The Next Team is Leaving Soon! (Pray with Us)

The rainy season is fast approaching, which will limit the ability to deliver food to the Sudanese people.
The next team is going out soon. Leaving Sunday afternoon. Returning in approximately 2 weeks.

A Long Journey by Operation Broken Silence



Nice To Meet You by Operation Broken Silence

Special Delivery by Operation Broken Silence



We're Here To Help by Operation Broken Silence




Close Examination by Operation Broken Silence

People have given.

The team is going.

We are telling.

You can pray. 

 Contact Jessica to be a part of our 24 hour around the clock prayer team. Email her at: jessjohnson624@sbcglobal.net to sign up! 

And from the bottom of our hearts we thank you for all of your continued support. 

Counting the Cost

"What started out as a fuzzy notion that the greatest need for food was in a remote area of Sudan, blossomed into full blow confirmation from the Lord in less than eight weeks.  First, while a debate was going on as to whether to return to Yida Camp or not, a group of tribal elders from the Kao-Niaro came out of their remote villages and made a rare plea for aid stating that hunger and opportunistic disease was claiming the lives of many of their youngest and most senior members.  As focus shifted to their plight, a radio broadcast talking about the dire situation in Eastern South Kordofan, as well as an article, came to our attention just days ago.  Far from over or subsiding, the real effects of the war in South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions of Sudan are manifesting themselves with horrifying results.  As the international community stands by, thousands at risk of starvation are starting to succumb to conditions unimaginable to our modern senses: no food, water, shelter, or protection from daily bombing raids on civilians.  Time is running out and something has to be done soon.  Jesus promised us we would be able to do greater things than He, but He didn't promise us it would be a cake walk.  On the contrary, He told us we would suffer in fulfilling the commission.  He reminded us that as disciples we must count the cost.  "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?" Luke 14:28.  We've started something in Sudan, and must complete it.  It will take sacrifices of time, talents and yes, even money, but who among us did not count the cost before starting this journey?  May God strengthen us all like a strong tower for what lies ahead."

http://radiotamazuj.org/en/article/22000-displaced-kao-nyaro-and-werne-splm-n

An Article by Samuel Totten

An article by the most recent person on the End Nuba Genocide Team who went to Sudan in December.

Africa Views - Nuba Mountains people are starving to death, but who cares?

By Samuel Totten | Friday at 6:24 PM | Comments ( 1 )

Delivering small amount of food, Kauda, Nuba Mountains. Photo credit: Samuel Totten

by Samuel Totten

Beginning in late January 2012, as malnourished refugees from the Nuba Mountains poured over the border into South Sudan, the international community discussed opening up a humanitarian corridor into the Nuba Mountains.  Since then, the people of the Nuba Mountains – some 50 plus tribes of Muslims, Christians and animists – have faced daily bombings and been forced from their villages. Many have only sporadically been able to work their farms. Already eating food they wouldn’t normally touch until May, food stores have dwindled, while rates of starvation and malnutrition have soared. The constant fear is that when the rainy season sets in and it’s nearly impossible to travel the muddy, swampy dirt roads, mass starvation will set in and become a fact of life - and death. Yet the international community has failed to provide desperately needed humanitarian support.          

The Government of Sudan adamantly refuses to allow any international agencies into the Nuba Mountains or Blue Nile, thus preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those in need. The international community seems handcuffed, either out of being truly flummoxed over how to act vis-à-vis certain situations or, in the case of individual nations, being so wedded to the notion that it is only worth acting when it is to their best interests or benefit. Often organisations, like Waging Peace – an NGO which campaigns against human rights abuses and genocide in Sudan – Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Internal are left as the only ones willing to shine a light on the atrocities perpetrated by the regime in Khartoum. [include link to Guardian article]

Frustrated by the inaction of the international community, a small group of individuals in the U.S. recently decided to take the matter into their own hands. The members of the group – two professors and five individuals closely tied to various Christian churches and organizations – have all been involved in Sudan in one way or another.

