Russ Randle made a special visit to St. Paul’s to present an official Dinka Cam Bible to Margaret Yar Deng, the Senior Warden of the South Sudanese worshipping community. She gratefully accepted this gift on behalf of the entire congregation.
On Sunday, February 15, the South Sudanese Community at St. Paul’s, Alexandria, received its first copy of the newly translated and printed Dinka Cam Bible, the first time that both the Old and New Testaments are available in that language, spoken by over a million people in South Sudan and in the Sudanese diaspora including many here in the United Stats.
Over the past twenty-five years, each of St. Paul’s, Alexandria, St. Mary’s, Arlington, and Christ Church, Alexandria, helped support this major effort by The Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Wycliffe Bible Translators to complete this translation which occurred in fall 2023, with the delivery of the first shipment of these bibles to South Sudan in October 2025. Virginia churches supported this translation effort starting in 2000, with mission trips to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya and to Juba, South Sudan, with continual prayer for the translators, and with major financial support from individual donors. This is the blessed product of a long-term partnership with faithful partners in South Sudan, who overcame great hardships, including the deaths of several translators, and the need to move the project through four countries to escape persecution. Thanks be to God for this happy day.