MISSION OF THE MONTH

South Sudanese Fellowship of St. Cloud 

The October 2025 Mission of the month for FPC is the South Sudanese Fellowship of St. Cloud. This is a Presbytery sponsored mission.

Pastor Elizabeth Tot, a Presbyterian minister who emigrated from South Sudan, has been supporting refugees from South Sudan, mostly women and children, through a prayer fellowship in Minnesota for the last 15 years.

In 2007, Tot and two of her children arrived in Buffalo, New York, as refugees from South Sudan by way of Ethiopia and Kenya. Other than her family, there weren’t many people in Buffalo who spoke Nuer, her South Sudanese language. In 2010 she moved to Minnesota, where Sudanese immigrants had built communities after finding work in the meat processing industry. Tot began her ministry to the community right away. On her days off, she would visit mothers raising children on their own. “I brought them something for the children, as is our custom back home, a toy or some money for food, and then I would pray with them,” Tot said as her son, Thijin Gatwech, translated from Nuer to English.

The women were always glad to see her, while Tot was grateful to have a way to fulfill her calling. Elizabeth was Tot’s baptismal name; her Nuer name is “Nyareat,” which means “orphan girl.” Tot explained that it is customary to name a child after the circumstances of her birth. Tot’s mother died in childbirth. Without a mother, her survival was uncertain. Her father’s work as a cattle herder meant long periods away from home and the village. At that time, burying the infant with the mother was a plausible solution, but an aunt stepped in to take her for a few years until she was passed among the women in her extended family. At age 8, she was baptized as a Christian in the church where her father served as elder.

In church, she soon learned about the story of Moses, who was taken from his mother to fulfill God’s purpose and later be reconciled to his family. Tot understood her life had also been saved to serve God. At age 30, with a husband serving as a soldier in the liberation struggle for Southern Sudan, she was displaced to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Separated from her husband, she decided not to remarry but to dedicate her life to raising her family in the refugee camp and ministering to other families there. According to her son, Tot’s eldest daughter settled in the United States in 1999 with the help of a “missionary woman who saw the hard life of refugees in the Ethiopia’s Dimma Refugee camp.” In 2004, that daughter helped the rest of the family to relocate to the United States by moving to Nairobi, Kenya, where sponsorship to come to the United States was easier.

In adulthood, Tot served as an elder and a deacon for more than 18 years before she was ordained by the Presbyterian Church in East Africa, headquartered in Nairobi. She served as a pastor there for three years before coming to the United States.

In 2010, she arrived in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and met the Rev. Ed Morgan, who gave her a space at First Presbyterian Church of St. Cloud to hold prayer meetings on Sunday afternoons. Morgan helped Tot in her process to have her ordination recognized by the Presbytery of Minnesota Valleys. Although Morgan has since retired, the South Sudanese Ministry that Tot pastors continues to meet there.

You can read more about Pastor Elizabeth Tot’s story and mission work, click on this link: https://pcusa.org/news-storytelling/news/2025/7/7/new-worshiping-community-supports-south-sudanese-women-minnesota

Your generosity to support this mission can be placed in the offering plates or sent online. Please put the South Sudanese Fellowship in the memo to designate your donation. Thank you!