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Join Me by the Rev. Jerry Drino (Editor's Note: the following article and request was received from the Rev. Jerry Drino, Executive Director of Cross Cultural Ministry Development in our Province. Drino has led a vestry retreat for us and was the preacher at the Rector's Installation Service in 1997). In this season of the Resurrection, I am writing to ask you to join me in helping the persecuted Church in Sudan. In a month, as a part of my sabbatical, I will be traveling to war-torn Sudan and the Diocese of Bor, as well as visiting the refugee camp in Kenya. A decade ago the rivers were choked with bodies and numerous villages were wiped out. Two million Christians, many of them Episcopalians, have died in the last 20 years of civil war. Today two thirds of the population of Southern Sudan (six million) is internally displaced, mostly Christian and over half are Episcopalians. It is among the largest human tragedies on the face of the earth today. A year ago I began working with the Lost Boys of Sudan at Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, with initial links to seven other dioceses in Province VIII who have Sudanese ministries. In the `80s, when these now young men were children herding their families' cattle, the armies attacked their villages, killed many of their family members and enslaved their sisters. These youngsters began a five year trek that carried them across East Africa, thousands of children caring for each other with almost no adults to guide them. Amazing! For a while they found refuge in Ethiopia, but a civil war broke out there and they were once more forced to flee. Thousands more were killed as they entered Sudan. Those who survived walked another thousand miles across deserts and mountains and came at last to Kakuma in Kenya where the UN had set up a refugee camp. For seven years they languished in this camp and then the U.S. began to resettle them in the States. Four thousand were brought here, but after 9/11 the U.S. closed the borders, refusing any further refugees from Sudan, including thousands of Lost Girls. There are 80 some Episcopal ministries in the U.S. today, nine within Province VIII. I have been invited by the Diocese of Bor to make a living link with the Episcopal Church of Sudan and Province VIII, to witness first hand the devastation of the civil war and the abject poverty of the villages and to connect the work in our province with their ministries of re-establishing the villages, churches, clinics and schools. The especially heightened Khartoum aggression of eight year ago massacred thousands and destroyed numerous villages. Those who survived have been hiding in the bush in the meanest conditions. It is the ministry of the Diocese of Bor to call them back into community. Will you join me and the Sudanese? I am raising funds to buy bales of used clothes in Nairobi that will be taken by hired plane to the poorest of villages where the widows and orphans do not even have a t-shirt to call their own. A pair of shorts may be an entire wardrobe. I am also raising funds to buy a motorcycle in Kenya for the Rev. Mark Atem Thuc, Archdeacon of the Southern Bor Diocese. He is calling people back into community and re-establishing 10 villages. Because there are no roads in that part of Southern Sudan, a motorcycle is the most economic way for him to move between villages. Please take this message to your parishioners and friends. A bale of clothes is $100 and the motorcycle is $4,500. Join me in bringing tangible hope to this part of the persecuted Church and make a living link to participate in the Global Village where marginalized communities can easily be forgotten in the face of current international events. Please make checks out to "The Episcopal Church in Province VIII," earmarked "Sudan Support," and send to me by June 5 at 14801 Whipple Ct., San Jose, CA 95127.
Copyright © 2003 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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