| WINDOW

Into Sudan

 

By Hans Olson

 

Known in Bible times as Cush, Sudan is the largest nation in Africa. Two civil wars and the recent regional violence in the west-central region of Darfur have decimated the infrastructure of Sudan during the past half century. Since the country gained independence in 1956 Sudan has experienced fewer than 10 years of peace.

 

Part of this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering 
will help build permanent dormitories at 
Eyiera Adventist Vocational Academy in 
southern Sudan, if the offering is large enough.
By some estimates more than six million people have been displaced within or outside Sudan since the second Sudanese civil war broke out in the early 1980s. In 2004 widespread violence broke out in Darfur, which has reportedly displaced some 2.5 million people within Sudan. According to some estimates another 180,000 people have been killed. Peacekeeping forces are working to establish peace within Sudan, but refugees continue to spill into neighboring countries, which is further destabilizing the region.

 

Sudan lies just south of Egypt and north of Kenya and Uganda along the Red Sea. In a sense Sudan marks the line between the Middle East and Africa. The north is mainly Islamic Arabs and the south is predominantly animist and Christian Africans. The Blue and White Niles join in the capital city of Khartoum, to form the famous River Nile, which flows north through Egypt and into the Mediterranean Sea. Today more than 40 million people live in this country, which is just a little more than a quarter of the size of the United States. About 140 ethnic groups and nearly as many languages divide much of the country.

 

The country is rich in natural resources such as petroleum, natural gas, metals, and minerals. In 1999 Sudan began exporting crude oil. Thanks in part to oil revenues, last year Sudan posted a 10 percent economic growth rate. Yet nearly 80 percent of the country depends on the tenuous agricultural industry for its livelihood. Civil unrest, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices have kept most of the society below the poverty line. Only a quarter of Sudanese are literate.

 

Farris Basta Bishai, an Egyptian pastor, and his family moved to Khartoum in 1953. Their first two converts went to Middle East College in Beirut, Lebanon, before returning to work in Sudan. During the civil strife of the 1960s the church lost track of all members. By 1969 the then Middle East Division declared Sudan an unentered country. In 1973 Adventist Church work was officially reopened.

 

Today Global Mission pioneers and other lay evangelists are an active part of the Adventist Church’s outreach in Sudan. The country has only nine pastors for the more than 13,000 church members.

 

In 1979 the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) began work in Sudan with a primary health-care program. Since then, ADRA has broadened its scope to include food security, emergency relief, water resource development, and sanitation and community development.

 

To learn more about the Adventist Church’s work in Sudan, visit www.AdventistMission.org . Read inspirational stories from Sudan in the online quarterly Mission magazines or browse a missionary blog by Darrel and Kristina Muehlhauser from the South Sudan Field.