When a couple from California teaching short-term at Nile Theological College (NTC) approached him, they had seen in him the ability [to get a graduate degree].
“We want you to apply to Wheaton College in Illinois.” The couple, Dennis and Trevecca Okholm, both with degrees from Wheaton, told Fugoyo.
Immediately, Fugoyo said no.
“I want to go to Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), because the masters classes there are taught from an African perspective, and I know I’m going to work among Africans,” he told her. “I need something really relevant to Africa.”
“She looked in my eyes and said, ‘David, now I understand God is calling you, because so many people want to go to the United States for any reason. But you said no, so it must be God.’”
“I think so,” he told her.
Today, Fugoyo leads a growing Ugandan university focused on educating Christian leaders in sub-Saharan Africa. But his ambition is even bigger: to bring Christian higher education to South Sudan, site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Left behind
The Second Sudanese Civil War from 1983 to 2005 between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army left the south in even worse shape.
To escape, Fugoyo, his father and siblings would take a military caravan to Juba, then a cargo plane to Khartoum, leaving their mother working in a local hospital, training nurses and midwives.
She has told his father to take the kids and go ahead; she’d be along in a few days.
But a few days passed and she didn’t come. And then a few more. And then the news came over the radio—rebels had taken Yambio.
Re-settlement to Khartoum
Slowly, Fugoyo adjusted. He figured out how to work the faucet, and how to plug things in. He learned how to cross the street without being run over, and joined a youth group at a church.
Instead of enrolling at Wheaton, Fugoyo signed up for classes at NEGST (now Africa International University) in Nairobi, Kenya. He earned a masters and a doctorate there, paid for by a combination of the Okholms’ church, scholarships, and John Stott’s Langham Scholars.
“I am not studying for the sake of studying,” Fugoyo told Langham in his request for funding. “I am here in Uganda for a few years, but I have a vision of opening a Christian college in South Sudan to train church leaders.”
South Sudan born but, war continues
In 2011, the South Sudanese—with assistance from the United Nations—cut themselves loose from Sudan. On their independence day—July 9—the celebrations started at midnight, with dancing and crying and screams of joy. After decades of fighting and negotiating, they were free. The primarily Christian nation was starting a new life, finally safe from the persecution and neglect of the majority-Muslim Sudan.
But just five weeks after Independence Day, the peace began to unravel. Ethnic fighting destroyed seven villages and killed 600 people. Five months later, 100,000 fled, escaping still more warring clans.
Halt return
With the new country in turmoil, Fugoyo delayed his plans to return. But he did move closer.
While Fugoyo was earning his doctorate, one of his friends asked him to teach a short summer course at the Gaba Bible Institute—then Africa Renewal Christian College (ARCC)—in Kampala.
Only three years old, ARCC was led by American Jeff Atherstone. A missionary from Francis Chan’s Cornerstone Community Church, Atherstone came to Uganda to train pastors, and began by moving from village to village all week long, teaching the same lesson to different groups.
“It was a lot of time traveling and not a lot of time establishing relationships or discipling—just teaching, teaching, teaching,” Atherstone said. So when the brand-new Gaba Bible Institute asked him to be their academic dean, he jumped on board. Two years later, he became the president—or, in local parlance, “vice chancellor.”
“There are so many challenges, with staffing and finances and construction,” he said. “It’s a struggle, but I am loving it because I am learning a lot.”
Looking toward home
Fugoyo still has his eye on South Sudan, where his siblings live, and where his father is a senior government official for Yambio county. After his five-year contract at ARU runs out, he would love to finally start his school there.
Atherstone is looking that way, too.
“After a civil war, after a disaster, how does a country rebuild?” he said. “Christians should be the first ones in.”
If South Sudan can stabilize the violence, then its openness to Christianity and its geography—as part of the “tension belt” between the primarily Christian sub-Saharan and the majority-Muslim north—make it strategic for gospel work, Atherstone said.
Until then, Fugoyo and ARU are educating any South Sudanese students who can afford to come. And despite the atrocities that aren’t slowing down in his home country, he has hope.
“Every day, I tell myself, God is in all this,” he said. “It is him who designed it.”
Additional Reporting by The Gospel Coalition.
marvin@ugchristiannews.com
