This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Hope in the Morning. Turning tragedies and tears into testimonies of hope. In parts of Sudan today, following Jesus can cost everything. Families are fleeing violence, churches are being destroyed, and believers are risking their lives simply to remain faithful to Christ.
Welcome to Hope in the Morning. I'm joined today with Ed Lyons from the Persecution Project and my husband and the executive director of Hope in the Morning, Brent Curtis. These stories will break your heart and strengthen your faith, and remind you that even in the darkest places, Christ is sustaining His church. Ed, welcome to Hope in the Morning. Thank you, Emily.
Thank you, Brent. Appreciate being here. Yeah, Ed, it's good to see you again. Yeah. We first met in Nashville a few months ago and Man, your story was just uh Stories that of all the people involved is just incredible, and what's going on over there.
I just, you know, I. Was curious what was going on in Sudan.
So I did a little bit of Googling, and the Department of State tells Americans: do not go to Sudan. If you go, you might not return. There's a good chance you're going to be killed, be kidnapped. They said we don't have any hospitals there. There's no medical ability for you to get if you get sick.
They said we closed down our embassy, our consulate. There's nothing there. All Americans evacuated out. And many people were saying that this is the greatest humanitarian crisis that's ever existed since we started recording humanitarian crises. Um Yeah, Ed, I mean, your ministry is right in the middle of what's going on there.
And just, I don't know, I mean, maybe give us a backstory of the. Maybe just I mean they just got bombed a few days ago. Um from what I heard from a drone. And um but yeah, if you could just maybe give us a little back story of what's going on in Sudan, just kind of paint the picture and then we'll jump in into what what the uh persecution project's doing. Yeah, well, thank you for helping us shed a little bit of light on the situation there.
And you're correct. Even the United Nations has. recently come out and said over the last couple of years, this is the world's worst humanitarian crisis going on in Sudan.
So when you put that into the light of all the wars and conflicts going around the world, I mean, that That puts it in perspective. You've got about a quarter of the population. That have been internally displaced from their homes. And it's not going from one village to another, it's going from the country to another country.
So it takes.
sometimes months for these people to walk out. And as a result of the population moving. There's a massive famine that's going on as well. And we've been told by the doctors that we support in Sudan that there are about three hundred or more children dying each day from what they call severe wasting. That's a situation where the Famine has gotten so bad, the malnutrition, that even if you gave them food grown locally, Those children and even adults, the pregnant mothers, the elderly.
Those individuals, when they get to that point, they can't even process food grown locally.
So you have to actually get in there medically. And provide them with IVs, solutions, and also a formulated food that will get them back to the point where they can process food. Wow. Normal food. Wow.
That's crazy.
So, you mentioned that you're part of what the Persecution Project does is try to kind of like help give some of that medical aid, some of that food aid. How how is that working right now with Not being able to really get in there, how are you getting any supplies there? Do you have what you need there currently?
Well, we are we just have a team, had a team in there just over the last week or so. But we partner with the local Indigenous church.
So it's also they're on the ground, they're there. We partner with the hospital staff. At Jagaba Hospital, for instance, we have almost 100 medical personnel. We have doctors, nurses, maternity ward. We have those individuals that we provide what they need, and they're helping.
Of a severely wasting situation. And they're also going out into the IDP camps, the internally displaced people camps. And for those who are too sick to even come to the medical facilities. They're taking this emergency medical food out there and ministering to the people who are in need there as well.
So it's always been a covert operation to some degree for us. We can't go through the when Khartoum, which is the capital of Sudan, was actually open. And had a viable airstrip where you could land international airspace. We couldn't even go through there because they recognized us, they would arrest. us and and put us in prison so we've never done that wow so we just we come up through other means to get up into the into the newba region yeah the team that you guys sent in a week ago are they still there Mm.
Um No, I believe they've come out. Was that Americans that went? Didn't that team or was that uh n um Yeah, it was a mixture.
Okay. A mixture of. Yeah, I mean, that's crazy just to think that people are risking their lives to. To do that, even the indigenous. I mean, they're risking their lives every day, obviously, but.
They are. It's actually gotten worse. You know, some of the you asked me for photos that you could share along with this.
Some of those photos took place on some of my trips. Where I've been bombed, I've been shot at. We've had artillery shells shot into our locations. We've had to jump into foxholes, we've had to hide in caves and things like that. But since this past Thanksgiving, they've They've actually started using drone warfare.
which you mentioned, Brent, earlier. That there was a recent drone attack. They're dropping bombs from these drones, and the drones are much quieter. And so you can't hear them coming. They used to use these antiquated Antonovs, Russian cargo planes.
You could kind of hear them in the distance. That would give you time to get into a safer place, a hole, a foxhole, or a ditch or a cave. But now you don't hear that.
So it's very quiet. They do surveillance, they look for high population areas. They'll bomb churches, they'll bomb medical facilities, they bomb marketplaces. Any place where there are a lot of people gathered, they'll drop these bombs from these large drones. You know, I used to think drones were like.
