We are sad today that our little friend Prince, one of the Ghana orphans, has just passed away from AIDS. Please watch this video and remember him…

And thank you for all you do to serve our friends in Africa who are infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. We could not provide love and care and medication to those like Prince, without you.

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ORPHANAGE We continue to receive testimonies from some of the Grace Orphans you are helping in Sunyani, Ghana!

“Because of the food you give to me I am always filled up and am able to learn when I come to school. My school uniform makes me very happy and I look nice. I am grateful.” -Evans K. Osei, 8 years old

“Now I have school uniform and food to eat am very happy. You have made me happy I thank you SO MUCH.” -Sandra Nyarko, 7 years old

“My stomach is always full. And I have books to study oh I am happy. I want to tell you that God will give you more money. Thank you.” -Philip Obiri, 8 years old

Here are some photos of school uniforms being distributed recently:

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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.

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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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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

African Leadership Director of Development and Relief, Gerry Wolf, traveled to Sunyani, Ghana last month to visit with the Grace Orphans that Mocha Club helps support at Odumasi Methodist Preschool & Primary School. You might remember the video of Prince, one of the children there who has AIDS. Thank you for helping us provide schooling, food, and hope for these children!
>> VIEW MORE PHOTOS of the Grace Orphans.

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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!

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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 could hear the roar of trucks rolling into our small village. This sound meant two things. Firstly, and thankfully, more food for our village which was in desperate need of it. Secondly, more Returnees would be on the trucks, which would put yet further demand on the already strained food supply.

Since the Peace Treaty was signed, the Arabs began driving large open air trucks out of Khartoum and into the desert toward Nyamlel. These flatbed trucks were full of life-saving rice, grain, sugar and lentils. There were only thin wooden rails running along the side of the trucks to hold the 100 kg bags of food inside. These bags were stacked six to eight bags high. It is here, high on top of these food bags, that the Returnees were perched, riding exposed to the harsh desert elements for days at a time trying to return to their homes.

A Returnee is either an escaped slave or someone who fled North during the war trying to escape the bombing and raids upon her village. As soon as I heard the trucks, I ran for the drop-off point where I knew many former slave women would be dumped with no means of help. By the time I arrived, everyone was down from the truck except one woman who still sat on the edge, with one foot dangling down. Several men were holding a sheet; two stood on top of the food bags, two clinged to the back gate of the truck while the four of them struggled with the sheet.

One of the men on top of the truck began to push the woman toward the sheet. She twisted her body angling away from the truck while a man below her grabbed the dangling leg. With a quick-jerk movement, the woman was suddenly in the sheet as if cuddled in a hammock. The men began to slowly lower her.

When the dangling leg found the desert floor, another man handed her a set of make-shift crutches. It wasn’t until then that I realized the leg I saw dangling from the top of the truck was, in fact, her only leg. She spied me moving toward her; I stood out for obvious reasons. I asked if I could speak with her. She said her name was Mary and that she had heard of the Kawaidja Woman (white woman) before she even made her way out of the North. She had hoped I would care to hear her story.

With me in tow, Mary hobbled her way to the shade made by the truck. In 130 degree heat, the diesel/tar smell made me nauseous; I wondered how in the world she had survived the trip. She was very thin.

Mary returned to Nyamlel full of hope to find her husband. They had been separated for many years – since her abduction by the Muslim Militia. She had been used as a sex slave in the North. Today, however, she was sad and discouraged because the men who helped her down from the truck told Mary that her husband did not want her to come home because she was “used up and crippled.”

When her village was attacked years ago, Mary was shot in the leg and dragged off to the North. Her leg became gangrenous and her Muslim master cut it off.

Now, she had risked her life to get home to her husband, but he was declaring a divorce from her. She had no other known living relatives, save her children.

We took Mary into Make Way Partners’ New Life Ministry care program and built a home for her. She began working in our micro-enterprise, Mary’s Crosses. Later, a couple of our partner families learned how hard it was for Mary to get around the desert on crutches, so they bought her a special bicycle which she can “pedal” with her hands.

Mary still has many emotional and spiritual wounds, but she is now in a safe and loving community where, over time and with God’s grace, she continues to heal each day. Your support enables us to reach out to these society “cast offs” with tangible help and hope for the future.

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Here’s a real life story we wanted to share with you from Kimberly Smith, representative of our partners in Nyamlel, Sudan. Thank you for stepping forward to help us care for children like Tamar so we can help prevent such atrocities.

WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC MATERIAL.

While in Sudan, I always devote a certain amount of my time just listening to the people. In this way, I have been able to learn not only much of the culture but also what generations have endured. The following is a true and very difficult story of a little girl.

As was my custom, I was the first human to rouse on the compound. But the sun barely beat a crowd piling around our gate waiting to give their testimony to this strange white woman who walked with a stick to beat off the wild dogs. Un-customarily for me, ‘testimony’ had nothing to do with Christianity, but rather carried the pure connotation of that of which a person could give first–hand account. The guards came to me shortly after sunrise to tell me there were already more than one hundred people waiting to see me.

I waited in the dining tukel: a mud-brick room we built so the staff could take meals in shelter from the sun. The first person brought to me was a mere child; she appeared to be maybe thirteen. As images of what this young thing had probably endured flooded my head, I admitted to myself, I did not really want to hear from this girl. We had positioned three chairs in the tukel; I sat in the middle with a translator to my right and the girl on my left.

