flooding of the White Nile, compounded by the halt to USAID and United Nations nutritional and medical assistance, have brought the spread of diseases and hunger.
Bishop Tut was making his first visit to the United States, beginning with the triennial New Wineskins Missionary Conference in Black Mountain, North Carolina. With borrowed money for airfare and an Ethiopian passport, he continued making friends in Virginia, South Carolina, New York City, and Nebraska before his return to South Sudan October 31st.
Growing up in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya with a rudimentary education, Tut became a Christian and was baptized in 1995 at the age of eighteen, becoming an active choir singer and eventually an evangelist. In 1999 he suffered a broken leg and dislocated hip and was immobilized for five years without treatment in a remote village of Ayod County. In 2001 he traveled to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where he met Bishop Nathaniel Garang, who made him a deacon and then in 2003 a priest. Tut finally received treatment in Nairobi, first at a Coptic mission hospital, then at Kijabe Hospital. The hip was replaced with financial support from the Anglican Communion’s Clergy Emergency Fund. As an evangelist, and, since 2014, as a bishop among his Nuer people in the Upper Nile Region of South Sudan, he has been baptizing more than 1,500 people yearly. Simultaneously he continues his own education through St. Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya.
Contact: Rt. Revd. Thomas Tut Gany Tel: +211920 888 555| +254715 888 555 – WhatsApp* tutgany@gmail.com https://www.ayod-anglican.org
Meeting in Kampala, Uganda in late October, the seven bishops of the Episcopal Church of Sudan shared their responses to the civil war devastating their people.
Gathering face to face in Uganda for their first time since 2023, the seven bishops of the Episcopal Church of Sudan sent a message on October 29 condemning outside countries’ support of the civil war in Sudan. Calling for humanitarian relief corridors to be opened to refugee encampments and towns including El Fasher, the bishops said, “Fire cannot be quenched with fire: only water can make a difference.” They urged all warring parties to receive the initiatives of mediators.