Small, but these are massive drones. Yeah, that's well funded. Yeah. Yeah, pretty good-sized bombs. Yeah, so this is a civil war, obviously.
So, do both sides have drones? I think both sides are using drones. Yeah. But for the Nuba people, where we're working, it's about the size of the state of Georgia. Kind of.
In Sudan, it's located in the southern part of Sudan. It's not in South Sudan, but it's in the southern central section of Sudan. And uh It's predominantly the Sudan armed forces that are using the drones against the Nuba people.
Okay, and the Nubia. The rapid support forces, who are the other Islamist Military, they're fighting for control of the country, they're using them against the Sudan armed forces primarily. Oh. You had mentioned that you have some stories. Like, you've been there yourself a couple of times, and you mentioned how there were.
There used to be where you could hear the bombs coming and you would jump in the foxholes. You've done that before. Can you share a story like that with us? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we were in a uh in a village.
meeting some individuals as we came in and We got word that the Antonoff was on its way, and so we got into a cave situation, my whole team. And sure enough, they did bomb that area where we were. We could hear the plane slowing down. You can kind of, you know, when you're driving in a car out there in this area. You kind of keep your eyes on the people.
You know, if the people are looking up, there may be a plane coming overhead. You can keep, you kind of slow down and you might stop if people are looking up into the sky. If the people are running, then you stop and you get out and you jump into a ditch of some sort, anything to give you a little bit of protection from flying shrapnel. But in this particular case, there was an Antonoff coming. We got word, we got into a cave, and the Antonov dropped four bombs on our location.
So when each bomb hit, we could feel it. It was close enough. You could feel the ground shake. And when we came out of that cave, we noticed that the opposing hillside. We were on one mountain, there was a valley, and then the next mountain was probably about a quarter mile away.
That's where the bombs hit. That bombs actually, all four of them hit on that opposing, so about a quarter mile from us. And there was one instance where we were on a Sunday morning. Me, we were going to have church service. We were pretty far up in the Nuba.
On the other side of the mountain, was the Sudan Armed Forces, and we were having tea and coffee with the pastor. Just prior to the service, I would say maybe about 10 a.m., we were having tea and coffee. And so At 10 a.m., the Sudan armed forces on the other side of the mountain started lobbying artillery shells into our area. And I'm sitting next to the Sudanese pastor, and I turned to him and I said, Does this happen every Sunday? And the Sudanese pastor turned to me and said, Yes, they know exactly when we're trying to worship, and they try to disrupt our service.
So at that point, I started counting. And over the course of the hour, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., the Sudan Armed Forces shot 40 artillery shells into the region where we were going to have church. And then at 11 a.m., all of a sudden, you know, it was very rhythmic.
So you could kind of get a sense of when the next artillery shell was going to get shot. The people who were doing it must have been loading. It would shoot, they would put the next one in. It was very regular.
So at 11 a.m., all of a sudden the artillery stopped. And after a few minutes I turned to the pastor again and I said, Okay, well It sounds like the artillery stopped. You know, we're not really sure, but what do we do now? And he said, Well, we just go out and worship. You know, he didn't even want to wait.
And so, sure enough, we went out there, we had church under a tree. He had a metal pulpit that he stood behind. That metal pulpit had shrapnel holes in it. And then from the caves, these people were living in caves in this area just to avoid the attacks. From the caves, they started coming out.
In that church service, we had about 150 people there, and it was the most powerful church service I think I've been a part of. Wow. Do they do that as a scare tactic or do they think that the church service is happening between the hours of 10 and 11? No, I think they just want to dissuade people from worshiping Christ. You know, the military, well, the government of Sudan is run by Islamists.
And so they want Sharia law in place throughout the whole country. And this pocket in the Nuba has a majority of the Christians. And so they would like to either eradicate them or get them out of the country, chase them away. Wow. Well, when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about more stories that you have for one thing, because not only does it take a tremendous amount of courage on the behalf of those in the persecution project who actually go in, you are risking your lives to save our brothers and sisters in Christ.
We are a universal church as believers. We are not just here in America or in your own little pocket of your congregation. We want to love. Fervently, those brothers and sisters all around the world. And so, when we come back, you're not going to want to miss some of these very powerful stories about our brothers and sisters and what they are facing for the cause of Christ.
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Welcome back to Hope in the Morning. I am joined today not only with my husband, who is the executive director of Hope in the Morning, but I'm also joined with Ed Lyons. And he works with the Persecution Project, and they give aid to our Christian brothers and sisters over in Sudan. It's a very important ministry.
So, Ed, thank you for joining us again. Thank you. Appreciate you having me on, letting the people know what's going on over there. Yeah, Ed, could you just give us a background of the Persecution Project, how it came to be, maybe the history of that in regards to where Sudan was at the time, where the Nuba people were then, maybe how it's transformed since it started to where it is now, and just kind of paint the picture of the ministry that you're involved with. Yeah, Persecution Project Foundation's been around working in Sudan for nearly 30 years.
We've been One of the longest standing humanitarian groups to be in there. And we've had quite an experience. We have a partnership with over 400 pastors, indigenous Sudanese pastors. They're an amazing people. They're hardworking.
