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"My parents were Christians," says Simon Anyang, 19. "They told me about the Word of God." He last saw them when he was 5. "I cannot say if they are dead or alive."

In some cases, parents have been killed or disappeared without a trace.

The four cousins, like thousands of others, have survived desperate adventures, beginning with escaping from their Dinka tribe village of Makol Cuai, to get where they are today. Refugee experts estimate that about 12,000 Sudanese children and young adults escaped from their villages, eventually making their way 1,000 miles on foot to a refugee camp in northern Kenya.

After scrambling across the hot deserts of Sudan, these four wandered into an Ethiopian refugee camp. But political turmoil there four years later forced them to flee again. They walked back to southern Sudan, where they stayed for six months, until government soldiers captured about 1,000 others in their group. Danger did not dissipate once they had dodged the bullets of Sudanese soldiers. Wild animals killed some of the youth on their trek to the refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. Some boys ran to rivers to escape, only to drown or fall prey to crocodiles. Once they were in camp, misery continued. Sometimes restricted to one meal every three days, they faced starvation and disease. They lived in a five-person dirt hut, sleeping on weathered blankets atop piles of twigs. Relief workers taught English as part of the boys' education.

"All other aspects of life were difficult," Abil says. "There was no work or food there." And by spending more than eight years in camp they missed something as vital: their childhood.

World Relief seeks to place refugees with a family for the first two weeks of their stay so they can adjust more quickly to American life. But because the four cousins arrived during Christmas week with little notice, Uomoto had no volunteers.

Members of First Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Renton, with a weekly attendance around 850, bought clothes and furnished the two-bedroom apartment for the arrivals. But being on their own meant learning by trial and error. A key bent in the door because no one knew how to use the lock. Spilled beverages left carpet stains (the ground had always absorbed spills before).

When another two refugees arrived in March, Uomoto was able to line up a sponsor family from First Evangelical Presbyterian Church, making the transition easier and giving the sponsors an opportunity to serve others in new ways.

Jacob Makuel, 19, and Paul Guet, 21, lived with Roger and Leonda Cox for two weeks before moving into their own apartment. "We had never done anything like this before," says Roger, a 53-year-old university teacher. "We learned along the way."

The Coxes learned about the plight of the Sudanese from fellow church member Dennis Bennett, whose national Blue Nile Project helps the persecuted in southern Sudan by mobilizing church-based prayer, political advocacy, and direct donations for food and supplies.

"It is a privilege to help them on this part of their journey," says Leonda, a 52-year-old nurse. Along with taking the refugees to appointments to obtain Social Security cards or to receive immunizations, the Coxes taught practical lessons: how to read a bus schedule, how to operate a calculator, the difference between a freezer and a refrigerator, and why you do not use the same towel to clean both the dishes and the toilet.

"They know how to run from dangerous animals, but they do not know how to cross a busy street," Roger says. The refugees do not understand some customs, such as why Leonda's 90-year-old mother lives in a retirement facility rather than in the family home.

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July 8 2001, Vol. 45, No. 9