The Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem Diolofe 36

Diocese of Bethlehem churches collect $70,000 to stave off mass starvation in southern Sudan
Making Every Moment Count in Iraq
First Fridays at Trinity, Pottsville
Scranton rector named archdeacon, effective January
New Rector called to St. Mary's, Reading
Bishop Paul's book on Samuel Seabury

Diocese of Bethlehem churches collect $70,000
to stave off mass starvation in southern Sudan
By Judith Green
Diocesan Life, October 2004

All of us give money to charity. Some of us knit baby caps or hang scarves and gloves on a winterwear Christmas tree. But rarely do we see the fruits of our generosity so immediately and dramatically displayed as the Diocese of Bethlehem saw when it turned out its pockets for the Sudanese refugees in and around our sister diocese of Kajo Keji.

Kajo Keji County is in the southernmost part of Sudan, along the border of northern Uganda. The region that includes Kajo Keji County is a diocese of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. The Diocese of Kajo Keji and the Diocese of Bethlehem formed a companion relationship in 2001.

Churches of the Diocese raised an unusually large amount of money to provide food and supplies to these starving people, who had returned from refugee camps in Uganda. They had fled there in the first place after being displaced by the ongoing Sudanese civil war, which has been raging in Africa's largest nation since independence was granted in 1955.

Now an estimated 157,000 expatriate Sudanese had come back across the southern border of Sudan after a series of terrorist incidents, including rapes and camp lootings, by the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group backed by the government of Sudan. Because of a local drought and other inhospitable conditions, as well as the overwhelming volume of need, there was no food, shelter, clothing, medicines, or agricultural tools to give them.

"We must act now to prevent people in Kajo Keji [Sudan] from starving to death," Bishop Paul Marshall wrote late in July on our diocesan internet lists.

He asked parishioners of 67 Episcopal congregations throughout our 14 eastern and northeastern Pennsylvania counties to remember "this situation which is beyond desperate" during each of the five Sundays of August.

Local Episcopalians and others responded quickly. By mid September, more than $70,000 was received, including checks from other states, possibly as a result of the Episcopal News Service stories about the Diocese of Bethlehem appeal.

The diocesan World Mission Committee also negotiated an additional $10,000 grant from Episcopal Relief and Development toward the rescue efforts.

Funds were wired to the Diocese of Kajo Keji by way of an account in Kampala, Uganda, the closest large city. Because of conditions in Sudan, the diocese decided to buy food and rent the trucks to haul it in Kampala, about 500 miles from the refugee enclaves in Kajo Keji.

Within days, we saw results: photographs of heavy trucks loaded with staples on their way over rutted roads into the Kajo Keji area.

"Even if you don't see it on the national news, " Bishop Paul said, "it really happened. This summer we learned again that when followers of Jesus work together, great good comes of it. We best know who we are when we care for others." (Read Bishop Paul's October column.)

Stephen Tomor Kenyu, finance and administration manager for the Uganda office of Food for the Hungry International and our contact person there, wrote to Connie Fegley of Reading, who heads the World Mission Committee for the diocese: "Three trucks have left. Two are carrying 35 metric tons of maize (costing $ 9,170 [U.S.]). And one is carrying 15 metric tons of beans ($ 8,295). Tomorrow, one smaller truck will carry five metric tons of salt." A metric ton is 1,000 kilograms, weighing about 2,200 pounds.

"The world suddenly seems so small," wrote Jo Trepagnier, office manager of Episcopal Church of the Mediator, Allentown, and a member of the World Mission Committee, "for us to get this information so quickly!"

On September 9, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the other tragedy of Sudan, the persecution and execution of Christians and Muslims in Darfur by the government-backed Janjaweed Islamic militant guerrillas, to be genocide as the United Nations defines it.

Representatives of the Diocese of Bethlehem visited the people of Kajo Keji twice over the past few years. In 2000, Connie Fegley and her husband, Dr. Randall Fegley, were among those who visited refugee-settlement camps in northern Uganda for uprooted Christians from southern Sudan.

