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A Letter To The Parish of St. Augustine's from the Rev. Jerry Drino from the Province of Sudan
Please click on the pictures Dear Friends at St. Augustine's, On behalf of the Diocese of Bor in the Province of Sudan I would like to thank you for your generous gift $4,500 to purchase a motorcycle to aid the Rev. Mark Atem Thuc, rural dean of Northern Bor, in overseeing the work of rebuilding the persecuted and suffering Episcopal Church in Sudan. He has charge of 30,000 people in fifteen villages. Crippled since childhood, it takes him months to walk between congregations. Earlier this year he invited me to visit some of the liberated areas of Southern Sudan because of my work with the Lost Boys of Sudan in Province VIII, of which LA is apart. A second twenty year civil war has left two million Christians dead, half of them Episcopalians and most of the people internally displaced from their villages or in refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt or Uganda. It is the single largest tragedy on the face of the earth today. I arrived in Nairobi on June12 to find that none of staff or their families, who greeted me had eaten in three days. The first order of business was to buy food for all of them and to pay some of their back rents ($25-75/month) because their landlords were threatening to evict them. None of the clergy have ever been paid since they were ordained.
We flew to Sudan, arriving at Panyagoor to discover an additional 500 people were in the village for a peace conference of the tribes of the Upper Nile. All the chiefs and the key military commanders of the Sudanese Peoples' Liberation Army and Movement were present to face squarely the problems of inter-tribal warfare, child and women abductions and cattle rustling. Seven out of ten women are widows. There are tens of thousands of orphans. As the days unfolded over and over again the most common conversation was about education. One of the young men, David Bol, has set up his own school under a tree for the children of his village even though he has no books or supplies. Each day they gather to be taught by this very courageous young man. The amazing thing is that he is typical of most of the young adults and older people who really believe that there is a better future that they can work to bring about...this after a forty year continuing civil war. The human spirit is amazing.
They are the Episcopal Church of Sudan and it is their faith that keeps them going. They live by such phrases as "We must forgive in order to sustain ourselves," "Take care of the children and forget about your pain," "Each of you must take your child to school once it is built, because that is our future," and "We have come to re-settle again our homeland. God has done a miracle, so we must not give up."
I now return to your generosity and the hope that you have brought to thousands of people because you care. How might you continue to be in solidarity with a people who live with the real likelihood that the civil war will continue? Theological Education of the clergy is essential for they are positioned to be the enlightened leaders. Most of the clergy have only had a few months training because they have been on the run with their people. $6000/year for tuition, books, room and board and transportation; Building Equipment for making bricks for the school and hospital: $5000; Agricultural Development Project: $4000 to develop an irrigation system using solar energy to run generators and pumps; College Tuition and Support for key young adult leaders in the church who share in the work of rebuilding the Episcopal Church in Southern Sudan: $4500/year Again, thank you on behalf of the people of the Diocese of Bor. They ask that you tell their story to your family and friends so that they are not forgotten and that you learn more about who they are and what they are about. I will continue to send you updates in the months to come.
Checks to be made out to Province VIII - earmarked "Sudan Relief," P.O. Box 36647, Los Angeles, CA 90036-0647
Copyright © 2003 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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