They're faithful. They risk their lives day in and day out to plant churches and to help other people know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And they have this joy, this inner peace that even in the midst of the struggle and I would say probably if you gathered everybody together. I would say 50% of them have some sort of a A traumatic experience in their lives. They've either lost a loved one or been injured themselves, or they've lost their homes or their business or anything like that.
So, in the midst, I like. For example, the name Hope you know in in the morning i mean it's a perfect A perfect description of the Sudanese Christians in the Nuba region. They have hope in the midst of their suffering. And so it's always a privilege. You know, I go over there thinking I'm helping them, but really, they have helped increase my faith.
And I like bringing back their stories, you know. Uh As far as the country is concerned, since 1956, The Muslim Brotherhood really has dominated Sudan and it's transformed that nation into a factory that is supplying global terror networks. I would say 85% of their existence has been in warfare. And so you've got these. Young children who are growing up knowing nothing but war, and as they get into positions of power, I mean, what can you expect out of a A group of people that has experienced nothing but war and trauma.
And so the cycle of that just continues.
So the only way to break that cycle is to introduce Jesus Christ into the hearts of men and women. And so, I mean, it's an amazing thing to see the transformation. And so we do a whole bunch of different things. We we obviously help with medical, as we mentioned before, but we also do a lot of audio Bible distributions and pastor training. We do distribute some hard copy scriptures in English and Arabic.
And some of the New Testaments in their language, local. tribal languages. But you know the the population itself probably has a literacy rate of maybe 55% or so.
So audio Bibles. Also, containing the scriptures in Arabic and English and some of the local languages. I mean, that's the way to change the hearts because people, it's an auditory society.
So they sit around and they tell stories over dinner and share that way and they learn that way. The audiobibles, we're hoping to do about 10,500 this year, distributing 10,500 audio Bibles.
So do I remember correctly that those are solar powered? They are, solar power. They're pretty incredible. They are. They're really amazing.
You've got to imagine the area where we're working hasn't changed much since the days of Jesus.
So you go back in time. There's no paved roads. There's no running water. There's no septic lines in homes. Only in some of the bigger cities do you have electricity.
There's no cell coverage. There's none of that.
So you've got people who are hardworking. You might be a doctor or a teacher, but you're also a farmer. You've got to raise your own food. And so that's kind of the environment of what's going on. But just recently, since April 15th of 2023, the wars have changed.
Now it's two Islamic military generals fighting for control. And they're using that as another opportunity just to attack the Christian population. The Christians have always been a target, but you know, this is just another opportunity for that bullseye to be put on them.
So we come alongside the Christians. They encourage us with their faith, and we try to support them with relief and supplies, medical, safe water. We're the only group in there right now doing borehole repairs. The water comes up through a borehole, and those break down because it's usually being used 24/7.
So you've got a lot of. Moving parts, metal on metal. You've got chains and you've got kids pumping the wells, and so things break down.
So, in order to provide clean, safe drinking water, we send out a team to go to these boreholes that are broken. And they've been doing repairs. Last year we did 167. But we've probably provided, so we started this in about 2012, 2011, 2012. And we've probably provided over a million people with clean, safe drinking waters.
Wow. Ed, you shared some incredible stories with Brent and I when we were at the NRB with you. I'm thinking back to what you were just saying now with there being no cell coverage there. And so there's no way to warn other Christians when you, even if you were to hear of an attack coming or you know, oh, they're targeting this pocket right now, they're looking for the Christians, there's no cell coverage. And so I think it was in your Exodus video that you talk about these amazing men who actually went out door to door and how the Lord.
did an incredible form of protection. Can you tell us that story? Oh my goodness, yeah, that's an amazing documentary film. It's the Exodus film. And you can actually find that at NubaExodus.com.
It's a 24-minute film. It's a true story of a pastor in Sudan named Musa, that's Arabic for Moses. And he was a pastor in Khartoum.
Now, Khartoum was the capital, so they had all that stuff. They had running water, electricity, they had banks. It was big. It was a city of about 8 million people when the fighting started. And there were pockets of Nubans who had gone up to Khartoum to find work.
So some of them had been there for decades up in the capital, but they're predominantly the Christian population.
So you've got a whole bunch of Christians living in the capital. When the fighting started on April 15th, 2023, a lot of people were warned ahead of time to get out of the capital because the fighting was gonna start there between these two Islamic generals. And but the Christian population wasn't told to get out.
So you have these Christians and others who didn't escape that were in their apartment complexes. Trying to wait out the fighting, but the fighting kept going. The bombs were going. And so after a few weeks, you know, they're in need of getting out for fresh water because everything started shutting down. All the electricity was off.
All the businesses were closed. There was death everywhere.
So you had these people who were holed up in their apartments, and they were going out looking for water, looking for food. And you even had snipers up on buildings that were targeting the Christian neighborhoods. You know, we had some. Members of our some team members of ours who had relatives in Khartoum and they were killed by snipers.
