report. we're very privileged thave with us a specici guest who has literally traveled halfway around the world to come to iowa program here this morning. right now. please welcome to the steele report for t t very first time ever bishop samuel enosa peni, the first and only bishop of nzara, south sudan. that's an episcopalal diocese of thank you so much. today. i know that you have ties to iowa because, get this, he graduauad from a well-known college in nairobi, the carlisle college, but you also have advanced degrees from a couple of seminaries right here in eastern iowa, the well-known seminary in dubuque, obviously, and wartburg seminary, so you have some iowa ties. tell, first of all, everyone, let's show the map of where sudan is located so everyone gets afofos. we have it right there on the

we have the main sudan, which of course, is involved in civil war fighting for many, many decade many, and south sudan, onef the newest countries in the world. tell us about your participation. you grew up there, your wife, you and your wife centina, and you have seven children. you're not paid. the clergy in south africa or in africa and in south sudan, you don't receive anything. it's all volunteer. what are you doing here inn iowa and what brings you to -- what has brought you to our state? i know by the time we air, this you'll be back home, but what did you come to iowa for? >> bishop peni: first and foremost, i want to thank you for welcoming me here. >> ron: our privilege, thank you. >> bishop peni: as you vel know, i articulate very well. i am from south sudan, which is the newest mission in the world, which is a mission that has gone

many o o us have been grown in war, but three year ago, we got independence. when we got our independence, we didn't even know that only in two years, we were going to go into another war, so that became very difficult for us. but in myy life, i've been born there, i've grown there. i have the privilege, many people not have, to visit other countries, to study abroad, but being south sudanese, i have gone back always. i've never chosen to be a refugee. i want to be in my own country, i want to transform my own country, and it was a privilege for me to come and study here in iowa. iowa i think is v vy special for us.

our hero studied in iowa and went to iowa university and being here, i have had the privilege also to be able to be the first bishopp of the diocesese of nzara in south sudan. >> ron: so you've chosen not to be a refugee, but someone who's empowering the people of your own nation. you ao had a a chance to speak a national convention in washington, d.c., and so people probably don't know this, but the diocese of iowa has a five-year, what they call a companionship relationship with the diocese of your nation and your diocese of nzara, on tell te -- so tell us how that came about and how you can relate to what's happening in your nation, which is a nation of poverty to a great degree, and how iowans might be able to relate to that? what's the connection, you think, between iowa and nzarar >> bishop peni: i think our connection started when i was

when i was studying here, i went to the church, the episcopop chchch here, and when they had meetings, they welcomed me, much. when they had meetings and i was around, they invited me- when i became the bishop, i brbrght to them and invited them to come. i was happy that some people came for my consecration from here, and that continued. they saw the poverty, they saw the need where clergy has to walk barefoot, walk many miles to go tol to go to village churches, and i started by asking them to begin to help our clergy and they started by, you know, giving them bicycles, which i asked them for, housing -- because we e e nott paid. >> ron: right. >> bishop peni: you know, many people live in absolute poverty which is beyond what you can imagine, and because of this,

know, little by little, as people from iowa come to visit and i come and also my wife, like we were here two years ago to visit, you know, this helps to deepen our relationship, and this relationship was formalize the as a companion relationship where we pray for one another, ere we visit one another, where we support one another, and when i came this time, i came to washington to speak with the american friends of the episcopal church o of sudan and south sudan. they have always annual conference and because it's the chairperson for justice, for peace and the commission f f our province, they invited me to come and speak on what is going on. and then the bishop of iowa said i cannot only come to washington without coming to visit. so -- >> ron: so here you are.

and now i've been able to visit and the people have been able to come to our place and to ask, this is really important because this is where now they can get to hear first hand story. they come to see first-hand story and they see ways in which they can support the diocese to, you know, provide education, support the dioceseo grow, support the diocese in many things as they wish to. >> ron: now,w, should point out, there was a delegation from iowa that actually went over to your diocese in nzara back in february, and you mentioned alrerey reverend cannon suzanne peterson of the episcopal church here andshe's been on the program before talking about how to end the vioionce we have locally in ourur own community. i also want to mention o that trip was reverend robert norris

st. timothy's in west des moines, so you had quite a designation that came from iowa to come to --elegation that came from iowa to your nation to see what was going on over there. i saw a video, i believe a 2010 or 2011 clip, in which you said there are so many concerns, so many chalalnges, people in your nation make less than one dollar -- i believe it was either a day or a week. you're talking about, rely, poverty we can't really comprehend here in iowa, right? talk a littltlbit about your nation and h you try to help them and are you in danger at all at any time during the day as a member of the clergy? >> bishop peni: first of all, when there's war, everything stops. there's no progress. even going -- movement from one town to another, one village to the next, is not there because fear of, you know, danger, of death. and when there's war and

