c. 2006 Religion News Service
WYOMING Mich. _ The worship at Sudanese Christ Lutheran Church looks a lot like many other Sunday services, but when a rhythmic beat drums out on a laar, the praise starts to sound different.
Then, the Word is spoken: in Arabic, in English and, mostly, in Dinka. The Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the sermon.
“This is our place to worship God,” said Nyaluak Kucha, 27, wearing traditional Sudanese dress. “It’s more joyful when you can worship with your own language. This is the only place we can communicate with each other in Dinka.”
Though the younger children chatter in the lobby in flawless English, not all of the refugees who fled civil war in their motherland know the tongue of their newfound home. Many speak only Dinka; the official language of their native Sudan is Arabic.
When the Rev. Matthew Riak came to start a church in West Michigan, he wanted the worship to be trilingual _ a cultural home away from home for the Sudanese church in exile.
“We want to adopt this culture, but we don’t want to just let our culture go,” said Thon Deng, the drummer.
Riak was 7 when he fled from his former home; his father was killed the day he left. He ran to shelter in Ethiopia, then four years later, again chased away by violence, wandered back through the bush to another refugee camp in Kenya.
He rested under the trees during the day to hide from bombing raids and moved at night, evading lions and swimming past crocodiles. He is one of Sudan’s “Lost Boys.”
“We spent the whole year walking,” said Riak, who thinks he is either 27 or 28. “Without God, the area that we went through, we couldn’t make it. This is the time the Holy Spirit came into us to tell us where to go.”
His story is startling, but, not uncommon among the 300 or so “Lost Boys” living in the area. Riak compares the journey to that of the ancient Israelites wandering through the desert after their exodus from Egypt.
But instead of living on manna and water under the leadership of Moses, he fended for himself on tree leaves and urine. And if Canaan was the promised land for the Israelites, then perhaps Western Michigan is the predestined place for local Lost Boys.
Riak is pastor of one of three Sudanese churches in the Grand Rapids area. His congregation, among the largest of its kind in the country, is buoyed by a faith in God made strong by the unimaginable tests of their spirit.
Thousands of miles from the place where their identity vanished in the night, they worship as if they were there, because God has enabled them.
“If you’re still alive, you believe that God protected us,” Riak said. “I can’t say that I took care of myself. I can say that God took care of me.
“The situation we went through, that showed me that God is God.”
Riak in 2001 came as a Lost Boy to North Carolina, where he was identified as a spiritual leader, educated by the Episcopal Church and sent to Africa for ordination in the Episcopal Diocese of Bor.
Two years ago, he arrived in Grand Rapids to seek out a place of ministry.
“He just walked up and knocked on my office door jamb,” recalled the Rev. Bob Mueller, associate pastor at Christ Lutheran Church, the 1,100-member congregation that offers space to their Sudanese peers.
A group of Lost Boys formed the core of the Sudanese church in fall 2004, and by word of mouth worship attendance in six months grew to 100 people. The congregation is recognized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as a mission developing congregation.
The ELCA designation brings some funding, and Riak has quit his job as a machine operator to become full-time pastor. In addition to offering worship space, Christ Lutheran also has provided English-language tutoring, paid for Dinka prayer books and, soon, Dinka Scriptures.
“They’ve got one Bible,” Mueller said. “I don’t know that I’ve met an ethnic group so unanimously generous and pleasant and positive about life, about the future, about God, about themselves, in spite of what they’ve been through.”
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Yar Kur, a laywoman, preached last Sunday, reminding the congregation, in translated Dinka, that the “church is us, not the building.”
That message also rings true among Sudanese congregations at Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids and St. Mark Lutheran Church in Kentwood.
Including Lost Boys, about 700 Sudanese have resettled in West Michigan. Since 2001, Bethany Christian Services has helped 120 Lost Boys find homes, and Lutheran Social Services of Michigan has helped about 90 Sudanese, mostly Lost Boys, settle in Grand Rapids.
“When you are new in a country or a place, you don’t know where to go,” said Mayen Wol, a member of Grace Episcopal Church and chairman of the non-profit Sudanese Community Refugee Services of Michigan.
“This is a way we can put our feet on the ground, … to worship God together, to socialize together and to solve our problems together as one community.”
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By the power of God, the refugees believe, they have made it to West Michigan. And they intend to use the opportunities here to erase the horrific memories of their native land.
Grace Episcopal Church and its Sudanese counterpart recently held a Walk for Sudan that raised more than $5,700 to buy school supplies for students in southern Sudan. Sudanese Christ Lutheran Church also is raising money to support a school back home.
And the refugees are studying to become doctors, pastors, engineers and carpenters who someday will go back to rebuild the villages of their youth.
“We’ve found the Promised Land, the land where God wants us to be,” Riak said. “This was God’s will for us to be in America.”
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(Matt Vande Bunte writes for The Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Editors: To obtain photos from services at Sudanese Christ Lutheran Church, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
