Meet the Marpins: Highlights

We are coming up on the end of one year in…well, when we arrived it was Sudan, and we had no friends. Now it’s the Republic of South Sudan, and we have both lovely friends and a wide variety of answered-prayer stories. Needless to say, a lot has happened.

Stephanie and I arrived just in time to witness the
historic referendum on Southern independence from Sudan. 98.83% of voters wanted
separation! The question on everybody’s mind: who were the 1.17%?

The College’s graduation in June. The graduating class—

12 men and one woman, 12 South Sudanese and one Nuba

from the North—had been together for four years, often studying by

flashlight and in the early days eating once or twice a day.

They leave behind a stronger institution, improving every semester,

and they go out into two new countries in need of their service and hard work.

On June 12, many thousands of miles from G St. NW, DC,

we celebrated our 1^st wedding anniversary with Chinese

food and Lebanese sweets. I have a wonderful wife!

Throughout the year, there have been tensions and violence between communities within South Sudan. There has been good news. In May, after a discouraging day at work, I got an email from a coworker relating the information that, according to a chief in one area where we have been working, “Enough is enough and they are starting to come together. The Jur [one of the conflicting communities] are going for treatment at Immaculate Hospital in Mapuordit and Atuot [the other] also do cross to Mvolo for small business, this shows that peace is already in between…” Those communities are still peaceful now. Let's pray it stays that way!

However, not all is well. In Jonglei State, the most populous and least developed in the nation, Stephanie has been playing an important back-office role in the hugely important negotiations between the Lou Nuer and Murle communities, who have been party to some major attacks in the past few months. As we leave for the holidays, a conference has been postponed until January because fighting was about to start again. The Sudan Council of Churches requests that we pray for a peaceful and deep-seated resolution to this conflict in particular.

Starting in April, northern Sudan has been looking to make life hard for the South, but even more so for the border areas, in which there are now active wars. People from Abyei, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan, like Darfur, are suffering greatly at the hands of their own government.

Bad news notwithstanding, it’s impossible to do justice

to the outpouring of joy, euphoria, disbelief, and pride that

accompanied South Sudan’s independence on July 9.

And in between processing agreements and assisting donors worldwide put their money to worthy use developing South Sudan, Stephanie has gotten to visit women’s cooperatives and a variety of local organizations :).