For Those Who Hunger and Thirst
Dear friend,
A vicious power struggle in the African nation of Sudan has displaced millions of people from their homes. To escape the fighting, many have fled to distant corners of the country, including parched regions that can’t possibly feed them all. About 700,000 have poured into the region known as Kordofan, near the Nile River and the South Sudan border, where Samaritan’s Purse has been working for years. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen how farmers struggle to raise enough crops to feed their families, much less deal with a wave of desperate and hungry exiles who have built huts out of nothing but sticks. To make the situation worse, not long ago a plague of locusts devoured fields of sorghum, the crop that sustains this part of Sudan. Now, people are so hungry that they are boiling leaves and foraging weeds.
Samaritan’s Purse recently launched a feeding program in Sudan that’s comparable in scale to what we’ve done in Ukraine. We’ve organized 16-truck convoys that are delivering 800 tons of grain and other food staples—enough to sustain over 30,000 people for three months. But the rainy season is quickly coming. When it arrives, all of Kordofan will likely turn into a swamp, making it impossible for our trucks to travel the unpaved, soaked roads for up to five months. Please pray that the rains hold off and that an additional seven convoys of food will reach those in need—allowing us to feed close to a quarter of a million people. The Samaritan’s Purse DC-8 aircraft also airlifted 1,200 rolls of emergency shelter material to assist more than 42,000 people.
Once the rains come, local farmers will look to a harvest later this year, but it is hard to imagine they can produce a crop that can feed such a vast influx of displaced people. We must get the food to the people now. There’s no time to waste! Sudanese refugees have also fled to camps in Chad. We are sending emergency shipments of food from Canada to meet this critical need.
Jamila and her four children are typical of the many thousands of displaced people who have settled in the hills of the Kordofan region, hundreds of miles from the embattled capital city of Khartoum. They walked for three weeks to reach a teeming refugee camp. Samaritan’s Purse was able to provide Jamila’s family with a basket of food, including corn, beans, salt, and cooking oil; plus fresh water from a well, medical care at a clinic, and a tarp to shelter her family from the weather.
Another mother, Amira,* told our team about the horrors she escaped when her home came under attack. With four of her seven children, she fled into the wilderness of Kordofan and settled in a crowded displacement camp. She’s had no contact with her husband or her other three children, who were staying with her sister. “I don’t sleep,” she said. “Every moment I am thinking about my kids and if they are alive.”
She thanked God for the basket of food from Samaritan’s Purse. She is a strong Christian, and our team encouraged her and prayed with her. “The Bible says that there will be war, hunger, and suffering,” she said. “But we can find strength in God.”
“Every moment I am thinking about my kids and if they are alive.” – Amira
Amira is right. As the Scripture says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).
The United Nations calls Sudan the world’s worst hunger crisis and warns that more than 230,000 children, pregnant women, and new mothers could die in the coming months due to starvation. Nearly 3 million boys and girls there are acutely malnourished. Samaritan’s Purse has been working in Sudan for decades, and it’s heartbreaking to see so many who are hungry and hurting. Sudan has more people displaced by fighting than Ukraine or Gaza. Many of them are Christians, like Amira, who have endured generations of persecution yet trust the Lord to deliver them.
Samaritan’s Purse Canada is also working in South Asia where we are drilling wells to provide clean water for villages that lack access to this vital resource. I encourage you to continue reading and discover how one of our wells changed the life of a teenage girl and her community.
Thank you for your prayers and support as we work in Jesus’ Name to save lives, relieve suffering, and share the hope of the Gospel.
Sincerely,
Franklin Graham