So we have that situation going on and this pastor, Musa. Decides he needs to help try to evacuate the Christians. It's kind of like a Schindler's List type of documentary. at great risk to himself. He employs the help of an evangelist named Emmanuel.
So, you have Musa, Moses, and Emmanuel helping rescue Christians out of Khartoum. And at that point, they were able to get in touch with us, some of our workers, our logistics officer, and so they put a plan in place where we would. Fund Persecution Project was funding buses. And Emmanuel and Musa were going throughout Khartoum neighborhoods, reaching the Christians and telling them: if you want to leave Khartoum, you have to show up at a certain time in a certain place. You can only bring what you can carry.
There's not a lot of extra room. And uh we That first year, 2023, after the fighting started, we rescued thousands and thousands of Christians out of the capital and at great expense. you know at one point Emmanuel was uh approached by two armed gunmen in the streets, And he had on his cell phone, he had all the names of the Christians he was reaching. And they told him to empty his pockets. They had him on his knees.
They had his hands behind his head. And they put the barrel of the weapon against his forehead. And they were frisking him. And Emmanuel says he was very afraid, you know, and their hands went down. He hadn't pulled out the phone because he knew all the names of the Christians were on this phone.
And the hands came down. They got near the phone, he says, but they didn't find the phone. With tears in his eyes in his documentary, he says. Then I remember my name, Emmanuel. He says, God was with me at that time.
And so it's just a powerful story. And there's so many stories like that. Absolutely. The Nuba region, how far away or how far did you have to rescue the people or how far away from Khartoum did they have to go? At that time, boy, sometimes those buses would take weeks or even a month to get from Khartoum.
Not normally, like when it wasn't warfare going on, you know, it might take a day journey. But during this time of fighting, there were checkpoints, military checkpoints. I think they had to go through 14 from Khartoum all the way down to the Nuba region, and half were of the Sudan armed forces. and half were from the rapid support forces. And every time at a checkpoint, they would get on and they would look through and they would You know, we couldn't really rescue young men who were of fighting age.
We rescued women, children, and the elderly. They would pull out the young men and either conscript them into service for themselves or worse, you know, so. Yeah. How did they get past those checkpoints as Christians? Did they just was that a concealed part of their identity?
Nobody knew that that's who they were. It just was known as this is just rescuing women, children and the elderly. Right, yeah, it was just people fleeing the fighting. And there was such a chaotic. Mass exodus everywhere, people leaving villages all over the place.
Wow. And, you know, one. This didn't happen to our buses, but I had heard of other buses. That were attacked by drones because, once again, you have people, a large concentration of people in the bus. And I had heard that the civilian armed forces had used drones against some of the buses.
So none of our buses were hurt or hit. Wow. You know, I mean, if you're listening to this on the radio. Ed has a ton of these stories, and these stories they're going to strengthen your faith because you're going to see that these men and women and children even in these regions say, you know what, this is this is Terrible things that we're going through. We've watched our loved ones die in front of us, but Jesus is worth it.
And so, I hope that as you're listening to this, it's challenging your faith. And you're thinking, do I have that kind of faith? Would I be willing to withstand the hardships that they are? When we come back on the podcast portion of this, we're going to talk about more of these stories and we're going to talk about what does life look like for the average Christian out there.
So, if you're listening on the radio, follow us on our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, or subscribe and watch all of our videos on YouTube at Hope in the Morning Backstage. You're not going to want to miss any of this episode. It's going to strengthen your faith and it's going to equip you to pray for our brothers and sisters across the world. Join us again on Hope in the Morning.
So going forward with that, um Man, I would love to kind of talk a little bit about what life looks like for the average Christian? What does life look like for For the Nuba people, that once you get them to this location, I know that part of what the Persecution Project does is you try to supply what they're going to need there. Am I correct in thinking that it's pretty remote, the Nuba area? It's very remote.
Okay. Okay. Can you tell us the story about how some of these people get water that you were explaining to us again at the NRB? It's pretty like this, these are just mind-blowing stories. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
We were in that area where everybody was sleeping in caves. They had moved their families out of the lowlands where they were raising crops. and they were actually moved. All of their possessions into caves. In fact, our team on that trip.
We couldn't find a cave to sleep in.
So they were all full.
So we ended up sleeping outside a cave. We just put a blanket on a rock and tried the best we could to sleep that night. The next morning, when we woke up, you know, we had carried in our bottles of water, you know, so. The next morning, it occurred to us: where are because it was mountainous rage, boulders the size of cars, you know, on top of each other. And so it occurred to us, we're like, where are these people getting the water?
And then we saw this young girl named Remus. and she was probably about 11 years old. and she had an empty jerry can on her head. The women carry everything on their heads. The empty jerry cans about five gallons.
And when you fill it up with five gallons of water, that's 40 pounds of water that this girl is going to be carrying back to her home. But at that point, we didn't know where she was going.
So we said, hey, you know, and she wasn't alone, there were other women. with jerry cans on their heads going further up the mountain. And so we decided, hey, we'd like to See where they're getting the water.
So we followed Remus up. And she went for A good hour or so climbing on boulder after boulder, and she got to this cave. This one was 20 feet down.
