We received this story from one of our partners on the ground in Sudan, Kimberly Smith, in the village of Nyamlel.

Yesterday, en-route to the Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camp, we slowed down the Land Cruiser so that the videographer who was with us could get some footage of people who had squatted along the roadside and tried to build make-shift shelters. There had been terrible rain storms the previous night so many were huddled under one set of sheets strung up by branches they had cut down in the bush.

As the Land Cruiser slowed, one man stood up and began shouting. He raised his hands to his mouth in desperation, mimicking eating. He cried out, “WE ARE HUNGRY! FEED US! THERE IS NOTHING FOR US TO EAT! WE ARE HUNGRY!”

Knowing that we had no food or anything to give him, the videographer quickly shut the window as the man rushed at the Land Cruiser. The hungry man bashed his fist against the window. Again he shouted, “We are hungry!”

[Local partner] James jumped out of the Land Cruiser and tried to talk with the man, explaining that we had nothing to give him today. We are trying to record the situation so that we can share it with other people who might share what they have to help others.

There was no consoling the man. He was hungry today. His children were starving today. He could not wait for weeks or months for food to come. He became all the more angry with our empty words and once again shouted, “WE ARE HUNGRY!” and added, “PEOPLE DON’T SEE US! WE ARE HUNGRY!”

As we drove away, we looked across the dirt road upon which we had been driving. Almost directly across the road from where this hungry man (and many others) huddled from the rains was a huge tent full of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) food. Inside the WFP storehouse we could see there was a huge stock pile of sorghum, grains and cooking oil. The UN or WFP only ‘drops’ the food, and there are no UN troops here to oversee distribution. So it lies in the hands of corrupt leaders and business who will not release it to those starving from the genocidal government’s control and now the severe flooding.

Once again, we are reminded that lasting help only comes through action. We are committed to remain on the ground, overseeing justice of distribution and sharing a Gospel of Hope for those to whom He has led us to serve.

We appreciate your love, support and prayers for they truly shore us up during our long days.

Posted in Sudan Regrowth | 2 comments

>> Sudan Declares Darfur Ceasefire.

Posted in Africa News, Sudan Regrowth | no comments

In the middle of a bad-news world, it’s difficult sometimes to see the GOOD that is happening. We wanted to share some GOOD NEWS from our partners in the village of Jach, Sudan…

When we stepped off the plane in Jach, Southern Sudan, over three years ago, there were no smiles.

Even when we distributed food, blankets, tools, shelter tarps, mosquito nets and other humanitarian relief supplies to several thousand Darfuri refugees who had gathered there, the people were grateful and some wept, but few smiled.

It was too soon for smiles. The nightmares were too fresh. The region too desolate. Hope too far away to grab hold of.

Today, smiles are the first things we see. Smiles, and eyes shining with hope.

Building by building, family by family, the wilderness called Jach is becoming a community—160 square miles, 76,000 strong and growing.

Although primitive by Western standards, the Jach community now has schools, churches, a medical clinic and a marketplace. Twenty-six boreholes provide fresh, safe water to thousands of people and their livestock. Every year, more families eat the produce of their own kitchen gardens.

Jach even has its own sports league and has fielded two soccer teams—a sure sign of civilization in any quarter of the globe.

Most important of all, the Kingdom of God is advancing. Hut to hut, compound to compound.

Hundreds of children meet regularly in Christian clubs to hear the Word of God and be discipled in their faith.

This summer, 18 students began studies in our new Bible Training Centre for Pastors (BTCP).

At the same time, powerful new programming is being translated into several languages for broadcast over Radio PEACE.

Through the faithful gifts and prayers of friends like you, we have accomplished a tremendous amount in just a few years, and we are deeply grateful.

And it is just the beginning.

Nurse Peter Mazjoub examines a child at the medical clinic in Jach. Malaria and waterborne diseases are the most common illnesses during the rainy season. When these photos were taken, Southern Sudan was in the grips of an outbreak of cholera.




Many families have turned now to farming. By July (winter in Sudan) most were on their third planting. The first two dried up due to a lack of rain. Crops include okra and tomato plants like these, as well as watermelon, water lily, sorghum and squash.


With each new borehole, at least 500 people and their livestock gain access to safe, clean water for drinking and cooking.


Despite dangerous landing conditions, delivery and distribution of emergency relief supplies continued throughout the rainy season.


Mosquito nets like these are precious cargo as torrential rains spawn deadly clouds of malaria-infecting insects.

There are still many challenges and much suffering in Jach. The Darfur refugee community is still very impoverished. It is difficult to establish a new life in an area where the indigenous people don’t speak your language and still harbor bitterness from the years of persecution levied against the South by Janjaweed militia (which in many cases came from Darfur). Our partners continue to work with the Church in Jach, reaching out to the predominantly Moslem refugees and showing them the love of Christ through forgiveness and reconciliation.

