Dear brothers and sisters, I invite you for a prayer item over a crucial situation in Wangulei, South Sudan.

I write to you with heavy heart of sorrow to bring this sad news that you might have already heard through media that people of Wanglei in Twich East County, Jonglei State, South Sudan have fought among themselves over an issue of land ownership as in who historically owns Wanglei center.  Wanglei is a small village/center (perhaps less than 800 acress of land with no any viable economic activity) hared by the three clans of Awulian, Dachuek and Ayual some 200 miles from north of Juba. These communities have been coexisting peacefully for years until on March 4th when Ayual and Dachuek fought  in a fight that has left 21 people dead and about 53 others seriously wounded. About 30 houses (tukuls) reduced to ashes. In Feb last year, 4 other people were killed in a related case of land dispute over the ownership of Wanglei between the Dachuek and Ayual. The land being fought over is where the portion of it was donated by the same communities to Good Shepherd Leadership Training Center in order to its campus there.
 
This is very unforunate thing to happen at a time that the people of South Sudan are celebrating their hope and achievement of becoming a new nation.  Similar fight over the land ownership have also being recently reported in Unity state where a chief of the local community together with four others were killed in the fight. In February, a  minister in the Government of Southern Sudan together with his body guard were shot dead in the ministry building by the former driver and a brother in law of the minister.
  
Please I invite you wholeheartly for a special prayer for these two communities to come into their sense and that the Lord will give them His peace that surpases the understanding of all men. Pray for amicable solution over this dispute and that both government and the church may effectively succeed in finding peace among these communities.

Source Living CHURCH POSTED on:July 21, 2010

The Episcopal Church of Sudan’s Diocese of Aweil has consecrated the Rt. Rev. Abraham Yel Nhial as its first bishop. He was elected on July 16 and consecrated two days later.

The election had been postponed from the spring because of Sudan’s historic national elections. The new diocese covers the entire Southern Sudan state of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, and is divided into seven archdeaconries. The other candidates in the election were the Rev. Angelo Yuet Aguer and the Rev. Mathew Garang Chimiir.

Born in Wun Lang village, Aweil District, in 1978, he was forced to flee in 1987 when troops sent by the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum attacked his village, killing everyone except those taken as slaves.

Like most of the other “Lost Boys of Sudan,” Nhial survived only because he was not home during the attack. Nine-year-old Nhial was one of 35,000 boys who fled toward Ethiopia. After a four-year sojourn when Ethiopia’s civil war forced them to flee again, he was one of fewer than 16,000 to survive and grow up in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp.

The new bishop was one of the Lost Boys chosen to come to the United States in January 2001, an event documented by 60 Minutes.Living in Atlanta, Ga., Nhial first earned a G.E.D. and then a bachelor’s degree from Atlanta Christian College before joining other Sudanese priests at Trinity School for Ministry. Nhial completed a master’s degree in May.

He married Daruka Aloung Bior, his sweetheart from Kakuma, in June 2003, and they have three children.

Broadman & Holman published his autobiography, Lost Boy No More: A True Story of Survival and Salvation, written with DiAnn Mills, in 2004.

Even in Kakuma Refugee Camp Nhial was an evangelist. His ministry is marked by his forgiveness and mercy toward his former persecutors. The Rev. John Chol Daau, another former Lost Boy, says Nhial has a vision “to share the gospel beyond Aweil” and a desire to see all of Sudan’s marginalized and oppressed peoples, Christian and Muslim alike, receive justice.

Faith J.H. McDonnell

 “The Good Shepherd Leadership Training Program is developed for southern Sudan in response to a very real need, to assist a very underprivileged and deserving people. The program will bring knowledge and skill and ability to the leaders in the Bor area of southern Sudan, assisting them in helping their people to improve their lives by proper management of the resources available to them”
Dr. C.M Crous
Formerly Deputy Vice Chancellor, Finance, Administration and Planning, Daystar University, Nairobi, Kenya.

“This is a story of courage for GSLTP to provide training and it is a genuine need not only in the Episcopal church of Sudan, but all the Christian denominations in Sudan need such forums of in-service training.”

Rev. Nathaniel Garang Aduot,
ECS Diocese of Bor