Randall Fegley, who teaches about Sudan and Africa at the Berks Campus of Penn State, joined three others on a 2002 trip to visit Sudanese refugees in Uganda and to study and assess educational and agricultural systems in Kajo Keji itself to determine what the Diocese of Bethlehem might offer and, at the same time, to offer spiritual and pastoral comfort to beleaguered brothers and sisters there. Others on that trip were Mr. Jack Moulton, who retired two years ago from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and is an agriculture specialist with experience in Africa, the Rev. Elizabeth Moulton, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Montrose, and the recently retired Archdeacon of Bethlehem, the Venerable Richard I. Cluett.

In 2001, Bishop Paul joined members of the diocesan World Mission Committee and other interested people from the diocese on an advocacy trip to Washington, DC, to meet with key senators and representatives and members of the State Department to make the case for alleviating the suffering of the Sudanese people.

Bishop Paul said he and his wife, Diana, would visit southern Sudan in January.

They will visit orphanages and schools that Diocese of Bethlehem parishes support. They will also visit health institutions and refugee camps, if conditions permit.

"We will do our best," Bishop Paul said, "to listen to the stories and hopes of our brothers and sisters in Kajo Keji. Our goal is to express your love for God's people in Sudan and the solidarity we feel with them as they confront the effects of their government's genocidal policies on a daily basis. Please pray for this mission that across the boundaries of culture and language, the love of God may be seen and celebrated."

[Judith Green, assistant director of publications at Moravian College, is a member of Episcopal Church of Mediator, Allentown.]

To make your contribution to help the starving people of Kajo Keji, please send a check payable to your local Episcopal church or to the Diocese of Bethlehem, designated for Kajo Keji.

Remembering Ykeem
Making Every Moment Count in Iraq
By Captain Gabrielle Bryen
Diocesan Life, October 2004

Editor's note: Gabrielle Bryen, daughter of Cathedral parishioner Betsy Strasser, is a career social work officer in the U.S. Army. Captain Bryen was part of a medical mission team that spent five months in Iraq during the U.S. invasion and occupation. Her first-person account of the less-known labors of the Army's post-invasion troops appeared in the June issue of Marie Claire magazine. The abridgement below was made by Judith Green from a manuscript Captain Bryen sent to Diocesan Life at our request. (If you would like to receive her original unabridged manuscript as an MSWord attachment, please send a note online to Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org.)

Gabrielle Bryen with Ykeem Gabrielle Bryen, with Ykeem. "I am never without memories of the war. I can't forget the little girl Ykeem. I keep a photo of her on my desk to remind myself that our biggest plans have consequences for the smallest people."

As I trudged up the steps of the plane to the Middle East with 40 pounds of gear on my back; a laptop slung over my shoulder, and painful new boots on my feet, I was determined to make every moment count and not count every moment until I returned.

Deployment

The call came on my first day of Christmas leave in December 2002. I reported to the 546th Area Support Medical Company out of Fort Hood, Texas, where I joined other medical officers and support personnel assigned to field units. Altogether, there were three doctors, three physician assistants, a nurse, a dentist, and me, the social worker. Of the officers, I had the least medical training. Back when I accepted my commission as an Army social work officer in June 2000, I saw myself counseling soldiers, running support groups, chairing meetings with a cup of coffee in my hand, comfortably seated in an air-conditioned room. I never thought I'd find myself in the middle of a combat zone, helping with the wounded.

Normally, I work at an Army community hospital. But in the 10 years I'd been in the Army, I had seen action in Haiti and Bosnia, where I was part of what's called the stabilization force. This is a team that enters an area after initial occupation to bring life back to as normal a state as possible. By the time the stabilization force rolls in, plumbing, telephones, and Internet access usually are in place.

But not this time. For I was part of the invasion force of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

After four weeks of training and weapons practice with the company, we left Fort Hood for the Middle East. Though the media were still debating an invasion of Iraq, American soldiers were already at our staging base in Kuwait, and we all knew we wouldn't be there unless war were imminent. I hoped a show of force would be enough. But I also had enough experience to realize I had a bad case of wishful thinking.