“What is your name?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“I am Tamar.”

“Tamar, she was the daughter of David [in the Bible],” I said, sadly remembering how she was raped by her kin and never knew justice on this earth.

“What is your name?” she asked without looking at me.

“Kimberly,” I replied.

“I mean your Christian name. What is your Christian name, your given name?”

“That is my name,” is what I said, but what I thought was, “My God, will these people never stop killing each other over the name that they chose or are given? ‘Christian: Peter’, ‘Muslim: Mohammed’, it is only a name. A name does not determine who you are or what you do.” Or so I thought at the time…

“Are you from Nyamlel?” I asked trying to move on.

“I was born here, but they took me away a long time ago.”

“The Murahaleen: the Arabic Muslims.” Tamar reminded me of a large bird craning its neck to clean under its wing as she bent and twisted her head away from me practically sticking it under her left arm.

“Yes, the Arabs, but there were many from Darfur riding with the Murahaleen, too, weren’t there? I have heard that before the attacks on Darfur happened, the Darfurees were part of the Muslim Militia. I asked if that is what she meant.

“Aye. Nluck (This is a sound the Sudanese make by sticking their tongue to the roof of their mouth and then sucking it off like a plunger being pried from a sink – the sound means yes.) Darfur men don’t rape with the Murahaleen anymore because the Muslims rape and kill their people now, too.”

“What do you mean, ‘They don’t rape with them anymore?”

“When they got me, I was only this (she held her right hand to the side of our chair indicating the height of perhaps a seven year old) ‘agement’. Many of them got on top of me. I could not fight them off; they were so big. I just tried to go to sleep, but I kept waking up as one would finish his work on me and the next would begin. I tried hard to go to sleep through them all, but I kept waking up and another and another would be working hard on top of me.”

“I am sorry.” I wanted to express empathy but all I felt was nausea and rage so I dared not venture down that path too far.

“Did they mutilate you?”

Suddenly and without any preamble, Tamar hiked her legs to place her feet on the opposing arms of her white plastic chair as she brusquely raised her dress up to her chin. “Yes! See? They cut me here. I cannot feel anything down there anymore. Sometimes I just pee and pee and pee because I cannot feel when I need to go.”

I fought the storm of emotion that squalled against me. “Do you live with your family now?”

“No, they will not have me; I am marked. I bleed now, so I should be making babies for Sudan, but no man will have me because I am marked by the Murahaleen. I live in the bush. I heard that there was a Kawaidja woman who wanted to know our stories. I wanted to talk to you. No one has ever wanted to hear what happened to me. We are not allowed to talk about it. Who will you tell?”

I knew that when she said, “I bleed now,” it meant she had a fistula. I also knew that if we had a sterile surgical unit, she could easily be healed for less than $150.

“Tamar, I will tell everyone who will listen. I will tell the world your story and I pray that through your courage, the world will make the Murahaleen stop this evil.”

“This would be a very good thing.” Tamar pulled her dress down and stood to leave. I asked her to stay and have some tea and biscuits. She smiled. As I drank a cup of liquefied coffee crystals, Tamar drank her tea (with three heaping tablespoons of sugar and equal amounts of powdered milk) and ate her English-style biscuits (sugar cookies). I was never more thankful than at this moment that James had advised me to carry in sugar, biscuits, tea and powdered milk. There were no such luxuries on the local economy.

Your contribution helps us to rescue, tend and protect the many “Tamars” of this world.

Posted in Sudan Regrowth, Orphan Care | 1 comment

In December, we shared about Mary Abuk, one of the orphan girls we serve at New Life Orphanage in Nyamlel, Sudan. Abuk was having unexplained seizures from a traumatic experience. Today, we have an encouraging update for you on how she is doing!

Update from our partners in Sudan…

If you will remember last November, shortly after we moved the girls into their new home, the girls’ dormitory, several of them began having mysterious seizures. We went through vigorous research, doctors’ questions and examinations, close scrutiny of our building supplies and wood treatments, but we could find no cause for this mysterious outbreak.

After a few days, Abuk, the first girl to have seizures, finally began to talk about what had happened. She was out early one morning gathering fire wood, and what she called a gorilla jumped out roaring at her. Of course, whatever it was, it scared her nearly to death. She ran back to the dormitory where Mama Agnus tried to console her, but Abuk was traumatized.

Not knowing what had happened, several of the other girls panicked. They were being introduced to so many new things all at once. Most all of our children have witnessed the brutal murder of their parents, and many of them were also raped. After years of living alone, fending for themselves in the desert, there was some level of fear about moving into the safe home that they had dreamed of for so long. Abuk’s seizures set off a panic attack among the girls, and several of them manifested the same symptoms.

Once we knew what we were dealing with, our staff was able to provide loving care and stabilize the situation fairly quickly. All seizures stopped except Abuk’s. At that time, there was no fighting on the route between Nyamlel and Khartoum so we drove Abuk the several hundred miles to Khartoum for medical care. Abuk improved, but then the fighting began again before we could get her back to Nyamlel. The roads were too dangerous to make the return trip, and Abuk was stranded in Khartoum with the aunt we had sent to watch over her.

Thankfully, once again the fighting lulled. We brought Abuk home swiftly. She is not only safe, but as she told James, “I am the luckiest girl alive. People all over the world prayed for me and now I am leading the worship parades back in my school!”

A child saved from fear and given hope..that is GREAT NEWS!

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