But students still learn under trees or crowded into grass and mud tukels. Our medical clinic is staffed by a registered nurse who sees more than 100 patients a day. Families that do not live close to a borehole continue to drink from surface water or hand-dug wells contaminated with waterborne parasites.

As we trust in God’s faithfulness for every need and challenge that lie ahead, we rejoice and thank him for all the wonderful things he has already done. And we thank you for your compassion and generosity.

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We received this story from one of our partners on the ground in Sudan, Kimberly Smith, in the village of Nyamlel.

We went to two Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps. The camps we visited and assessed today were full of a combination of Darfurees trying to flee the persecution and genocide as well as local farmers whose land has been flooded out by this unusually brutal raining season. The desert is flat; there is nowhere for the water to run.

What we found in the camps were literally thousands of widows, orphans and all manner of broken families suffering starvation and disease and drinking water only from cesspools on the road side. After fleeing their homes, they now scramble to find grass to weave a thatch shelter or a tarp to protect themselves from the harsh rains. The women were picking leaves from the trees and boiling them in a small pot over an open fire so that they had something to put in the bellies of their babies. Most do not have tarps to keep the scorching sun or the pounding rain from their heads. Instead, they simply sit with their nursing babies on the roadside awaiting some form of help that seems to never come.

Widow in front of her “house” with her five children

Of the huge crowd present, one woman (Fabo) stepped forward as their spokesperson. Fabo said, “We have had our husbands to be killed by the Arabs. They have killed most of our children. Many of our women have been raped to death. We have so many orphans among us. Now, we survivors sit here on the road, waiting for help. We thank God you have come. We pray you will help us.”

Please continue to give sacrificially and remember these widows in your thoughts and prayers. To help them, we need:

• thousands of tarps
• additional medicine
• to drill at least two fresh wells
• water filters to disperse for them

Thank you for serving the Sudan people with us.

Posted in Sudan Regrowth, Orphan Care | no comments

Please remember our friends in Sudan as they face unimaginable challenges right now…

Floods leave 40,000 more people homeless in Southern Sudan!

AWEIL, SOUTHERN SUDAN. Heavy rains in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal have caused the Kuom river to overflow in the town of Aweil, driving tens of thousands of people into the bush. This is in addition to 50,000 who fled the fighting in May between government and southern troops in the oil-rich Abyei district.

As conditions deteriorate, high water levels increase the threat of cholera, typhoid and malaria.

The UN recently announced that Sudan ranks in its top ten list of “Hunger’s Global Hotspots.” At the same time, citing “relentless” attacks on food convoys, along with severe budget shortfalls, its World Food Programme threatened to stop air services to Darfur this week. More than 300 humanitarian agencies depend on UN flights, which currently deliver emergency supplies to three million people.

“We currently serve over 80,000 Darfur refugees and IDPs in the Bahr el-Ghazal region,” said Brad Phillips, president of the Persecution Project Foundation [one of African Leadership’s partners in Sudan]. “Although they may not be directly affected by the WFP cutbacks, more refugees in Darfur will flee to our area of operations on the border, putting a greater strain on our resources. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

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For three years, several thousand refugees from the genocide in Darfur have huddled in and around the community of Jach, which is located just south of the Darfur border. Jach is a wilderness, making it very hard for survival. Temperatures can easily reach 130 degrees during the day. Until recently, the refugees had no dependable water supply. However, Mocha Club and African Leadership have helped fund the drilling of 20 clean water wells recently! New wells were dug next to the medical clinic, school sites, church, landing strip and other strategic locations. Our partners in Sudan have also begun to buy “bowsers” (110-gallon donkey carts) to transport water to those who do not have access to a well and to help irrigate the growing number of “kitchen gardens” being planted every year.

Women in Jach enjoying the well
With this new water supply comes the opportunity for sustainable agriculture programs in the area. Mocha Club is now helping provide the supplies for the refugees of Jach to grow “kitchen gardens” – a variety of vegetables that will be the easiest to harvest and will best enhance the health and diet of the local people, including:

• Tomato
• Okra
• Pumpkin
• Onion
• Watermelon
• Sweet potato
• Ground Nuts

A half acre plot is being used to cultivate 10 kitchen gardens maintained by 10 families. This plot of land can potentially yield enough vegetables for 500 people or the equivalent of 100 families! These kitchen gardens will supplement the refugee food supply, thereby greatly increasing health standards and saving many lives. The ground is hard, and the tools are elementary. But the people are determined, hard working and tenacious. And the result is a sustainable food supply in a wilderness that the United Nations declared didn’t even have any water.

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The boys’ orphanage at the village of Nyamlel, Sudan is progressing…

The boys’ orphanage construction began several months ago, and in spite of the genocide, slavery and political unrest all around us in Sudan, the boys will soon have a safe home.