I worried about the soldiers of the 546th. I wanted to return with the same number we had started out with. I worried about my family. Strangely enough, I was not afraid of my own death.

The Desert

What I wore on the plane was nothing compared to what I carried in the invasion. Before crossing the Iraqi border, Army units donned chemical protective suits, Kevlar vests, helmets and protective masks. No one knew whether Iraq would use chemical or biological weapons. As a medical unit, armed only with M-16 rifles and the officers' 9mm pistols, we relied on a military police company to get us to our first objective, an airfield.

The Kuwaiti desert is hot in the day and cold at night, ranging from the mid-80s (F) as daytime high in March and dropping to the 30s at sunset. These extremes produced chapped lips, dry skin, dry hair. Most women in our company had been in the field before and had stocked up on lip balm and Baby Wipes. Beauty products are multipurpose. Lip balm, used around the eyes, keeps the sweat from dripping in, and Baby Wipes are great for cleaning truck windows.

The trip across Kuwait was long, and driving in the desert is really difficult. (Forget those ads with the four-wheel-drive vehicles flying over the dunes.) Even at 40 mph, the dust cloud from a forward vehicle can blind the truck behind. It's easy to lose track of the trucks in front of you even at a distance of 100 meters (110 yards). The heavy vehicles, laden with equipment, frequently got stuck in the sand. Much of the trip was spent digging out our armored vehicles. We spent three nights sleeping in the trucks, and everyone was sore and exhausted.

Tallil Air Base, Nasariyah

We reached Tallil Air Base at night. This was an Iraqi headquarters that we needed.

Our headlights shone on the fronds of palm trees. Posters of Saddam Hussein, younger and slimmer than he was in real life, smiling a benevolent welcome, marked the entrance. The welcome itself was not so benevolent. Explosions and the ever-present chatter of small-arms fire could be heard.

Our first patients, borne by Medevac aircraft, circled the advancing vehicles. We set up a clinic in an abandoned building that had been cleared by the MPs. It had no electricity or plumbing, but its doors and windows were intact. About all it had in accordance with the Army field manual description of a clinic was that its doorways were wide enough for a stretcher with a wounded soldier on it.

Our mission was to provide medical care to enemy prisoners and American soldiers. We were told to practice what is known as blind triage: most seriously injured are treated first.

One of our first patients was an Iraqi sergeant burned over 80 percent of his body. We expected him to die of kidney failure as his system shut down and were prepared to keep him comfortable until he died. Because he was an enemy prisoner, he could not be transferred to a place where he could die with his family around him. It was my task to help him achieve a "good death" (as hospice workers call it) under less than optimal conditions in an unfamiliar culture.

Medical resupply is always an acute problem, for delivery never can be assured in combat. Some of the medics had learned that a convoy of U.S. soldiers had been taken as POWs by Iraqi forces, and some were opposed to letting our patient die comfortably. I reminded them that we'd made a commitment to all our patients, and that we had an obligation to treat the enemy as we would want to be treated.

Once the sergeant was stabilized, someone found an interpreter. He told us he had been working at the air base when they got word of the American approach. He accepted a ride home from a captain, thinking he'd get home to his family faster. On the outskirts of the base, they met a U.S. roadblock. The driver panicked, and tried to veer away. The soldiers opened fire. The driver was killed instantly; and gunfire ignited the gas tank. The sergeant told the story quietly, sitting on his cot with an IV in his arm, talking to the enemy medics.

I asked Tim, the civil affairs interpreter, to write a letter for the dying sergeant's family. Hours later, they had finished the letter, and Tim promised to send it.

In the end, the sergeant sent everyone away, and we moved his cot into a quiet room. In the end, the sergeant died alone, and I wondered if he knew that his enemy had washed his body after death and prepared it as closely as possible to Muslim burial tradition. I was proud that one of my most conflicted soldiers volunteered to guard the body until it could be transported to the makeshift morgue.

