Mission: Rescue abducted children

Samuel Childers has risked his life to save abducted children, especially in the southern Sudan. “I’ll do whatever it takes to rescue these children,” says Childers, a 42-year-old, American from Pennsylvania and founder of World Missions, a Christian-based organisation that rescues Sudanese children who were abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

“I might be white,” he says, “but, I am Sudanese at heart.”

Childers started his missionary service when he entered the mission field to “preach the gospel,” about six years ago. He says his mission is “to preach the Gospel where no one else wants to go.”

While working in the mission, Childers says he heard only about the war in southern Sudan, and not northern Uganda. So, when he served as a missionary in Sudan, he was moved to help the Sudanese children and he did.

“When I first went in on the mission trip,” he says, “everything in my life changed. I saw a small child being blown up in Yei, Sudan by a land mine. And later, I just kept visiting the Sudan.”

“I visited a hospital there and donated money to help the children.

We would bring the injured children to the hospital and treat people with injuries. I have also seen and been in many bombings in New Sudan,” he says.

In addition to working closely with the Sudanese People Liberation Army (SPLA), to rescue these children, Childers and his wife, Lynn, run the World Missions orphanage in Nimule, Sudan. “We have over 60 children in our orphanage,” he says. “And over half of them were rescued from the LRA.”

He has memories of relocating about 5,000 displaced Sudanese residents to southern Sudan who were displaced by the LRA. His orphanage has also assisted girls who were raped and children who were shot during the war crossfire.

“We just love them, give them three meals a day, protection and have church everyday.”

Childers also wants to introduce southern Sudan to foster care, so that the children will not be orphans forever, but will be placed in homes in Sudan. He says he has worked closely with the Uganda People’s Defence Forces in Gulu, to rescue Sudanese children, as well as helped the abducted and dislocated Ugandan children.

“In Kitgum, I asked the authorities what they needed and they just said they needed blankets and housing,” says Childers. While in the city, he says about 50,000 children were in the streets and hospitals. “So, in the future, we are going to work on donating the requested supplies.”

Childers helps Sudanese children by taking them to his orphanage if he cannot reunite them with their families. When working in Sudan every other month, his wife Lynn, who is the co-pastor of his church, Shekinah Fellowship, in Pennsylvania, preaches and heads the congregation. He plans to return to Africa in December with Lynn and his 14-year-old daughter, Page. “They are looking forward to the trip. The first time they went there, six bombs went off,” says Childers.

Before he started missionary work in Sudan, many Americans like himself, were not aware of the 18-year old war in northern Uganda and the southern Sudan. Now in the US, after leaving Africa last week, Childers plans to go to every media outlet to tell his story and show pictures of the two war-torn countries and its children. He says his organisation is funded by his preac-hing engagements in the US.

“I wish the United States would do more than what they are doing to stop Joseph Kony.”

“When I return to the US, I am going to tell everyone that he is the worse terrorist in the world,” says Childers.

“Osama bin Laden has done some awful things, but who has cut off the lips of children? Not bin Laden.

Who has nailed children to trees? Not bin Laden. Who has raped little girls? Not bin Laden. If America can get involved in Iraq, they can do something here.

If the US, did step in, it would be a blessing to send soldiers in to work with the Ugandan army to stop this nonsense,” say Childers.

When asked when he will retire from missionary work in southern Sudan, Childers replied: “When somebody kills me. I am a born-again Christian. I cannot be killed... Maybe I can be killed in the flesh, but not in my spirit.”