stops. when it stops, it means that there's no progress in all circles. there can , you know, no jobs where you can pay, you can get paid. there can be no roads. the infrastructure is down. in fact, in all the civil wars that have taken p pce in sudanan before we even began south sudan, there are many things, many infrastructure stopped. the only infrastructure that was there is the church. the church, you know, was the only infrastructure you could find in any village, and the reason w w this has turned, the people have turned to be so poor is because they have no business. >> ron: there's nothing to do, no pce to go to work. >> bishop peni: yeah, no place to go to work, no education. if you can imagine a country

rate is so high -- so little, literacy rate is 73%. >> ron: my goodness. >> bishop peni: and the 27% of people who are considered to be literate and this is a big thing. this has turned many people to be turned because if you don't go to school, you don't know how to read, you don't know how to write, your mind is not opeed, so you -- even when we had the feast, you can't get a job because you can't read or you can't write. so the people who came to get the jobs are from other countries. because there's no work, then you cannot afford anything. the only thing that helps is we e privileged to have rain which comes at least for nine months a year. >> ron: lots of rain, yeah. >> bishop peni: and we're able to grow our own food. we're able to raise food which helps to keep us year-round, so

the moment you become lazy, you can't eat. the moment you, you know, thehe moment you don't have food, the moment there's famine, you face a danger of starvation, and that is for our part of south sudan. >> ron: so you're self sufficient through agriculture, your own farming. we'll talk about that when we come back and we'll talk about something you call the threrelegged stool on which you base outline the focus of what's happening in your church. we'll come back with more. also a reminder, our program will be posted online later

its entirety >> ron: and welcome back to this week's edition of the steele report. my very special guest today, i want to introduce him to you once again, the inaugural, actually the first and only bishop of the diocese of nzara, south sudan. this is bishop samuel enosa peni, and he was also, really for your entire provisional part of south sudan yu,elling me the chairman of justice, peace, and reconciliation, that commission. you've been very busy. you've been in iowa, been in washington, d.c., speaking recently and will be going home shortly after this. heard you say that your ministry, the ministry of your church always stands on what you call the three-legged stool, and that focus is onn evangelism, health and education.

your people and keep them going despite this life surrounded by war and violence and in some cases -- most cases, poverty. >> bishop peni: that is right. what happened is that when there's war, our government concentrated on fighting only. and then the church, as the only infrastructure, remains to serve the community in those three things. the firsts evangelism, to help preach the gospelel help win souls for christ, and then the second, you know, talking about holistic ministry, is to do with health. we train people who can help us in providing health services, like maybe a few months because we can't get, you know, people who can have a lot of training, but people who can, you know, help people in the villages, to give them medicine for malaria, typhoid, those basic things.

we didn't have -- or we do not have many trained teachers locally because many people have not been going to school. not many teachers have been trained. what we locally will have is what we call you teach your brother a, b, c, d. some people will finish at that same school in the same village and come as a teacher in that same village without going for any further training in the same school. some people, you know -- for us noww in this time, to provide what we would call quality education is where we have trained teachers, where there's access to paper and pen, and these we cannot get b bause our teachers, our government after the, you know, after we got our independence, they are supposed to supply all this, but they were planning and preparing the syllabus and opening the

trained and that all stopped, so now the concentraraon of the government is kind of divided and the church, you know, is a strong pillar within the community, so we also now are first t t invite people from other countries who are trained, like in the school we have, which is supported by the community in west des moines, is, you know, supported by them because we invited seven teachers to come from uganda, to come and stay. 1,000 miles away, to come and stay there so they can teach and provide quality education because they have been trained and they have the capacity to train. so -- and also, in our place, you don't go to school according to age as over here. you go to school w when you are able to go. >> ron: when you're able to go, wow.

you can go nine miles to go to school or you can go 11 miles to go to school. all that is there. so that is what we would like to serve our community. health, education, and church. all those three is the combination of what we call holistic ministry. >> ron: we talked about the five-year relationship with iowa. so how can iowans help you? i think you mentioned something that can be very powerful and that is the p power of prayer. and in what ways can iowa help you? are there ways that iowans might be able to help the citizens of your nation and really not even know it? >> bishop peni: i think the first thing, there are so many things we have to be thankful for. as i said, when once i got here, i received a warmelcome from the people of iowa. once i introduced who i was, i was welcomed in the churches, into the communities, into the homes, and when i went backk and

been able to visit. first is prayer. prayer really is very important for us because when you pray for us, we are encouraged. we know that people are there tending for us, people are there who can speak for those who cannot speak. and the second thing is that support us financially in many things. >> ron: sure. >> bishop peni: raise money to pay more teachers to train more people at the clinics. we get medicine, but we don't have -- we don't have the money to pay those people who are able to administer those medicines to the people. and another thing which i would ask them to do is to, you know, to visit. visiting is very important. when they visit, they bring their, you know, their experts. >> ron: expertise. >> bishop peni: teachers can come and train teachers for a

medical p pple can come and help build medical practitioners we have who have less than two years training, maybe in one thing together. clergygyn can come and train our clergy in all our three-legged stools, whoever has any expert can come and give that to us is very important. and i think also, providing opportunities for some people to come and visit the parishes here and the people here, can even have learning. my coming here is, you know, i learned quitee a lot and i take back home and i'm privileged to share it to the people. >> ron: people probably want to know -- i've got some things listed here. what about clean water and some of those health services you were talking about? are health services plentiful or very minimal? >> bishop peni: no, no, very minimal minimal, very basic.

