January 12, 2005
by Robyn Davis Sekula

KANSAS CITY, KS - It's not enough to have a church that welcomes you every Sunday. Sometimes you need a place that feels like home, says Peter Biet, a native of Sudan who moved here from Sudan in 1999.

"Being far away from home, you are deprived of so many things," Biet says. "When you are in a foreign church where the language is not yours, you will get messages in bits. You will not be able to enjoy it as you did when you were at home."

Biet helped found the Sudanese Community Church in 2001 so the growing congregation of Sudanese people in the Kansas City area would have a place to worship in their native language each Sunday. The church is a Presbyterian-Episcopal hybrid, and its first minister is the Rev. Paul Ater, an Episcopal pastor who is Sudanese.

But forming a new church wasn't enough for Biet and other Sudanese people living in the United States, many of whom have fled Sudan because of a 17-year civil war in their homeland.

The group took it a step further when they formed the Sudan Council of Churches USA (SCC-USA). That group is for all denominations, and includes Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. It is headquartered in Kansas City; Ater is its executive secretary and Biet its treasurer.

But again the group wasn't satisfied. As they sit in the United States learning a new language, adopting a new culture and setting up new lives, their kin in the Sudan are being mass-slaughtered, some starving to death, under a regime that is persecuting Christians. So members of the SCC-USA began again looking to see what could be done.

That's when Dr. Katie Rhoads, a surgeon who lives in Olathe, KS, heard about the council's desire to take action. As a frequent visitor to Africa on medical mission trips, Rhoads knows how to get in and out of countries that aren't typically visited by Americans. So she offered to help organize a trip.

"We had to figure out how to get into the country, how to get the equipment where we needed to go," Rhoads says. "All of these skills became very appropriate for our trip."

The crisis in the Sudan turned genocidal in February 2003, when the government of Sudan began backing militia groups and their own military who were mass-murdering black Sudanese citizens in the Darfur region, according to the Human Rights Watch Web site, hrw.org. Villages have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of Sudanese are living in refugee camps in the Darfur region near Sudan's border with Chad.

To add to the region's problems, the government and the militias have blocked some aid from reaching the refugees, according to the Web site http://www.darfurgenocide.org/. Some 1 million people are facing death from starvation and disease.

Most of those doing the killing are Arab Muslims, and most of those being killed are Christian, explains James Telar, a member of the group who went on the trip.

Although a peace agreement has been signed in southern Sudan, western Sudan is still plagued by death and starvation.

Few churches or religious organizations are reaching out to Darfur, and the region desperately needs aid, Telar says. "Flying over the region, if you look down at the desert, you cannot believe your eyes. Human beings are thrown down like stones."

In an open letter on its Web site (www.sudancouncilofchurches-usa.org) the Sudanese Council asks the people of Kansas City for support in helping their troubled homeland. "The victims are the people who persecuted us. The army that burned our homes and killed our families was mostly Darfurian," the letter reads.

"We believe God is calling us to reach out to our former persecutors in love, forgiveness and mercy. We want to do all we can to get them food, water, medicine and clothing and most importantly, hope and forgiveness. They are God's children, and they are suffering terrible injustice."

Rhoads, Telar and two other Sudanese people traveled to Darfur, leaving Nov. 25 and returning Dec. 1. The group passed out medicine, and the Sudanese members of the group met with Muslims to urge reconciliation.

The group's sense that they were called by God to go on the trip were confirmed, Rhoads says, with some of the amazing things that happened while they were in Africa.

The group had two names and phone numbers of people in Chad to contact, hotel reservations for two nights in Chad, and other than that, no agenda.

A man stopped to talk to the group on a long layover in the Paris airport, and as it turns out, he was a Chad government official whose job it was to help mission groups like theirs find their way. "By the time we got to Chad, two people were waiting for us in the airport," Rhoads says. "By the third day we were able to go to the refugees."

Rhoads says the conditions were harsh. "I've been in several Third World situations, but this is really hard. The climate is hard, and it's barren desert. The winds are strong, and it's blowing this dust and fine sand. Each family is issued a tent, and the United Nations takes care of the latrine. But that's it. There is no wood, and you have to feed your family. They get food once a month.... It's heart-wrenching, and it's mostly women and children. The children are all malnourished."

With much of the world's attention on the Indian Ocean region hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami, Rhoads says it's been tough to get anyone to pay attention to Darfur. Rhoads and the members of the Sudanese council are asking Christians to pray for reconciliation, and to give what they can in aid. Rhoads' church just sent $16,000 to the region, but much more is needed, she says.

"It goes to below zero in the desert," Telar says, "and a lot of those kids are going to die, and nobody is paying attention to them."

Contributions may be made to the Sudan Council of Churches USA, Ms. Marie Drummond, Accountant, Christ Episcopal Church, 5500 West 91st Street, Overland Park, KS 66207.

Presbyterian News Service
Robyn Davis Sekula is a freelance writer who lives in New Albany, IN. She is a member of Highland Presbyterian Church in Louisville, KY.