Raising more than 50,000 USD, the group purchased five and a half tons of traditional foods (sorghum, lintels, salt, and cooking oil) and transported it up and into the Nuba Mountains. By using direct action, the group hopes to shame decision makers at the UN and within the United States into action. 

After many failed attempts, last month a lorry packed to the brim with the five tons of food made its way across South Sudan and on up into the Nuba Mountains. Meanwhile I headed up into the Nuba Mountains on Christmas Day hauling another half ton of food in the Toyota Land cruiser I rented. As my driver, interpreter and I rumbled along the dusty and potholed dirt roads, we kept a vigilant eye out for Antonovs on bombing runs and hid in wadis (dry riverbeds thick with trees) until the planes had flown by. 

While almost everyone in the Nuba Mountains wakes up and goes to bed hungry, those who reside high up in the mountains and great distances from the suqs (in some cases a four-day walk over mountainous terrain) are suffering severe malnutrition and starvation. A representative of the Nuba Mountains Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organization (NRRDO) reports that 100% of the infants up in the mountains are suffering from severe malnutrition to starvation. As Dr. Tom Catena, the only surgeon at the only hospital in the Nuba Mountains, observed to me, the effect of hunger on the population can be far reaching. Babies are born smaller. Mothers have less milk for their babies. TB increases. Pneumonia increases. There are more broke bones as children climb trees and scramble up mountainsides in search off food. He told me of one child who was admitted with such a badly broken arm after falling out of a tree in search of tree leaves to eat that his arm had to be amputated.

If ample amounts of food are not somehow delivered and stored in the region prior to the outset of the rainy season it could possibly result in mass starvation. 

Our first five tons were successfully delivered to different points in the Nuba Mountains: Kurche and Kauda. Understandably, the recipients were overjoyed, expressing their appreciation with their smiles, words of thanks and patting their hearts with the palms of their right hands.

The team – which goes by the name End Nuba Genocide – is currently raising new funding to haul another five tons of food into the Nuba Mountains in April. Five tons may be a drop in the bucket in regard to what is needed, but it provides ample evidence to the people in need that they have not been totally forgotten by the world and it is enough to stave off severe malnutrition and starvation for at least a handful of people.

For the time being, at least, its seems that such initiatives by intrepid individuals and ad hoc groups may be the only way forward in helping those in extreme distress and dire need when the international community is, for whatever reason, not willing to step up and honor the relatively new concept of “the responsibility to protect” (that is, it is the responsibility of each government to protect its own citizens and when it fails to do so, then it is the responsibility of the international community to step in and protect such individuals).  In that regard, the End Nuba Genocide Coalition plans to lead the pack and act as a role model in that regard.

Sam Totten is a genocide expert, Professor at the University of Arkansas.

A Christmas Eve of Expectation & Anticipation

Written By: John Jefferson

Christmas Eve is a time of expectation, hope and fulfillment, not only for the millions of children that are looking for presents under the tree, but also for millions of people who await the return of Christ. 

This is how the Nuba people celebrate Christmas, and those among them that have survived years of persecution, war, and the threat of widespread famine, their only real hope. As we are here to represent Christ on earth and do His work, it is only fitting that the End Nuba Genocide project's second phase is moving steadily toward these desperate people with a message of hope in the form of several tons of nutritive foods. 

We hope they will arrive by Christmas Day, but whenever the shipment arrives, it will mark the unfailing hand of God and the triumph of His people over many obstacles, snares and trials, to get it there. 

Two of the team left in mid-December to time their arrival with that of the food shipment near the border. From there, with temperatures of well over 100 degrees, they will take the now dry and dusty roads into the war zone. Bombs are still dropping every day on civilian targets throughout South Kordofan, and the world has found other things to be concerned about. Tens of thousands are at risk of starvation and many find a much quicker route to eternity through raids on villages and indiscriminate bombing raids. Christian villages are especially targeted, but none are escaping the wrath of the Fundamentalist Northern government. 

