[Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi] Maar, the cathedral city of the Episcopal Diocese of Twic East in South Sudan (the companion diocese of Mississippi and Nebraska), was attacked and burned last week, at least 78 murdered, according to the BBC, and many women and children abducted.

I visited this town with Bishop Duncan Gray III in 2010, and in 2012 a medical team from Mississippi and Nebraska travelled there on a medical mission. Peter Malual, one of the lost boys of Sudan who came to the United States as an unaccompanied refugee minor in 2000, returned in 2012 to help with medications, having participated a few months before in a diocesan medical mission to Panama. (Peter has since completed his master’s degree in health sciences from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.) Peter fears that the death toll may rise, hearing that many were killed as they fled into the Nile.

In 2010, people had just returned from refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda, and life was precarious. Most were subsisting on U.N. rations, distributed carefully from a large white tent adjacent to the cathedral compound. People came to a thatched-roof structure whose walls were woven from reeds to allow cooling breezes. Nearby, old men were planting with sticks their first crop of sorghum, a staple. People were rebuilding their mud-and-thatch homes and the much larger beehive-shaped barns for cattle and goats.

In worship, the women of the church, wearing white dresses and headdresses, each uplifting a painted cross in her hand, led the procession, singing and dancing God’s praises.

As Bishop Gray and I walked through Maar one afternoon, a boy passing us, a bleating goat slung over his shoulder, a man stopped us, asking the bishop’s blessing. He was an old man, and he told us that he was afraid to die. Bishop Gray put his hand on the man’s head and prayed for God’s blessings.

In the cathedral compound, under a vast tree, we were welcomed both on our arrival and at our departure by hours of singing, dancing, storytelling, and speeches. Young herders from the nearby cattle camps, their hair dyed bright orange, joined us briefly. Children laughed as they pumped fresh, uncontaminated water for their families from a new well on the edge of the compound. There was no electricity in Maar in 2010, nor was there ambient light for miles in any direction, so the starlight at night was as brilliant as a full moon, only clearer and more jewel-like.

Children arrived at dawn on our second day, having walked several miles, to sing and dance for the bishops in celebration and welcoming.

Our 2010 visit took place during the rainy season, and the roads were barely passable. We encountered overturned trucks in the road. At one point, our jeep was mired, and all of us, including the bishops, joined in using a rope to pull us free. The rope broke, and we all flew through the air, falling in a pile.

This is now the rainy season, and the troops of the South Sudanese army will find it difficult to pursue the attackers or reach the women and children who have been abducted. According to reports from the Sudan Tribune, U.N. helicopters have evacuated many of the seriously injured to doctors in Bor Town and Juba.

Thousands of cattle, a source of milk and food for the Dinka — and their communal and familial wealth — have been stolen, leaving those who had little with less.

The attackers were reported to be wearing military uniforms, and both the BBC and Sudan Tribune speculate that they were followers of rebel leader David Yau Yau. Because of the recent disarmament campaign of the government of South Sudan, the people of the village had no arms with which to defend themselves, nor is it clear such arms would have helped in the face of such force. Since Yau Yau’s followers are predominantly Murle, and many attacks have involved child abductions, this violence can only heighten animosities between the Murle and Dinka peoples.

Maar had a new medical clinic and schools. (When I visited with Bishops Duncan Gray III of Mississippi and Ezekiel Diing of Twic East, the Father Maark Nikkel School was in ruins from war, inhabited by fruit bats.) Whether those were destroyed in the fire is not yet clear. Before leaving South Sudan in 2010, we visited a school for girls, its foundation freshly laid, thanks in large part to the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska.

How can we respond to this heartbreaking destruction and murder? The South Sudanese in America have experienced trauma and loss throughout their lives, and they need our support and our prayers, as do our brothers and sisters in South Sudan.

Let us pray for the survivors and for the children separated from their families, perhaps forever. Let us pray for peacemakers.

— Greg Miller is chair of the Sudanese Ministry Committee of the Episcopal Church, Diocese of Mississippi.