The Smallest Patient

"Incoming bird; three to five patients. Some are children," yelled the radio operator.

Night had fallen on the fourth day of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The team on duty comprised three doctors, two physician assistants, a nurse, and a treatment platoon of 25 medics. They would be first to treat the wounded when they brought the patients on the short ride from the landing zone to the clinic.

The 274th forward surgical team, our neighbors, took the most critical casualties; our team managed the less critical. Splitting the medical care and equipment this way allows for more mobile medical units, preferable to dragging, in effect, a full hospital around the battlefield.

The first and second patients, an adult and a child, were carried off to surgery. The last patient was passed down wrapped in a woolen Army blanket. As she was untied from her stretcher, we saw that it was an uninjured little girl. She had big, dark eyes and curly black hair. Her torn dress was covered with dried blood, and she was wearing one shoe and one earring. Where were her parents? I thought. For the next few days, I made it my mission to find the answer.

Her name was Ykeem, and she was 3 years old. She was one of six children whose parents had heard radio warnings to evacuate the town. They had crammed themselves into a truck, the children sandwiched between their parents. The truck had been caught in crossfire, and everyone was killed except Ykeem, her 5-year-old brother, and their father. They were the other two on the helicopter.
Ykeem's father and brother recovered. I was there when her father told Ykeem that her mother and siblings were dead. My Arabic is limited, but there was no mistaking what was said. As he told her, she began to rock and wail, burying her face in his chest. Her father and brother will bear physical scars; it's the emotional scars, such as Ykeem's broken heart, that are least recognized and most easily forgotten.

Home

There are simple joys in Iraq. Mail, e-mail, and telephone calls from home are morale boosters. When we received packages from veterans and schoolchildren, their letters were posted on the walls of the clinic so others could enjoy them. Magazines were read and reread and passed along until the pages fell out.

We bought a clinic television in Baghdad. (The company commander brokered a deal with an Iraqi contractor.) Thanks to a satellite dish, we got Fox News, CNN, ESPN, and Polish pornography. The soldiers rejoiced to see the news as it occurred, rather than in a week-old edition of Stars and Stripes. In June, when our area opened a PX, soldiers stood in line for hours to buy a case of soda for $10, and they were ecstatic.

My tour in combat lasted more than five months. By the time I left, Texas in the summer was relatively cool. I had forgotten what flush toilets were like, I learned to eat one meal a day, and I had given up all thought of uninterrupted sleep. With the money I saved, I was personally responsible for the third-quarter increase in Victoria's Secret's profits. (Nothing wears out underwear faster than hand-washing it and hanging it out to dry in the desert)! When I finally reached home, I spent two hours sitting in the tub, enjoying the chance to spend more than four minutes washing myself.

I am never without memories of the war. I can't forget the little girl Ykeem. I keep a photo of her on my desk to remind myself that our biggest plans have consequences for the smallest people. I cannot erase the hardship and loss. I hope the people we've encountered will remember that the Americans tried to treat them with dignity and respect.

When I left Fort Hood, I hoped I'd make a difference in soldiers' lives. The knowledge that we helped so many in a time of danger remains a comfort. It's the less dramatic interactions that I remember most fondly. To make soldiers smile and give them hope to face another day kept me going, even at the darkest moments of the war. In helping others, I tried to make every moment of my time in Iraq count.

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First Fridays at Trinity, Pottsville

To provide a rich diversity of worship experiences for the community and to introduce a variety of arts into worship, Trinity Episcopal Church, Pottsville, is offering First Fridays at Trinity, monthly, at 7 pm.

On October 1, Frank Runyeon, the TV star from Days of Our Lives and Santa Barbara, will present his acclaimed dramatization of the Sermon on the Mount, followed by the humorous Hollywood vs. Faith.

On November 5, a string quartet will feature Simon and Agnes Maurer, Hannes Dietrich and Marie-Aline Cadieux performing Beethoven's String Quartet, Opus 59, Number 3.

