Over 30 churches built in Uganda's biggest refugee camp

Congregants sit under an open-air wooden frame as they attend a Sunday service at a Pentecostal church in Bidi Bidi refugee camp, in northern Uganda, on June 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

By Paul W Denis

Statistics from UN refugee agency UNHCR recently revealed that since unrest in South Sudan began, about four million citizens have been displaced or forced to flee their homes.

Of these, an estimated one million have sought safety in Uganda since July 2017. UG Christian News has learnt that lives are being redeemed as dozens of refugees seek a foundation to put their lives back together inside Bidi Bidi settlement camp in the northwestern part of the country.

This camp which is now home to more than 270,000 South Sudan people is considered the largest in the country and world.

More than 30 churches have spread across Bidi Bidi, and they are headed by South Sudanese pastors, according to Ugandan officials who spoke to Religion News Services (RNS) on Wednesday.

Many church leaders, including pastors, bishops, priests, evangelists and others, moved with their South Sudanese congregations into Uganda when civil war erupted.

“Many refugees usually go to church because it’s the only likely place in the camp where they can get help to recover from the trauma,” Gabriel Mayen, a trauma counselor at Bidi Bidi told RNS. “The church gives them new hope, which is important to refugees and any person who has experienced trauma.”

For thousands of South Sudanese in the refugee camp, the search for healing from recent horrors involves a quest for God. Saddled with post-traumatic stress disorder in many cases, refugees are often encouraged by camp counselors to attend church as a pathway to healing.

“I can’t sleep unless I keep on praying,” Achol Kuol, a mother of five, told Religion News Service. “I always have nightmares. In my dreams I go back to my old village and I see how my friends were shot dead. They keep on calling me, ‘Achol! Achol! Achol!’ And I would wake up screaming.”

Koul joins many others who attend the open-air churches in the camps. There, she reads comforting scriptures while others cry out to ask God for forgiveness for the violence they committed during the war in South Sudan.

Preacher Daniel Rasash falls to his knees and weeps in prayer at the Yoyo Pentecostal Church in the Bidi Bidi refugee camp in northern Uganda, on June 4, 2017. South Sudanese refugees meet in open-air churches rigged from timber with seats made only from planks of wood or logs drilled into the ground, yet these churches offer support among the daily humiliations that come with rebuilding their lives. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Pastor John Deng of Christ Ministry Church fled South Sudan in 2016. He said his church is bringing together members of warring tribes, the Nuer and Dinka, and fostering cooperation across tribal lines. The church also provides emotional healing if one loses a family member at the camp or back home in South Sudan, he said.

“The church has played a vital role in unifying the people of South Sudan who had hated each other,” he said. “We are happy that people are living peaceful in the camp away from home.”

Kuol, a Dinka tribeswoman, credits God with sustaining her desire to live, despite her overwhelming troubles. Her church has helped her focus on the future rather than the past, she said. Her plans include a church wedding to her Nuer prayer partner.

“I don’t know where I would have been without God,” Kuol said. “I would have died a long time ago. I have so many problems that I sometimes think of committing suicide. But God always comes to my rescue.”