Worship Weblog
Monday, August 20, 2007
NY Times on Sudanese worshipers in the U.S.
A New York Times story from our backyard here in Grand Rapids on Sudanese pastor Rev. Zachariah Jok Char. We’ve been grateful to have one of the refugees who worships with Rev. Char, Mayom Bol Achuk, as a volunteer at Symposium.
No Longer Lost, a Refugee Accepts Call to Leadership
By NEELA BANERJEEGRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - About 7,000 miles separate Grace Episcopal Church here, where the Rev. Zachariah Jok Char preaches most Sundays, from the small town of Duk Padiet in Sudan, where he was born.
The tally of the miles started about 21 years ago when Mr. Char was 5 and militias backed by the Sudanese government attacked his town during the civil war in the south. He saw the explosions from the field where he was playing, and he fled. He met other boys who had escaped similar attacks, and they started walking.
“I still remember what I was wearing then: red shorts and a T-shirt,” said Mr. Char, sitting in an empty pew one afternoon at the church. “I didn’t have shoes. Some were naked.”
The orphans, mostly boys, walked more than 1,000 miles to Ethiopia from Sudan over three months, Mr. Char said. Later, they were forced to walk to Kenya. Thousands died. The West called them the Lost Boys.
Those boys are men now, and here and in cities like Atlanta and Burlington, Vt., the 3,800 who were resettled in the United States beginning in 2001 are trying to build lives and weave communities. For many, their Christian faith, often Anglicanism, is at the heart of their efforts.
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