So she went 20 feet down. And we followed her down with all these other women. And then she got on her belly and she crawled under the rocks, the boulders, and she had there was a little metal can. Um like you would drink out of a tin tin cup. It was by a little puddle of water that was about this big.
And she would fill that cup up.
Somebody would pull her out by her ankles. She'd pour that cup into her jerry can. She'd go back under, and they would do this until this jerry can is filled with water. And once it was filled, she climbed 20 feet back up. And then another hour or so down to her.
House. And they would have to do that a couple of times a day. Wow. So. After she was done, I wanted to see what this little puddle of water looked like.
So I got on my belly and I crawled under this thing. The rocks, now, of course, I'm bigger than she is. She's very thin and I'm heavy. But the rocks were hitting my back. And so they couldn't have been far above her back.
And it was just a very claustrophobic type of feeling and very uncomfortable. But you do what you have to do to get fresh water.
So, wow. In other places, they hand-dig wells. If their borehole breaks, they hand-dig wells, which are open. To the environment. And so then you have all these insects and creatures that are polluting that water source.
And of course, the people have to drink something.
So, you know, they end up getting a lot of diseases through these open.
wells that they hand dig.
So it's very, very vital to Repair the boreholes that have been put all over the Nuba region.
So, the Nuba region, how densely populated is that? How many people are in the Nuba region? Before this current war started, I would say the beginning of 2023, there were about 3 million people.
Now there's over 5.5 million people living there. Oh, yeah. two and a half million over the last three years and uh you know a couple of months.
Now is that what yeah, is that is that exacerbating the uh the the famine? Is that why? Because you've okay, the there's too many people for what the land can produce. Yes, yeah.
So when, especially when they first, and these are city folks from Khartoum coming down to a very remote. Um Rural setting.
So you've got people who don't really know how to grow their own crops, and the growing season is. Is something if you arrive at the beginning of the dry season, you're going to go six months before the rains begin.
So it's dry from, say, October through May. And then from May through September, it's kind of raining. It gets very heavy in July and August.
So you can get two growing cycles typically. But people who arrive in the dry season They have to wait. And they have to learn.
So the people who are living in the Nuba, Are taking these individuals in and they're helping them learn how to plant, how to grow. They're providing what they can. You know, it's a predominantly Christian region, and so the church is coming alongside a lot of these internally displaced people, and they're trying to help as much as they can. But the famine has increased, exacerbated because of the war that's going on.
Now, am I correct? I read a little bit about. uh I guess, the history of of the civil war. But is it is is are is one group identifying as being historically Arab and another group being identifying as being historically African? Is that how it works in Sudan?
Well, it's kind of interesting. There was a guy by the name of Omar al-Bashir. He was the president of Sudan for about 30 years. In 2019, he was ousted in a popular uprising. And uh Two of his generals are now fighting for control.
So they were both part of. The Sudan Armed Forces. Al-Burhan is the general in charge of the SAF, the Sudan Armed Forces. and Hamedi is in charge of the rapid support forces.
Now the rapid support forces are more of a mercenary type of A branch. They're not part. They weren't under the umbrella of the Sudan Armed Forces. Uh they were Kind of a special force. put in place by Bashir.
uh to produce havoc and destruction. Even Hamedi, he's not Sudanese. He's more of, well, he comes from Chad, I believe. And a lot of the people fighting in the RSF are not Sudanese.
So they're mercenaries being. paid out of what they can get from the attacks on the villages that they attack.
So you've got RSF versus SAF, and it's just really destroying the country. Yeah, and then the other thing I read was that one side's being funded by the Saudis, the other side's being funded by the Emirates. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of other countries, a lot of other actors. I just recently heard that Iran was giving the SAF drones for using the drones.
Yeah, I mean, you'd have to wonder how a country that poor could continue military operations and that it's coming from outside. Yeah, yeah, primarily, yeah.
So it used to have a lot of oil revenue, but in 2011, South Sudan separated from Sudan.
South Sudan is the most recent. Country in the world. And so they got their vote for independence because they had a 23-year civil war with. Uh, the Sudanese army and the south predominantly Christian. Uh, so when they separated, most of the oil fields were in South Sudan, but the pipeline still runs up through Sudan out to the Red Sea.
So, Sudan does get a, you know, some sort of a take on the oil revenues that are coming out of South Sudan. Yeah, but yeah, they're being funded by other countries, both sides. What can you tell us about maybe what the church looks like in the Nuba region? How many churches are there? How many pastors are there?
I mean, you said that the Nuba region is the size of the state of Georgia, right? Yeah, so I mean that's that's a big thing about Georgia. There's probably a lot of churches in in the state of Georgia, but yeah, I mean what it what is it what does it look like you had well I was just gonna say well I was just gonna say real quick that for those for those listeners that are more like me and less like my husband who are less geographically inclined The Sudan region, the country of Sudan is actually one of the largest countries in Africa. And so I think that's important to know even how like your efforts to try and help these people in this area, it's a huge area for you guys to be working in. And so I know that that kind of helped me in my understanding in this because again, my husband, he understands geography and politics and me not so much.
