Sapana Abuye
Sapana Abuye's account of how the gospel was brought to his area of South-West Sudan in the 1950's is an extraordinary one. A young boy of about seven years old was removed from the Jur people around Kulu, and taken to a leprosy centre established by the British Government in the neighbouring region of the Moro people. His diagnosis was thankfully a wrong one, and so he was allowed to enter the mission school in his new home area and became a Christian. When the first war broke out, three years later, he fled back to his own Jur tribe and began preaching! So the first converts in this remote corner of the West Nile region came from the witness of a local lad called Jonathan Mamuru.
Kulu Bible School was founded in 1995, with the vision of the local church leaders. It starts from the grass-roots - local people themselves taught evangelists orally. In 1999, however, they started receiving help from an American teacher and also a Kenyan, and at the same time the New Testament, together with Genesis and Exodus was finally translated into their language by SIL. Teaching developed into a mixture of oral and written.
Students attend the school from Monday to Friday and then go out into the villages to preach at week-ends. Their course is very practical, with the aim of building the church whilst giving the people a deep foundation in the Scriptures. Sixteen students have graduated and another sixteen will be taken on in November this year - when hopefully there will have been rains. At the moment famine looms. The churches in the area feed the students, and a Crosslinks grant has helped pay for second hand clothes for them, so that they can stand with self-confidence to preach on their Sunday placements. Crosslinks has also supplied books, stationary and blankets. The teachers receive no salary, but see their work as to the Lord. A grinding mill to grind the sorghum would be an enormous help, and save valuable time for the students who currently have to do this by hand themselves.
Kulu Bible School has a chapel which originally housed 20 people but now has a congregation of 400. But as the church grows it needs well trained leaders who can train their congregations in basics, especially as Muslim attempts to bring conversion remain strong, even though this is an SPLA / SPLM liberated area enjoying relative peace and security with freedom of worship.
Sapana's wife, Wilma Abuyi has been developing a thriving women's ministry. Virtually 100% of the Jur women are illiterate so they are learning about the faith through Bible stories taught orally. Twelve women have completed their training and are now moving out to share with others in villages, a very radical achievement in this conservative culture. Twenty other women are now being taught. They learn to lead prayers in their churches and family Bible studies in their homes. It's these home ministries which are beginning to have a strong impact on lives, dominated so long by war and aggressive culture.
Kulu is an Anglican Bible School, and in fact the only one actually at the moment on Southern Sudanese soil. The other is in Arua in Northern Uganda, and that's about two day's drive from Kulu.
Sapana spends about thirty per cent of his time as Bible School Administrator, and the other 70% is on translation work for SIL. He is proud that Genesis and Exodus are now in Jur-Modo, their vernacular, and he will continue the rest of his translation work, with the SIL team, from their office which is now being moved from Nairobi to Entebbe, Uganda..
Sapana is in the UK until mid-March undertaking a course with SIL on multi-language learning, It was a privilege to meet him and hear his inspiring story of the Church of Christ growing, in spite of such hardships, with such a strong biblical base. |
|