In the midst of this, as we celebrate the Soon and Coming King together with our brothers and sisters in Sudan, let's pray all the more earnestly that this Christmas will see the fulfillment of the hope and the reward for the perseverance of those that need it most. I look forward to updating you once the team has fulfilled its mission and is safely back, but know the work is still continuing.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Days for Hope4Sudan

Looking for another wonderful way to support Hope4Sudan?!?

The sweet Hannah Singer from Happy Days has generously created a beautiful series of necklaces that benefit Hope4Sudan!!!

For each necklace purchased, Hannah is donating $10 to our cause!!!

ORDER YOURS HERE!!!

This is her second round of sales for Hope4Sudan, and the first round sold out within hours of her listing
(thank you Hannah!!)
So get them while they are hot!!!!

Thank you again, Hannah, for your support of this project and your generous heart!!!

Rumor has it that Phase 2 of moving food into the Nuba Mountains will be taking place in the near future! Check back soon for details!!!

Joyful in Hope!

Katy of Katygirl Designs is doing something incredible to help the ongoing efforts in Sudan.
She already offers these beautiful prints in her shop where all proceeds are sent straight to Hope4Sudan.

For Christmas, she has just teamed up with Lindsay from Pen & Paint to create a Hope4Sudan Christmas Card!

A portion of the proceeds for each "Joyful in Hope" card go straight to Hope4Sudan!!!

We are so excited and thankful about this fun way to support the Sudanese people!!!
Head over to Katy's Holiday Shop to check out how it works and order your 2012 Christmas Cards!

Katy and Lindsay, a huge thank you from the bottom of our hearts!!!

Stories from the Ground: In the Mountains

Written By: John Jefferson

The next morning we rose early and had a meeting with the leaders of the command post which we used as our forward base for the distribution of the food.  Working with community leaders, the most needy families were identified and we set out early to visit the people.  

Walking past open fields where it would have made sense to see crops growing and farmers tending to them, we moved along narrow paths leading into the hills.  Everywhere small houses or tukals appeared nestled in between the rocks and crags and amongst them stalks of sorghum rose valiantly, if not defiantly as if to make a vain challenge to Bashir’s program of annihilation.  

We first visited a large extended family that had taken shelter amidst these rocks and built lodgings to protect themselves from the bombardment of the Government of Sudan’s Antonovs.  Their physical appearance and surroundings testified to the desperateness of their situation.  The children had the characteristic red hair caused by protein malnutrition and everyone was thing and gaunt.  

Though the Nubans are a strong people, the weariness of war and hunger, and a certain sense of resignation and hopelessness, showed on the faces of the adults.

One story typified the predicament of the Nuba people and their intimate ties to the land and the seasons. 

We came upon a woman with four young children living among the rocks in the hills around the compound we were visiting.  She had a look of profound weariness on her face, and seemed drained of life as we talked to her with the children scattered around her. (They were thin and ill-clothed as well)  Also present was an older women, her mother-in-law, and another woman with two children who was her husband’s sister)  She told us how she had come from a village further north that was first raided by government soldiers than payloads from the bombers.  Unable to plant crops, she and her family fled and wound up in this, one of the southernmost villages of the Nuba mountains.  Here they occupied a compound that was abandoned by a family fleeing the bombing there. (Yes, the Government of Sudan bombs indiscriminately, and very near as well as on the Republic of Sudan side of the border – and has even bombed the refugee camps in Southern Sudan!)  In essence, she had gone out of the frying pan and into the fire, and now, with no food or energy to go further, was forced to scrape out an existence for herself and her four children in the rocks, hiding in the caves when the bombers strike. (The fields in the valley below the hills are fertile, but this woman and her husband could not go to them to cultivate for security reasons and out of fear the children would follow them and not be able to get to safety fast enough should something happen.  This was a common theme)  What can people do in the face of such evil?  Well, fight.  Fight to stay alive another day, and fight the good fight of faith, that in the end they will receive the crown of glory.  We gave the family some rice and sorghum to help them in their battle against hunger and disease and prayed more aid would come before the end...

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. James 1:12 NIV