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"What message do you have for American Christians?" I ask the Rt. Rev. Peter Munde Yacoub. Yacoub is Bishop of Yambio in the Province of the Episcopal Church in the Sudan. He is in Houston to address the first-ever international Sudanese Christian Conference for Peace and Unity, which met at the city's First Baptist Church the weekend of May 23-May 26.

The conference brought together nearly 500 participants, mainly displaced Sudanese Christians now living in asylum in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, and a dozen or more Christians from war-torn Southern Sudan and from Sudan's capital, Khartoum. Also attending were a sizable group of non-Africans, mostly members of various churches in the Houston area.

A registration mailer sent to potential participants explained the conference's goals: "[It] presents a forum to raise awareness of the war in Sudan and explore solutions for the problems resulting from this war." Organized by Frank Blackwood, founder and director of AID Sudan Foundation, and Rev. Samson Diko, a refugee Sudanese Episcopal priest licensed to serve in the Diocese of Texas, the event was co-sponsored by an impressively ecumenical array of mission and refugee-relief organizations such as Samaritan's Purse, Persecution Project, Safe Harbor, Living Water International, Voice of the Martyrs, Catholic Charities, the YMCA, Interfaith Ministries, and Houston's Sudanese refugee community. Representatives came from refugee communities throughout the United States and Canada. Two groups—one from Omaha, Nebraska, and one from Lansing, Michigan—drove more than 24 hours to attend.

Bishop Yacoub contributed special energy to the Conference because his own Sudanese Episcopal Church leads among Christian communities in Sudan in working to end oppression and to rebuild a devastated South Sudan, called the New Sudan in those areas under the control of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). The Bishop works out of Kampala, Uganda, where he can have electricity, telephone, and Internet connections not available in his diocese.

The population of Sudan is 70 percent Arab or mixed-race Muslim, nearly all of whom live in the north. Yacoub works among Black African Christians and other non-Muslims who live primarily in the south and the northern Nuba Mountains. Many live in exile in what is called the "Sudanese Diaspora." Before returning to Africa, Bishop Yacoub will be visiting the exiles in Texas.

Among the most inspiring speakers at the conference was Abraham Nhial, a strikingly self-possessed young man in his twenties. In 1986, he became one of about 30,000 Dinka and Nuer boys aged five to fourteen who fled their villages on foot when Islamic forces killed or captured their parents in the civil war. Without adults to help them, they walked through harsh forest and desert areas of Sudan into Ethiopia. Many died of starvation, thirst, or exposure. Survivors of this first leg of the journey managed to move on into Kenya after war also broke out in Ethiopia. Sometimes having to eat dirt to put something in their stomachs, only about a third of the original group lived through the years-long 1000-mile trek.

Abraham is one of 3,800 Lost Boys, as they are called, who were chosen for resettlement in the United States. He is a testament to hope, courage, and perseverance. During Abraham's speech, the audience burst into fervent applause when he said, "While in Ethiopia, some of us found some books, and, despite the difficulty, we carried those books with us to Kenya, saying among ourselves that 'education will now be our father and mother.'" His own newfound competence with English and his poise as a speaker suggest that he has kept that commitment.

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June (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46