No, I don't know. When I look or hear about something like this, I often think, well, you know, what does it look like? What kind of city in America would it be compared to? I guess there's 50 million people in Sudan, which is, if you think about it, the largest state in America is California with I think 30 or 32 million people. Yeah.
And but Khartoum was more densely populated than even Manhattan, from what I understood. And now, you know, with the famine, I mean, you just think about a city in America, just their food supply being wiped out and then having that dense population and then bombs being dropped on it on top of that. And the the the picture, we try to you know try to bring it to life. And try to think through it, like, what would that look like here, sort of a thing. But yeah, I mean, Talk to us about that, Ed.
I'd love to hear more about what we just kind of opened up.
Well, for your listeners and viewers who may not be familiar with. the geography of Africa. Sudan is right below Egypt.
So, you've got some big countries that people are familiar with. It's Right below Egypt, and Eritrea is on the east side of it, and you've got a little border with Ethiopia, you've got South Sudan in the south. You've got some Chad, you've got some big countries next to it. Emily, you said it was one of the largest countries. Before the division between Sudan and South Sudan, it was the largest country in Africa.
And so, yeah, now Sudan is still one of the largest countries in Africa, but it used to be the biggest one. Um Yeah, so you've got the area where we're working is about the size of the state of Georgia. They have quite a few states within the country of Sudan. And we're working in southern Cordovan State, which is also known as the Nuba region or Nuba Mountains. And so that region has right now five and a half plus million people in it.
So, if you know, if you put it in perspective, if you take the state of Georgia, I'm not sure how many people live in Georgia, but there's a lot of land available in the Nuba region.
So, these individuals who are fleeing, you know, they can come down, they set up a temporary home. in in an IDP camp, you know, an internally displaced people's camp. And they set up a temporary structure. You know, they might make it out of sticks or. A lot of times they'll dig bricks out of the mud.
It's kind of a clay type of mud there. And they'll let those bricks dry for eight days. And then you can build, you know, they call their homes tuchels.
So you can build your tuchel with bricks, but mostly the temporary ones are made out of sticks. And then they get grass and they put the grass on top as their roofing material.
So We come in and we try to help even with these internally displaced camps. We'll come in and see what the needs are. We try to coordinate with the pastors who work in the areas. The church is doing outreach so that the people, when they know, you know, if they need help, they can go to the pastor. And in the process, you know, if these individuals are not Christian already, and even if they are, they can be encouraged in Christ by the pastor, but they can be led to Christ by the pastor if they're Muslim or if they're animist.
Uh, coming down out of the rest of Sudan, coming into, in fact. Um last year when I was there. I was talking with one of the pastors. And he said, you know, there's that verse, Romans 8, 28, where, you know. Everything works for the good, even in the mourning or in the conflict or in the trials.
And so he said, what we're seeing here is one of those instances where individuals who may never have heard the gospel, because they've fled the fighting elsewhere. They're coming into the Nuba region. And here we have the opportunity to minister to them and to present the good news of Jesus Christ. You know, that was pretty sweet. They have a lot of different denominations there.
Sudan Church of Christ is perhaps the biggest denomination in the Protestant. Church, but they also have Lutherans and Episcopalians, and they have Methodists and some of those other big denominations.
Now, do they line up exactly as U.S. in that regard? No, they're probably more conservative over there than we are in our denominations. What I've noticed is they really stick to the Word of God. They really preach the word and And the people have that hope, like I said before, because their hope...
What I've likened it to is when Moses is talking to the people as they leave Egypt. The Israelites. And he's saying, beware when you go into the promised land. You know, you're going to be. You're going to be drinking out of cisterns or wells that you didn't dig, and you're going to be eating from trees you didn't plant, and you're going to have all this abundance.
He said, Beware then that you might forget. the Lord. Um in Sudan, in the Nuba region, these These individuals who reside there. They're relying upon the Lord. I mean, they don't have.
What we have in the US, they don't have these umbrellas to help you to catch you. And, you know, say, say, you're, they don't have food programs.
So the church steps up, and the church helps.
So they're relying upon the Lord, and I see their faith is much deeper than, say, the average American faith. And how has that transformed your faith and challenged your own faith as you? As you see these people that are, I mean, they're losing everything. Their homes, their health, their family members, they've lost everything. And yet They choose to have faith.
They choose to have hope. How has that affected your faith personally? Wow. Yeah, I mean, it can't help but grow your faith when you see them living. There was a pastor I talked to, Dirya was his name.
He had been locked up 16 times for preaching the gospel. And the last time. There are some areas within the Nuba that are still under the control of the Sudan armed forces.
Okay, there are a few little pockets, little areas, villages. And uh one of those Dear sense that the Lord was telling him, Go and witness to that place. And so Dirio was telling his friends, he said, I'm being told to go and evangelize that area under the control of the civilian armed forces. And they looked at him and said, Dario, you're crazy. You've already been locked up 15 times.
They're going to lock you up or they'll kill you if you do that. And he said, Well, I have to do what the Lord tells me to do.
