by Brad Phillips
Every now and again, I like to rummage through some old pictures of PPF ministry activities and remember how good God has been to us through the years.
Recently, I ran across several early photos of refugees arriving in Southern Sudan from Darfur. They were on the run, severely discouraged, and starving. Most had [...]
It’s amazing the way God works things out in His own way and time. We are able to look back on the sequence of events and see that His hand and His perfect timing were involved even while we could not see it. Christmas this past year was a wonderful example of this for my [...]
Persecution Project Foundation was contacted in early January by Pastor Francis Ayul of Faith Evangelical Baptist Association of Churches (FEBAC), one of the pastors we support in the Upper Nile region of South Sudan. He wrote to tell us about a violent attack that had occurred in the village of Atar in the early morning [...]
During PPF’s Christmas outreaches, a team traveled south of Southern Darfur to the river town of Nyamlel, to visit an orphanage supported by PPF ministry partner African Leadership. While in Nyamlel, our vehicle suffered a puncture in one of the tires (a normal occurrence). After putting on a spare, which looked like it was about to join its predecessor, the driver recommended we drive to his office in Aweil to pick up a better spare. This would take us two hours out of our way, but we didn’t want to risk sleeping with hyenas in the desolate bush between us and our base camp in Jaac.
I was somewhere between Gok Machar and Jaac with my team. It had already been a long day. What was supposed to be a three-hour journey had doubled. It was well past dark, and our vehicle was weaving in and out between trees and thorn bushes, trying to avoid the occasional stump protruding from the “road” that was really nothing more than a glorified cow path.
We prayed that God would meet the needs of the students and multiply the fish and loaves all over again. Our desire was to get enough food to provide for the children until their next shipment arrived… and God provided.
Every week there seems to be a new story about a violent attack somewhere in the Upper Nile Region of Southern Sudan. So far this year, more than 2,000 people have been killed and 250,000 displaced because of the violence.
At PPF, we try not to be a “gloom and doom” ministry that communicates urgency and tragedy in every correspondence. We like to report good news — and there is much of it in Africa, despite the mostly negative reports we hear in the news.
Has Darfur’s war ended? Has the genocidal counter-insurgency launched by the Khartoum regime in 2003 against Darfuri rebels and the non-Arab civilian population of Darfur been halted? Two departing leaders of the current UN/African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) claim that the war is indeed over, and has devolved into a “low-intensity” security problem.
Recently, I travelled to the growing town of Torit in Southern Sudan to participate in a training session. The training session was on how to operate our new brick machine that was purchased earlier this year with the help of our supporters. We all know that the Church of Jesus Christ is not a building, but buildings are important. They communicate a message… that we’re “here to stay.”