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The Rev. Howard Stringfellow Scranton rector named archdeacon, effective January

After consultation with search committee members and upon receiving the consent of Diocesan Council, Bishop Paul has appointed the Rev. Howard W. Stringfellow III, rector of St. Luke's Church, Scranton, archdeacon for the Diocese of Bethlehem.

Stringfellow has served the diocesan community as cochair of the Diocesan Funding and Structure Committee and as a member of the Congregational Development Committee and the Diocesan Council. He is cochair of the diocesan Liturgy and Music Commission.

During his time at St. Luke's, since 1993, the church has undertaken numerous renovations including restoring rooms in the parish house and air conditioning them, air conditioning the church, structural repairs to the foundations of the church and replacing the slate roofs of the church and the parish house.

In the Scranton community, he is a member of the Board of Safety Net, a ministry of mercy sponsored by Protestant churches, the Physical Education Committee of the Jewish Community Center, president of the Plaza 550 Condominium Council, commissioner of the Civil Service Commission of the City of Scranton, member of Scranton Reads and the Scranton Public Library Board. He had been past president of the board of the Senior Craftsmen Shop, a consignment shop offering handmade articles crafted by senior citizens, and past president of the Central City Ministerium of Scranton, an interfaith council of clergy.

He has been a mentor and supervisor of interns preparing for ordination, an instructor in the Bishop's School, and a bible study teacher during Lent at the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in Scranton.

Ordained a deacon at Trinity Cathedral, Columbia, South Carolina, 1986, and a priest at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1987, he served as a seminarian, deacon and curate from 1983 to 1993 at St. Thomas Church.

Born August 9, 1952, in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, he married Carolyne Lyles Ellison on May 19, 1984.

He has a B.A. in English Literature and Political Science (Vanderbilt University, 1974), an M.A. in Shakespeare (Wake Forest University, 1976), an ABD in English Literature before 1660 (University of South Carolina, 1983) and an M.Div., magna cum laude, from General Theological Seminary in New York City (1986).

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New Rector called to St. Mary's, Reading

The Rev. Nancy Packard The Rev. Nancy Packard is the new rector at St. Mary's Church, Reading.

She comes to us from the Diocese of New Hampshire, and began her new ministry in August. We welcome her to the Diocese of Bethlehem.

She is a graduate of Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, MA. Before studying for the priesthood, she taught in the Manchester City school system for more than 20 years and served as a lay pastoral assistant. She has two grown children.

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Available from Church Publishing
Bishop Paul's book on Samuel Seabury

This first new book on Bishop Seabury in more than a decade, One, Catholic, and Apostolic: Samuel Seabury and the Early Episcopal Church is a fascinating story of the first bishop in the Episcopal Church. In 1783, Seabury was chosen by the clergy of Connecticut to seek ordination to the episcopate in England. After a year of negotiation, Seabury found it impossible to obtain Episcopal orders from the Church of England because, as an American citizen, he could not swear allegiance to the crown. He turned to the non-juring bishops of the Episcopal church in Scotland and was ordained on November 14, 1784. As part of his negotiation with the Scottish bishops Seabury agreed to incorporate the Communion Service from the Scottish Prayer Book into a new American Prayer Book, thereby establishing a pivotal component in American Anglican Liturgy. When he returned to America, he was recognized as the first Bishop of Connecticut.

Using Seabury's persona and thought as central themes, distinguished historian and Bishop of Bethlehem Paul Marshall argues that liturgy cannot be understood simply by studying texts, and so he explores the complex personalities, motivations, loyalties and prejudices that went into the formation of the Episcopal church and the creation of its liturgy.

($50 cloth, $30 paper - 300 pp, includes CD-ROM appendix.) 6 x 9 ISBN: 0-89869-447-7CODE: 4477.

The CD-ROM Appendix contains extensive correspondence and other historical source material from the Episcopal Church's turbulent post-colonial period.

[Church Publishing, 445 Fifth Ave., NY 10016 -- 800-242-1918.]

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