Thiet Church

Here is the story of Thiet Church which I mentioned a few days ago. This was written by a colleague of mine last year. How many of us have ever had to face this type of situation? Have you given yourself in serving another today? Have you proclaimed the Word of God in your life? Believe me that life is short and today is the day.

Thiet Church is located in the Bahr El Ghazal region of southern Sudan. In the ‘70s, evangelists from the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) visited the town of Thiet and established a church there. Over the next two decades, the church grew and by 1994, attendance reached 300 people. In the same year a temporary structure was built. The building was made with mud walls and benches and a grass roof. Until that time, church meetings had been held under a tree.

Only six months after Thiet Church was erected, the Government of Sudan (GOS) invaded Thiet and set fire to the entire town. The army burned down everything in the village, including the church. The people fled to nearby villages and returned days later to find their town in ashes. Because it was a dry time of year, in only took a few hours for the GOS to burn down the entire village and leave. The invasion had come without warning, and the people lost everything they had.

“When you hear the people coming, you just take your kids and run, you don’t have time for anything else,” said Santino Manut, a former pastor at the church.

When the soldiers left, the people of Thiet cautiously returned and began to rebuild their homes. The congregation at Thiet Church met under the trees and began to rebuild the church when supplies became available. Despite all of the devastation, the congregation continued to meet faithfully four times a week. In the winter of 1995, one year after the invasion, a new church building was constructed.

Unfortunately, for the people of Thiet the invasion in ’94 was not the only attack from the northern government. The GOS routinely bombed the area for seven years beginning in 1992. The worst attack came in 1998, when eight bombs hit the town. That incident killed 27 people in the town, including one woman who attended Thiet Church. One bomb fell through the roof of the church, but did not explode. When the congregation returned to assess the damage, a few people tried to explode the bomb themselves, but were unsuccessful and were forced to bury it. Remarkably, soon after the bombing, the roof was repaired and worship continued at Thiet Church. Throughout the war and in the midst of bombings, Thiet Church persevered and continued to meet together four times a week. Today the congregation consists of about 450 people. The church frequently has to repair the grass roof because of rain and termites and is eager to build a more durable structure. Now that peace has returned to southern Sudan, the people of Thiet Church have hope that better times are ahead and are eager to build a new church to replace their decaying mud and grass facility.

“A new church would be a new beginning,” said current pastor Joseph Ayei, who has pastored the church for the last seven years. “People have started coming back to church since they found out a new building was being built. Even the elders of the town have started coming [to church].”

Pastor Joseph AyeiJoseph Ayei has been the pastor at Thiet Church for the last seven years. Though he is now a faithful preacher of God’s Word, earlier in his life Joseph fought against the government as a rebel soldier in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) When he was a young man, Joseph had good reasons to be angry about the civil war that was destroying many lives in southern Sudan. In 1984, his village was burned to the ground. At that time he did not have a strong faith in God, and his anger towards the government motivated him to join the SPLA.

In order to receive military training, Joseph was sent to train with soldiers in Ethiopia, where he met many others who were also filled with anger and bitterness. He was trained to operate the guns on a tank, and became close companions with his comrades on his tank crew as they fought in many battles in the following years.

In 1992, Joseph’s life would forever be changed during a battle against the GOS near a city in southern Sudan called Bor. In the heat of battle one evening, Joseph’s tank was hit by a rocket from an enemy tank and his body was riddled with shrapnel and bullets. The other four soldiers in the tank were killed, and Joseph remembers seeing one of his friend’s head decapitated. Because he was sitting higher up in the tank as the gunner, Joseph was able to escape the burning tank by climbing out the window. He slept beside the tank for the night but did not cry for help because he feared GOS troops would kill him if they knew he was alive.
By the morning, the fighting had subsided and SPLA medics came and took Joseph to a hospital in Kenya. When a doctor finally examined him, he found that Joseph had shrapnel lodged in his legs, hands, stomach and neck. Some of his teeth were even broken. After a few days, Joseph asked one of the nurses about his comrades in the tank and was told that they had all been killed.

“The medics told me to thank God because they had all died and I had lived,” Joseph recalls. “That is why I decided to become a pastor, because of the new life God had given me.”

Joseph realized that God had given him a second chance and found there was an alternative to anger. While recovering in the hospital, he dedicated his life to Christ and promised the Lord that he would become a pastor if he ever became well enough to leave the hospital.
Four years later, Joseph followed through on that commitment and was ordained as a deacon for the ECS. In 1999, he became the pastor in Thiet, where he has served faithfully to this day.

Pastor Joseph has never fully recovered from his injuries and still has shrapnel lodged in his body that doctors have not been able to extract. His health has deteriorated of late and he may have to travel to Kenya to receive treatment if things don't improve. However, despite the lingering effects of his injuries, Joseph continues to preach the Word of God week after week.