Sudanese Event        

 The civil war between North and South Sudan was one of the longest and deadliest wars of the 20th century, displacing and killing hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese Christians. Ual, a refugee from Southern Sudan, spoke to the Willamette IVCF hosted group about his life and experiences in Sudan. He has an amazing story of struggle, and the ways that God and faith have played into that and formed the way he views his situation.  Although he has been living in Portland for the past four years, his family currently has refugee status in Cairo (a couple of the PSU students met them this summer.) He fled from Khartoum after facing much military persecution for converting from Islam to Christianity. He did not flee with his family. He lived in Jordan for 2 years before getting refugee status in America. In his talk he spoke about his conversion to Christianity, and the persecution he faced, and his trials as a refugee.

• Audience: Willamette University students

• Getting the Word Out: For invitations to the event we plastered the campus in posters, emailed every club on campus, and did a proxe station for a day in which the invitation was to come to the Sudanese event.  This worked really well for us.  The only thing that was hard about the event was follow up. 

• Description: MC (Daniel Esqueda) introduced the event, a student who went to Cairo briefly (10 minutes) talked about his experiences last summer and the things he learned, Ual- the Sudanese speaker (30 min), and then a gospel presentation by the MC (10 min).  

  "Kenagy introduced Ual, the main speaker for the night. Ual said that war, politics, and religion are the main causes for the creation of different refugees. He is one of those refugees, and has been in America for three years.  When he reached 18, Ual 'started looking for life.' His original inspiration came from the Bible, and he began preaching to others. However, he was caught and thrown into prison, where his captors attempted to force him to change his religion back to Islamic. He resisted, and his captors kept him jailed. 'I couldn’t tell how long it was,' Ual said.  One day, Ual’s captors bound and gagged him, then drove him around and said they were going to throw him into the river if he didn’t convert. Once again, Ual resisted, and his captors beat him and threw him back into prison for six months.  Eventually, Ual managed to escape. After being found and taken back twice, he went to Iraq in 2000 and stayed until 2002, when he went to Cairo. However, his wife and child were still in Sudan. They are waiting to come to America, and Ual hasn’t seen them in eight years.  Ual finished his speech with advice for his listeners. 'Sometimes you feel empty, sometimes you’re going through difficult times,' he said. 'Just open your hand, and God will come.'" (by Wade Collins, Willamette student- read entire article)

   

• Follow up: People came to the event because they wanted to hear the Sudanese speaker, not because they were interested in IV.  And that made follow up difficult. 

• What went well: Everyone thought the Sudanese event was a huge success.  People loved putting it on, and our students were excited to attend it and invite their friends to come as well. 

• What we will do differently: We could have done a better job letting people know where to get more info if they were interested in IV, as well as mingling with new people before the event started.

Questions or Comments about this website can be directed to Aubrie Stent