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07705 October 31, 2007
No place like home
Sudan immigrant helps raise funds for mission position in homeland
by Emily Enders Odom Associate, Mission Communications
GREENSBORO, NC - When Gai Ajak Riak narrowly escaped the horrors of war in his native Sudan and emigrated to the United States, all he could think of was helping his people.
"If I can get out," he recalled thinking, "I know that there's a way that I should help them."
Born in Bor into a farming family, Riak remembered vividly when war broke out in 1983. Even as he was encouraged by his father to seek refuge - escaping the first time into Ethiopia in 1987 - he always returned to his family in Sudan.
"When I left Ethiopia and went back to Sudan in 1991, the enemy was still dropping bombs," Riak said. "So I traveled to the Kenya-Sudan border and stayed there for several months. Then I went to Loki, and on to Central Kenya. I traveled barefoot, with no water to drink and little food, and was threatened by wild animals."
"God just protected me," he said.
Riak eventually settled in Kakuma in Northwest Kenya, where he was able to go to school. "There are no job opportunities without education," he said. In April of 2001, a door opened for Riak to come to the United States, specifically to Greensboro, NC, where he was introduced through Lutheran Family Services (LFS) to Linda Anderson and Katherine Poole, two LFS volunteers who are members of the Starmount Presbyterian Church here.
"Even now when I see Mama Katherine and Mama Linda," Riak said, "I always smile. God brought them to me."
Riak, who had been baptized as a Christian in 1989 while in Ethiopia, immediately embraced his new country and his new life, including being received into membership at Starmount. Anderson, Poole, and the entire congregation eagerly welcomed him and continue to support him through life's challenges.
"My being here was a plan from God," he said. "I always knew that."
Riak's promise to return help to the Sudanese people was realized, in part, through a gift that the Starmount church made earlier this year to Joining Hearts & Hands, the five-year campaign of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (http://www.pcusa.org/joiningheartsandhands/) to raise $40 million for new international mission personnel and for church development in the U.S., particularly racial ethnic and immigrant congregations.
A 430-member congregation in suburban Greensboro, Starmount has a personal commitment to Sudan, in part through the relationships it has built with Riak and three other former "Lost Boys" of Sudan, who joined Starmount after resettling in Greensboro.
Starmount's gift helped to fund a new mission position in (http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/profiles/reneaui.h Sudan, to which Ingrid Reneau tm) was appointed in July 2007. Reneau, a native of Belize, began her three-year term of service as education officer in Sudan in August. In her most recent mission letter from Sudan, she describes her sense of traveling so far, "only to be back 'home,'" a concept not unfamiliar to Riak.
"When I came to Greensboro from Africa, it was home," Riak said. "I adopted the lifestyle, I got used to the people, and church is always a place I go. I can go to Sudan to visit, but this is my home."
Riak, who celebrated his U.S. citizenship in 2006, hopes to be reunited here with his wife, Adhieu. The two met when both were students in Kakuma, Kenya. In the meantime, Riak works two jobs to support himself and to prepare for her arrival.
In his position with the North Carolina African Services Coalition, he helps refugee families get adjusted to life in the United States. Sometimes, he even offers help with the children's homework.
"God kept me alive for a purpose," he said. "If I have any way to help, I will."
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