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The Rt. Rev. Abraham Nhial to be guest preacher Sunday, June 5 at St. Michael & All Angles Episcopal Church
in Stone Mountain, GA
By Jim Jones
Special to the Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH -- Abraham Yel Nhial was only 9 when he was separated from his family and became one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Now he is one of the newest bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion. He was consecrated in July as bishop of the Diocese of Awiel in southern Sudan.
"God called me back home," Nhial said during a recent visit to Fort Worth. "I never thought this could happen. But God planned it for me. God can use anybody."
Nhial was among more than 20,000 boys in southern Sudan who were forced out of their villages in the late 1980s by a civil war.
Nhial's personal nightmare began in 1987, when his village of Wun Lang in the Ariel district was attacked by soldiers from northern Sudan. Nhial said he and other boys were away from the village tending to goats and cattle when they heard gunfire.
Cautiously going back to the village of 1,000, Nhial stepped over bodies, including those of some of his relatives. Some had escaped, including Nhial's mother and father. His father survived, but he said his mother was massacred in later violence.
After the attack, Nhial and his 11-year-old cousin joined other Lost Boys who encountered hardship and death on a 1,000-mile trek to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
"We hid in the tall grass. We were eating off the leaves of trees and the roots of trees," he said. "When lions would come close, we would gather in a circle with the older ones on the outside. We used sticks and stones, anything rough, to scare the animals away. We were told not to cry, because the lions would know we were weak."
Coming to faith
The Lost Boys had to flee again in 1991 after the Ethiopian government was overthrown. Rebel troops chased the Lost Boys to the treacherous Gilo River. Nhial made it safely across, but others drowned, were shot or were eaten by crocodiles.
In his biography, Lost Boy No More: A True Story of Survival and Salvation, written by DiAnn Mills, Nhial tells of looking back and seeing the river turn red with the blood of his friends.
Nhial and other Lost Boys eventually found safety at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Later he was reunited with his childhood sweetheart, Daruka Aloung Bior. They are now married and have three children.
His conversion to Christianity came at the Kenya refugee camp when a friend invited him to church.
"The preacher talked about John 3:16 and it really touched my heart," he said. "I found that God not only loved the world, but he also loved me, because I was a part of the world."
After leaving the crowded refugee camp in Kenya in 2001, Nhial landed in Atlanta, where he earned a high school equivalency certificate and a bachelor's degree from Atlanta Christian College. He later earned a master's degree from Trinity School Ministry in Ambridge, Pa.
During his recent visit here, Nhial, 32, had a joyous meeting with about 50 of the more than 3,000 Lost Boys who, like him, came to the U.S. seeking a new life.
"They were so happy," he said. "When someone in your own generation does something significant, it is a joy to all of you. It is like you all have been promoted."
Relief for war victims
Representing Sudan's Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Nhial was in Fort Worth to attend a board meeting of the Anglican Relief and Development Fund. The fund is the mission arm of the Anglican Church of North America, a new U.S. denomination formed last year in Bedford by Episcopalians who broke away from the national Episcopal Church.
Many Anglicans in Sudan and other parts of Africa endorse the Anglican Church of North America, said its leader, Archbishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who presided at the Fort Worth meeting. Jack Iker, the Fort Worth bishop and leader of local dissenting Episcopalians, hosted the group. Also attending were other representatives from Africa the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America and Canada.
Nhial's visit included efforts to solicit help for the people of Sudan.
"We have had war for 50 years," referring to conflict between the mostly Christian southern Sudan and the majority Muslim northern Sudan. "We also need to more clean water, more education for children, more education for priests and more medical care."
In the years ahead, Nhial believes, many of the Lost Boys who came to the United States will go back to Sudan and make major contributions.
"The Lost Boys are a unique group," he said. "They love their country, they love their God, they love and take care of each other. I believe God brought us to the United States for a purpose -- to prepare us, to train us. One day the Lost Boys will go back to Sudan and become its leaders. That's one reason God kept us alive."
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/10/01/2512787/one-of-sudans-lost-boys-finds.html#ixzz1OJqKcM1D
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