The Rev. Joseph Alaak (front row, center) gathers with family and other clergy after his ordination to the priesthood at St. Martha’s, Papillion, Nebraska, on Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: Diocese of Nebraska
[Episcopal News Service] Life has been busy for the Rev. Joseph Alaak since his ordination to the priesthood in August 2024. He serves on the staff of St. Martha’s in Papillion, Nebraska, a town of 25,000 southwest of Omaha, where he assists at two services on Sunday mornings. He and his wife Ajong also have five children, ranging in age from 4 to 15.
But what sets him apart from most new priests in The Episcopal Church is what he does on Sunday afternoons – he conducts a service in the Dinka language for people from his native South Sudan, as well as providing English classes and other activities for them and their children.
Alaak’s journey began in 1987 when he was among 20,000 children who fled South Sudan to escape being forced to fight in a civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Nearly half of them died from hunger, exhaustion, drowning or being caught in the crossfire of opposing fighters.
He began that journey when he was 7 years old, he told Episcopal News Service, and when his traveling group reached Ethiopia later that year, he first learned about God and Jesus from some older children. “People were afraid, and they missed their parents,” he said. But God would be their protector, “and also a mother and a father.”
He started to learn the catechism, and through the efforts of an Anglican priest, who walked seven days to reach them, he and about 3,000 other children were baptized. But it also was a deeply stressful time, he said, without food or clean water. It was also where he felt a call to be leader.
War in Ethiopia forced him and the others to flee again, and they ended up in 1992 in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp. There he was confirmed in 1994, with another 6,000 people. “It was just a moment of light and faith and full of love,” he said, which led him to become an evangelist, someone who was a leader within the Christian community and helped teach the faith to others.
By the late 1990s, the plight of the Lost Boys became known worldwide, and the U.S. government took steps in 2000 to resettle some of them in the United States. Eventually 3,600 Lost Boys, and 89 Lost Girls came to the U.S. in what was then the largest resettlement of refugees in the nation’s history.
The Rev. Joseph Alaak (left) joins the Rev. James Dowd during the Diocese of Nebraska’s Annual Conference in Hastings on Oct. 24, 2024. Photo: Diocese of Nebraska
Alaak arrived in 2001 in Omaha, along with many other Lost Boys. He soon became active at the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection (https://churchoftheresurrection8.wpcomstaging.com/), which had a robust ministry both to the diocese’s then companion Diocese of Twic East (https://www.anglicancommunion.org/structures/member-churches/member-church/diocese.aspx?church=south-sudan&dio=twic-east) and to the growing South Sudanese residents in the city. He soon was leading Sunday afternoon Sudanese worship services there and in Lincoln.
To make a living, he dealt cards at nearby casinos and was a truck driver. He also attended Bellevue College, now Bellevue University, where he earned received a degree in business administration in 2012.
That year he visited his family in South Sudan for the first time since he’d left. Sadly, his mother, who had become a lay leader in the Anglican Church of South Sudan, died three weeks into his visit – an event that prompted what he said was two years of grief and emotional struggle as he decided what to do next. That turned out to be pursuing ordination as an Episcopal priest.
Nebraska Bishop Scott Barker told ENS that once Alaak began his discernment process, he was adamant that he wanted to go to a residential seminary, even though it would be more challenging than studying through a local ministry school. He attended Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria and graduated with a Master of Divinity degree in 2021. Back in Omaha, he finished his required units of Clinical Pastoral Education and was ordained a deacon on Oct. 1, 2023, and priest on Aug. 16, 2024.
Alaak has the tools necessary for the church’s ministry to Sudanese people in the area, St. Martha’s rector, the Rev. Emily Schnabel, told ENS – a passion for the Gospel and “an understanding of the gift a church community can be to folks in a non-dominant culture.”
In addition to worship, Alaak has arranged for English classes for native Sudanese, and he teaches Dinka classes to their American-born children. He wants them to be able to have conversations in Dinka with their parents, even short ones, like thanking their mother for a meal or knowing the names of the food they eat.
There are three other Sudanese communities worshiping in the diocese, Barker said, numbering several hundred people, and they are very concerned about the escalating violence in their homeland. Over 20,000 people have been killed and at least 11 million people have been displaced since the latest Sudanese civil war broke out in 2023.
The diocese hasn’t been able to maintain ties with its former companion Diocese of Twic East, Barker said, so as a result, “We’ve redoubled our efforts to support our American Sudanese community, since we can’t be present in the same way in Sudan.”
Schnabel said the church has been working hard to support the Sudanese community, including providing car seats to families with young children and inviting other Episcopal congregations in the area to help. St. Martha’s was founded in the 1990s as a place where all are welcome, she said, and they are reflecting that now to immigrants from Sudan.
There are dozens of South Sudanese worshiping communities with roots in the Anglican Church across the United States, the Rev. Ron Byrd, The Episcopal Church’s missioner for African Decent Ministries, told ENS. Some, like those in Nebraska, are part of Episcopal congregations, while other retain their Anglican identity but are affiliated with another Christian denomination or are independent.
Within African Descent Ministries there are 12 convocations, or groups, including the South Sudanese community, for whom Byrd’s office hosted an online gathering in December 2023. He also invited Alaak and the Rev. Agook Kuol, vicar of the South Sudanese St. Philip the Evangelist Church in Houston, Texas, to attend General Convention with him in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this year.
A Task Force on the South Sudanese Anglican Diaspora was created in 2018 by General Convention and was reauthorized by the 2022 General Convention.
Alaak said he enjoys assisting with St. Martha’s English-speaking services on Sunday mornings but still feels more comfortable praying in Dinka on Sunday afternoons.
He also is grateful that several times a year the two communities worship together. Prayers are printed in the bulletin in both English and Dinka, and he even has taught the English speakers some songs in Dinka. They also gather for a meal, where people can learn about each other by sharing food, “the universal language,” he said.
He hopes in time, the two groups may become one congregation, with the church as a center for their shared community life.
— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.