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Samson Mamour Served At Grace Past Two Years
Growing up in South Sudan during civil war taught Episcopal priest Samson Mamour compassion, perseverance, and the importance of trusting God and others.
Mamour served at Lexington’s Grace Episcopal Church for a two-year Curancy after ordination and completion of his schooling at Virginia Theological Seminary. This fall, he will leave Lexington to serve churches in Ahoskie and Windsor, N.C.
Mamour has made Roanoke home for 33 years after resettlement there through the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). At 18 years old, he left South Sudan to go to college in Egypt and completed an electrical engineering degree.
The first civil war in Sudan was 1955–1972, and then the whole Arabic world built infrastructure – schools, hospitals, roads. Egypt decided to have Sudanese students go to college in Egypt, which was how most of his contemporaries went to school, he said. Sudan only had one university, which could not accommodate all the students. In 1983, a second civil war broke out when he was getting ready to go to college.
“The war became more intense, and I could not go back to Sudan after college,” he said. His father died during this time. Of his six siblings, three sisters and one brother still live in South Sudan.
Mamour grew up attending All Saints Cathedral in Juba, South Sudan. When he settled in Roanoke, he became involved in the Episcopal community at St. James Episcopal Church. About 500 Sudanese war refugees live in Roanoke, Samson said. Sudanese women, who were homesick, started a fellowship group, getting together to sing and worship, apartment to apartment and house to house.
Mamour started a Sudanese fellowship at St. James, which grew over 15 years from 30 to about 70 people. The priest there, the Rev. Susan Bentley, recognized Samson’s leadership ability and encouraged him to enter the priesthood. His path to the priesthood was neither easy nor quick.
“I struggled with that for so many years,” he said. “My first response was ‘no,’” said Mamour, who worked manufacturing jobs in Roanoke. His university degree from Africa was not honored in the U.S. “Seminary was not in my plans,” he said. “I always thought I was satisfied. But God had a different plan for me.” The Rev. Bentley told him to think and pray about the priesthood.
“That ignited something in me,” he said. “The more I prayed, the more it changed me. Then I eventually gave in.”
In 2019, at 51 years old, Mamour began studies at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria and completed his studies in 2022. The Covid period was difficult.
“The most difficult part was the outside training when most of the churches were not functioning and offering Holy Communion,” said Mamour, adding that his mentor continued to give communion. In seminary, he studied with people from many different backgrounds, such as construction, law, medicine, and education, he said, and was enriched by his classmates’ company.
Mamour’s experience in a war-torn country taught him deep lessons that will inform his service.
“When there is no clear path, you have to trust God and the people around you, who become your family,” he said. “You might not know what you’re going to eat in one hour.”
He recalled school being canceled because of violence. During his growing up, violence surrounded him, which gives him compassion for Gazan children now during the war in Palestine, he said.
“In Gaza, children, instead of going to school, are having to find ways to survive growing up,” he said.
Mamour remembers fighter planes in the air when he was growing up and the government’s attack on his school as a child. One of his brothers ran to the brush and then to the Congo, he said. Later, he met an uncle, who had joined the rebels but told Mamour to stay in school. He was 7 years old before he saw his brothers again.
“Who are these brothers? I said.” Samson added that one of the worst parts of wars are the scattered families.
Current war news “brings ugly memories to me now,” he said, recalling a time in Sudan when “it was raining like crazy, and we had to leave our house because we didn’t know when the bombs would come.”
Sudanese people hid in hospitals and churches, he said, adding that the destroyed Anglican hospital in Gaza has been especially heartbreaking to him.
“It’s rubble now,” he said. Mamour noted that Bible stories help sustain him and others. “Jesus talks in stories.”
He also stressed the value of education for himself and his communities, old and new. His own path through education has been wrought with struggle. He began primary school in Arabic and then in secondary school, Sudanese politicians said that all subjects would be taught in English.
“We had all new subjects and an all new language. It was very hard,” Mamour said, adding that most Sudanese people speak five or six languages.
“There’s hope among the Sudanese people that they can go back and change things in our home county,” he said, adding that Sudan will always be home to him.
For now, he plans to be in North Carolina a long time to grow his new churches and spread God’s teachings. He noted that the rural, agricultural landscape of northeastern North Carolina will be familiar to him because, during school breaks, his parents would send him to uncles’ houses in farming villages to learn skills.
Mamour is beloved at Grace Episcopal Church for “his peaceful presence, kindness, thoughtfulness, and deep faith,” said Father Tuck Bowerfield, who is the rector at Grace. “He inspires calm trust in God.”
Among many service projects, Mamour has led Bible studies at Lex Apartments and conducted Vesper Services at the Mayflower in downtown Lexington. Parishioners at Grace admired his warm and vivid story-telling during his Sunday morning sermons and his easy smile, communicating a genuine pleasure in joining together and doing God’s work, Bowerfield said.
Grace parishioners MJ Mayerchak, Susan Mead and others have maintained a longtime relationship with Mamour and other Sudanese Americans in Roanoke as well as with educational missions serving Sudanese children.
For the next several weeks, before he moves to North Carolina in October, he is serving as priest at Christ Episcopal Church in Buena Vista.
He plans to stay in North Carolina “until God sends me someplace else. Maybe God will send me to South Sudan.”