So he went, and sure enough, they locked him up. And this time they put him in jail underground. It was an underground jail. And every morning he said they would have little vents, I guess, going up to the surface. And every morning the guard would come over his cell and yell down, Daria, did your, you know, kind of mocking, Daria, did your God save you last night.
Yeah. And Daria would look up and he would say, Yes, my God is faithful. He saved you. And it turns out they had poisonous snakes down underground. You know, sometimes.
Inmates there would be bit by these poisonous snakes and die. And he even relayed a story about the snake coming into his cell. And he had a little conversation with the snake, and he basically said, Snake, what are we going to do now? And right then, he said, Another little creature came into his cell, and the snake got distracted. And he went after that other creature.
I don't know if it was a rat or a mouse or whatever, but. Left Deary alone and he survived again. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Seeing those. the that faith in people. has got to do something for you when you see it through the band. Does it does that give you like almost an extra Excitement, I want to say, when you go over there to minister, because you know, wow, I'm going to get to witness a faith that I don't really get to witness here in the States and Break bread with brothers and sisters who have sacrificed everything and yet they're faithful. Yes, absolutely.
One of the most I don't even want to say heartbreaking. It's not really heartbreaking. But one of the most encouraging stories was with a man over there named Abdulaziz. And uh He suffers from cerebral palsy.
So, understanding his words is a little difficult, but the man is always smiling, he's always joyful. When we first met him years ago, Uh In order to get anywhere. He would either have to be carried or he would crawl through the dirt In Sudan. And they have thorn bushes over there with two-inch thorns. And so.
You know, the first thing we did for Abdulaziz was we brought him a wheelchair tricycle. It's hand-printed. You know, he doesn't have very good use of his legs, but with his hands, he was able to learn how to ride this bicycle. Tracyle, and so now he's able to get around, and he's a farmer, he does very good farming, and so. It was maybe a few years ago now.
I was in his village. And he saw me. He saw me, I was on my way to do another outreach. And I hear him off in the distance trying to get my attention. And I didn't know who it was at the time, so I looked up, and there's Abdulaziz off in the distance.
He's probably, you know. Probably a good quarter mile from me or so. And I waved at him, and but I had to get to my appointment. And then when I came back to my compound, Abdulaziz was there, and so he stayed, and we had dinner together. And then it got to be nighttime where we're going to bed, and I said goodbye to Add to Laziz.
I assumed at that time that he had gone back to his house. And I went to bed and went to sleep. And in the middle of the night, there was a torrential downpour. Monsoon-type rain. It woke me up, and I remember sitting up in bed, and I remember looking out the window and actually verbalized.
You know, thank you, Lord, that I'm not out in this rain. And I was able to go back to sleep when I woke up in the morning. I looked out my window and I see Abdulaziz, and he's. Off of his wheelchair tricycle, and he's under the tailgate of one of our trucks. And he's sitting in the mud.
and he's under the tailgate to try to get out of the rain. And so I'm thinking to myself, Abdul Aziz has come back for breakfast. He wants to see us again.
So I sent one of our workers out to get him and bring him in. And I asked him, I said, Abdul Aziz, I said, when did you get here this morning? He said I didn't go home. No. He said, I stayed here all night.
And so all night during this massive storm. He's sitting in the mud. Under our truck. you know, stooped underneath the truck. And so I asked him, I said, well, why, why?
Do you need something? What do you need? And he looked at us and he said, I would like an audio Bible. And he said, I was afraid if I went home, I wouldn't get back in time. I didn't know what time you were leaving in the morning.
And so I just stayed all night. And I'm thinking, boy, I wish he had asked me last night. I would have given him one and he could have slept in his own bed. But he didn't, he waited all night. Uh we gave him the audio Bible and um You know, he was just so joyful, but he's always joyful.
Just his desire for the word of God. You know, just struck me as something very, very sweet and, um, What a blessing. That's the heart of most of the people out there. They really want the Word of God. It makes me think, too, about the fact that.
Sometimes, when people are praying for mercy, when they're praying to the Lord, Lord, be merciful to me, be gracious to me, see me in my affliction and help me. I can't help but think how sometimes the persecution project is that answer. To prayer, you guys are the mercy of the Lord coming in. And also, for our listeners that are hearing right now, sometimes you are the mercy. But as believers, we want to look for ways that we can show the grace and the mercy of God.
And sometimes that looks like a phone call.
Sometimes that looks like coming in and offering medical aid or bringing the word of God or sitting with someone at the hospital. You can be that answer to prayer. And you can be that hope where it makes people realize God does hear me. He does see me. I'm not alone in my affliction.
And the fact that you guys are willing to go into go into these regions, but you're not removed. From the people. I think that's one of the most incredible, impactful things about a ministry that's effective is that you. You create these relationships with these people. And as you've demonstrated even today, Ed, you know their names.
You remember their names, they're not just obscure people. To you, they're brothers and sisters and people that you have come to care about and love. How often have you actually gone over to Soudan yourself? I used to go once a quarter. And uh lately I've been going maybe twice a year.
