Mission Trip 9: Kapoeta and Departure

On Wednesday, June 10, after Mass and breakfast we said goodbye to the bishop, the vicar general and a few people of the diocese who had served the team during their stay in Torit, and headed East on the main road toward the Kenya border. The further East we travelled, the hotter and drier it became. By the time we reached Kapoeta the temperature was almost 105°. We had planned to stop in Kapoeta for lunch and to visit Our Lady of Sorrows Church, which had been desecrated during the war.

Kapoeta was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the civil war, and for a time it was held by the northern forces. While occupied by the Khartoum army the church was partly demolished, and the bricks were used to build a mosque nearby. Apparently the removal of some of the walls caused a main beam in the nave to fall and break. The remains of the sanctuary were used as a kitchen and bakery by the soldiers, and the walls were covered with Arabic graffiti. The images of saints in the spaces of the high altar were replaced with crude drawings, presumably of military or political figures. Since then the building has been abandoned, and has become overgrown with weeds and ant hills; the Catholic community celebrates Mass in the ruins of the parish center in town. The site evokes a deep sense of grief and loneliness; we prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet as we pulled away.

A few kilometers outside of Narus, where we were to stay for the night, we came across a vehicle belonging to the St. Bakhita School that had broken down. After dropping the rest of the team off at the guesthouse two of us returned to tow the vehicle, the driver (John, the jolly Ugandan mechanic) and passenger (Fr. Darius Modi) back to the compound. I had to do something similar two days later as I was nearing Torit on the return trip.

We got an early start the next morning, crossed the border with relative ease, stopped briefly at the diocese’s compound in Lokichoggio and made it to the airport in plenty of time for the flight, only to find out that it had been cancelled, and there were no other flights out of Loki that day. This created a significant crisis since four members of the team were supposed to fly out of Nairobi that night, and the other three early the next day. We explained that a total of 14 flights on 7 different airlines with stops in 5 separate countries would have to be rescheduled and urged the airline personnel as much as possible to find a solution. It was looking pretty bleak when we took a few minutes to pray and place the situation in the Lord’s hands, trusting that He would arrange things according to what He knew was best. Quite unexpectedly when we finished we were told that a small plane that was previously unavailable could be used to transport the seven passengers to Nairobi. The team’s incredible experience in Sudan ended with a dramatic divine intervention that left us all amazed and grateful.