The Vashon leg of the long and remarkable journey of two Lost Boys of Sudan is now complete, as both Jacob Acier and Peter Dut have moved away from the island to begin new chapters of their lives.

Dut moved to Vashon in 2013, and last year he brought the documentary “The Lost Boys of Sudan” to town as a fundraiser to help his family in Sudan. The 2003 film followed Dut and another Lost Boy for a year after they arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Sudan, chronicling the struggles the refugees faced in adapting to life in the states.

Now, according to Acier, his cousin Dut is married and living and working in Australia with his new wife.

Acier’s journey, on the other hand, is about to come full circle.

“I am going back to Africa,” he said in an interview with The Beachcomber last Thursday, the day before he was to leave. “I need to settle my family, take care of things there.”

Acier, who moved to Vashon from Seattle in 2008 to work at Pacific Research Laboratories (Sawbones), was featured in The Beachcomber when, like Dut, he raised money to help his family return to South Sudan. With support from his employer and many interested islanders, Acier was able to travel to Africa numerous times during his seven years on Vashon. As is custom in the Dinka tribe, he was also married, via arrangement, in the fall of 2013 to a Sudanese woman who was going to school in Uganda.

During his most recent trip to visit, Acier said that his wife had some news.

“She is pregnant,” he said with a smile.

Though Acier had been attending community college to earn his associate’s degree in accounting and still had some credits to earn, he said that his boss at Sawbones, Foss Miller, set him on the path home.

“When I told him that we are having a baby, that was it,” Acier said with a laugh. “He told me it was time to go home. And he was right.”

Acier, whose 32 hours of flying to Africa began last Friday night, plans to move his wife from Uganda to South Sudan to be with his mother and family there. He hopes to find work in either Uganda or Kenya, both countries that border South Sudan and have far more job possibilities than their fledgling neighbor. He will also try to finish his accounting degree once he gets settled.

One of Acier’s greatest hopes is that one day he can establish a mobile dental van that will travel to all of the villages in South Sudan, something he was working on while living on Vashon.

“He has high goals and visions and works toward that,” said Nancy Vanderpool of Vashon’s Interfaith Council to Prevent Homelessness. Vanderpool, along with other islanders, including Tom Langland and Kevin Joyce, formed a group to support Acier after he first moved to the island.

“We worked with him to learn about American culture, helped him gain citizenship and advised him, mostly about setting and achieving goals like getting his degree,” she said. “We will definitely be keeping in touch with him.”

Acier, whose baby is due in the fall, said that he hopes to bring his family back to the U.S. someday, and that he is grateful to everyone who supported and helped him while he was on the island.

“I loved my years here on Vashon, everyone on the island was so nice,” he said. “Everyone cared. No one ever treated me badly.”