have very few things that we can check. we have a typhoid, sanitary things and -- yeah, typhoid is one of those things whh many people will get because of laa of getting clean water. there will be many wounds and many people have malaria because of the environment. so here, you know, when we have, you know, when we have -- we have trained people who are able to provide sanitation, are able to go and train people, we can help reduce health risks, so we can do that. >> ron: what are some of the other things -- i guess we better take a break real quick here. we have one more brere we need to take. welcome back and talk more with

>> ron: and welcome back to our final segment here this morning, also a reminder we'll be online on kwwl.com. this is the steele report for this week with ourery special guest who has traveled to iowa from south sudan in central africa. please welcome again bishop samuel enosa peni, and one of the things that you said on a video i happened to see, when the diocese was created, not that long ago, even you were afraid to go there because there

yoyore out in a remote area and we have a lot o war lords and factions still fightiti, so you were even afraid to go to your new diocese of nzara, right? >> bishop peni: yes. i was afraid because, first of all, when i got there, the was no office. my first office was under a mango tree. >> ron: under a mango tree. >> bishop peni: yes, i had a generator to run so that i can be able to preach sosothing. ananthen when the wind and the rain and all this happened, then my generator, it burned my computer, my printer, because it doesn't have regular power as such, so it was a big challenge. and at that time, also, you know financial challenges in the world. when the finances has gone down, so i was really afraid about that, and i said, well, where will i get people who wl help

because there's no way it can just be me. i know the riches we have in the people and they have the faith, but, youknow, we have to have some, some external support, either financial, technical, and fear. >> ron: now, sudan went through >> bishop peni: 55 years. >> ron: 55 years total. no theighting was supposed to have ended in 2005 and then it took ananher sii or seven years for south sudan to gain its independence and be created. what is the status of the fighting right now and are there different factions that fight still among each others? i think iowans and people in america don't understand that there are different tribes and different nations within the tribes that fight against each other, right? >> bishop peni: yes. ron: how that is gogog now and how can you as someone ncerned about peace and justice, can you bring that fighting to a stop?

we got our independence, it seems like the church, the international communities, the friends of south sudan, went on vacation. >> ron: went on vacation, yeye. >> bishop peni: we thought everything is done, everybody was happy. we didn't know that in only two years from when we got our independence, there's going to be another bloody war. >> ron: exactly. >> bishop peni: we didn't know that. when it came, now it took everyone by surprise. when it came, even as churches, we didn't know, because this brought a different nature. the nature of this crisis was different in the sense that in the past war, we as south sudan stood as one body. we were united, you know, looking for our freedom from the northerners, but when we got our independence, now there seemed

identity, crisis of identity, because e enit started, it was political, but very soon went as tribal, and then people retreated to their tribes. another thing was people retreated to their regions because they have three main regions in south sudan. and then the third, which is ry sasad, is, you know, many denominations, christian denominations belong to different regions, and therefore belong to different tres. and because of this, the conflict, everyone, even church heres, divided among themselves. they could not speak with one voice. this made it even very difficult. and for us, you know, for me and as a chair for justice, peace and conciliation commission within the episcopal church,

of our leaders, unity of our people is key for success. >> ron: so when you get back home, , at will you b be doing right away? we have about one minute here to go, so tell us your next plans to try to help your people back home and bring about an end to the violence and end to the poverty in y your nation, in your region. >> bishop peni: when i go home now, what we got to do is we nt to roll out a program which we have come up wii in the next three years to go to the churches, call the community leaders, the government level, the cnty level, so that we can train them on peace-building and conciliation, forgiveness, so that they can stay as a united body. fofo a peace committee that can address issues on all the regions so we can be able to address the issues of peace at

>> ron: well, thank you so much, bishop samuel peni, for taking the time to be on the steele report. wish you a safe trip back home. >> bishop peni: thank you to give us our time as wewe. thank you very much. bye-bye. >> ron: we'll see you next week

>> announcer: the following is a paid presentation for the nuwave oven pro, brought to you by the makers of the nuwave precision induction cooktop. [ .] professional chefs create great-tasting meals from years of experience and by using professional equipment. and now you can too,

the number-one countertop oven