Our partner Kevin in Sudan took this photo as he and his wife were flying over the orphanage in July. The boys’ dormitories are the two long buildings laid out in “L” shape near the bottom of the photo. As you can see, the first one already has the roof on. At the time of the photo, the second one only had the foundation built; but, as of now, the walls are nearly complete!

Thank you for your giving which makes this possible!

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We received this story from one of our partners on the ground in Sudan, Kimberly Smith, in the village of Nyamlel.

I heard the trucks rolling through Nyamlel. Knowing they would be full of former slave women and children, I ran to the market to meet them. By the time I arrived, most of the women had climbed down the sides of the tall trucks and were sitting on the desert floor – watching the beating take place.

My eyes zeroed in on the angry Muslim truck driver who had sold passage to the women escaping slavery. These women had ridden high on open-air trucks sitting on top of large bags of cargo from which they would sometimes topple to their death on the desert floor.

The angry Muslim man was washing the sweat from his face with not some small sense of indignation. During the time it took me to get to the market, he had beaten one of the women he transported. An infant laid on the ground near her. Apparently, her older son, near starvation from the journey and whom she had birthed through the rapes of her “Muslim Master,” had torn into and eaten from one of the many 50-kilo sugar bags on top of which they sat.

I received no answer when I asked, “Where is the boy now?”

My memory latched onto the face of a small boy. I imagined it to be the hungry boy who stole some of the sugar he had sat upon. The boy in my mind had no hands. I never found the literal boy.

I learned the woman’s name was Sarah. She seemed to be in shock and would not talk to me. Sarah’s future did not offer much hope because her husband (who still lived in Nyamlel) had already been informed that her “illegitimate” son had “stolen” some sugar, and she was marked as a sex-slave by the Muslims. Her husband sent word that if he found her in town, he would immediately sell her to the next slave traders who came through. He said that Sarah brought him great shame.

Thanks to your generous donations, our partners in Sudan have an active fund for slave repatriation. For $1,000 we can build a home for women like Sarah and help to re-establish them in a supportive community. In Sarah’s case, we built her home in a separate village so that she is protected from slavery. She is in a small community of other survivors – learning to thrive.

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Are you a leader on your college campus…in your church…at your high school? Mocha Club is about to launch out a new initiative called Make Change that will equip YOU to activate your community by running a campaign to provide aid to millions suffering in Africa.

What is a campaign, you ask? It’s you using your VOICE and your LEADERSHIP to call others to come together and make change. You have the ability to engage your community to be a part of something bigger than themselves and make a huge difference! An initiative of African Leadership and the Mocha Club, a Make Change campaign is based on the premise that a little help goes a long way…and YOU have the power to influence your community to learn…to act…to give…to make change.

Just like in Mocha Club, you can decide on a specific project that gets you excited…like building clean water wells in Darfur, Sudan, or sending kids to school in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, or supporting Child Mothers at the Village of Hope in Gulu, Uganda. As you continue to read and learn about the different areas of injustice all over Africa, try and notice what gets you the most fired up—that’s where your voice and your influence will be the most effective! Once you decide on the project area you think others would get excited about helping with, we can get you materials and resources to run a campaign – which can be one night, one week, one semester, or one year!

Mocha Club is all about creating community, connection, and a long-term commitment to give, while Make Change offers a short-term way for others to get involved by giving their time and their money through a campaign.

If this sounds like something you would want to be a part of, email us at makechange@mochaclub.org. And look for the launch of our site in the coming month. It’s time to Make Change for our friends in Africa.

Posted in Job Creation, Education, Sudan Regrowth, Child Mothers, Orphan Care, HIV/AIDS | no comments

Kevin is a missionary-engineer who works with our partners at New Life Orphanage in Nyamlel, Sudan. Kevin has witnessed some pretty amazing things these last couple of months. He and James have worked so hard to gather supplies and begin the boys’ dormitories, and they have begun the construction in earnest!


Working rainy season has it challenges but the boys’ dorms are coming up!

Kevin is full of stories and it is fun to watch his face as he shares his stories for the love for the children and the joy he receives by serving them is evident! One of our favorite stories is of Peter Diing. Kevin is not only building a home for these boys like Peter, but he is also investing in their lives and spiritual journey. One Sunday after church, Kevin was asked to teach and pray for the sick over at the clinic. He readily agreed. But there was no adult available to translate. Peter Ding volunteered. So together they went with Peter Ding dressed to the hilt in his high-water suit and tie! Kevin said that Peter did a wonderful job and constantly seeks opportunities to share the love of Christ to his people.

Of course, there is always adventure too. Rainy season brings lots of snakes, spiders, bats and various critters to the compound!

Thank you for your support which enables those like Kevin to serve in Sudan!

Posted in Sudan Regrowth, Orphan Care | no comments