The worship at Sudanese Christ Lutheran Church in Wyoming, Mich., looks a lot like many other Sunday services, but when a rhythmic beat drums out on a laar, the praise starts to sound different.
Then the Word is spoken: in Arabic, in English and, mostly, in Dinka. The Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the sermon.
"This is our place to worship God," said Nyaluak Kucha, 27, wearing traditional Sudanese dress.
"It’s more joyful when you can worship with your own language. This is the only place we can communicate with each other in Dinka."
Though the younger children chatter in the lobby in flawless English, not all of the refugees who fled civil war in their motherland know the tongue of their newfound home. Many speak only Dinka; the official language of their native Sudan is Arabic.
When Matthew Riak came to start a church in west Michigan, he wanted the worship to be trilingual — a cultural home away from home for the Sudanese church in exile.
"We want to adopt this culture, but we don’t want to just let our culture go," said Thon Deng, the drummer.
Riak was 7 when he fled from his former home; his father was killed the day he left.
He ran to shelter in Ethiopia, then four years later, again chased away by violence, wandered back through the bush to another refugee camp in Kenya.
He rested under the trees during the day to hide from bombing raids and moved at night, evading lions and swimming past crocodiles. He is one of Sudan’s "Lost Boys."
"We spent the whole year walking," said Riak, who thinks he is either 27 or 28. "Without God, the area that we went through, we couldn’t make it. This is the time the Holy Spirit came into us to tell us where to go."
His story is startling but not uncommon among the 300 or so Lost Boys living in the area.
Riak compares the journey to that of the ancient Israelites wandering through the desert after their exodus from Egypt.
But instead of living on manna and water under the leadership of Moses, he fended for himself on tree leaves and urine.
And if Canaan was the promised land for the Israelites, then perhaps west Michigan is the predestined place for local Lost Boys.
Riak is pastor of Sudanese Christ Lutheran, one of three Sudanese churches in the Grand Rapids area.
His congregation, among the largest of its kind in the country, is buoyed by a faith in God made strong by the unimaginable tests of their spirit.
Thousands of miles from the place where their identity vanished in the night, they worship as if they were there because God has enabled them.
"If you’re still alive, you believe that God protected us," Riak said. "I can’t say that I took care of myself. I can say that God took care of me.
"The situation we went through, that showed me that God is God."
Riak in 2001 came as a Lost Boy to North Carolina, where he was identified as a spiritual leader, educated by the Episcopal Church and sent to Africa for ordination in the Episcopal Diocese of Bor.
Two years ago, he arrived in Grand Rapids to seek out a place of ministry.
"He just walked up and knocked on my office door jamb," recalled Bob Mueller, associate pastor at Christ Lutheran Church, the 1,100-member congregation that offers space to its Sudanese peers.
A group of Lost Boys formed the core of the Sudanese church in fall 2004, and by word of mouth, worship attendance in six months grew to 100 people.
The congregation is recognized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) as a mission-developing congregation.
The ELCA designation brings some funding, and Riak has quit his job as a machine operator to become full-time pastor.
In addition to offering worship space, Christ Lutheran also has provided English-language tutoring and paid for Dinka prayer books and, soon, Dinka Scriptures.
"They’ve got one Bible," Mueller said. "I don’t know that I’ve met an ethnic group so unanimously generous and pleasant and positive about life, about the future, about God, about themselves, in spite of what they’ve been through." (RNS)
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