Okay. Okay. And I know, Brent, you had mentioned that right now they're not allowing Americans. They're saying don't go. I'm sure the Department of State has said that for a long time.
Long time. Yeah, but it's interesting because we were talking on the way over here. You know, Hope in the Morning. We partner with the missions organizations that do the crazy stuff. I mean, the other, we have a Greg Barshall, who's on our board of directors, his ministry is in Haiti, and the stories there are just, I mean, it's crazy.
Another country, obviously, on the Department of State's list. Do not go there. You won't come back.
Well, same, we have another ministry that we have featured as well, which is in Nigeria, and it's called Carry Them. And they minister to these mothers and these starving infants, and they teach them lactation services. And they're able to get the same thing. They're able to get these women who would not otherwise be able to be around Christians and they're able to give them tangible help. And be the hands and feet of Christ.
And then these women actually get sent to them because they see the results of their work and they're able to share the gospel. But I mean, what a privilege it's been for us at Hope in the Morning to sit down and talk with you guys with these different ministries because they challenge our faith too. I mean, this is the first episode that Brent has joined me for, but man, I mean, you probably couldn't even count how many times I've come home and talked about these different ministries. And yeah, I think it's important to get out of our American. Bubble, I don't like the word bubble, but you know, we're just a shield that we live in, or we don't think about other conflicts going on, and you're really drilling down into what that looks like on a day-to-day basis and what people are going through.
It does, I mean, not to, we would never want to minimize anything that anybody's going through, suffering or disease or death, anything like that, is going to be painful regardless of where you're at in the world. But it can help us with maybe more of the some of the problems that maybe sometimes we could focus on a little too myopically, I suppose.
Well, I loved what you said, Ed, that here you're talking about this young man who I obviously is facing a lot of hardships, physical hardships, and yet He's always rejoicing. Is what you said. And that's what Paul tells us to do, right? Is rejoice always despite your circumstances. And that's a big thing we want to do here on Hope in the Morning is that we don't, you know, we don't want to come on here and make it so people listen to these stories and they feel downtrodden when they're done or they feel like, oh man, that was really heavy.
We want people to listen and say, wow, I am filled with hope now because I can't believe that my brothers and sisters across the world, they're facing similar. similar trials, whether it's physical or I mean, you've shown us pictures too and told us stories of people that lost limbs in these bombings and yet they arrive at church and they are praising and we can encourage one another with our testimonies. That's what Hope in the Morning is for is to remind each other that, yes, this hurts and we're not going to diminish or discount the fact that what you're going through is real and it's painful. But God. That's the big focus of our ministry: is look how He was faithful to this man.
Look how He was faithful to this woman. The same God will be faithful to you. Have that hope. Have the same hope that you see in these Sudanese people. And I think that that is, it's such an incredible challenge to our own faith, too, to make us realize that that's our hope.
Our hope is in Christ and in who He is. I wanted to ask you to, you sent me a picture, and one of the pictures that I absolutely love that I think is one of the most powerful pictures that you have sent me is of the woman bowing her head. Yes. Can you tell us about that? Yes, uh that was the same church service where we were had artillery shells.
Shot at us 40 times in an hour. She showed up carrying a handmade cross. It was a metal cross that was welded together. And as they're playing their homemade instruments, and we're singing and rejoicing, and hearing a message, this is an elderly woman. She's carrying the cross and holding it up high in front of the congregation.
And then we had this time of prayer. And she's bowing with her hands on the cross. And it was just so demonstrative of where her faith was, you know, in the man who hung on the cross, Jesus, you know, God-man, and the way he made a way for all of us. And I think what you both just said was powerful. You know, it's about the hope.
And it's about the fact that God's at work, the same God that's at work in Sudan and in Nigeria and in Haiti, is also the God working in the United States.
So we have so many in the United States that are faithful. And it doesn't matter if you're elderly or if you have cerebral palsy, but God is going to use you. He's given you the ability to reach others that I wouldn't have the ability to reach. And He uses your circumstances, you know, no matter what you're in. A lot of times, it's going through that mourning season.
The passage that says joy comes in the morning after, you know, he brings us through the valley of the shadow of death and he allows us, he's with us.
So he allows us to have that ministry to others who are suffering.
So that's important to remember. Yeah, I mean, you see that in 2 Corinthians, where it talks about being able to comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves were comforted. But if you haven't had a season where you needed that, That comfort where you were crying out to the Lord, saying, Lord, do you see me? Do you see these tears that I'm crying when nobody else is around? And God comforts you.
I mean, the Holy Spirit comforts you. And one of the things I think that his. I guess resonated with me more since doing hope in the morning than ever before in my Christian walk is the fact that the same spirit indwells in each of us that are believers. And that has been such a powerful thing for me, even in light of how do we serve one another? And because I truly believe more than ever now that sometimes the Lord stirs that spirit within us and puts somebody's name, puts a ministry on our heart.
And, you know, you might be making eggs one day and you're thinking, oh, I remember that Persecution Project episode that I listened to. That could be the spirit being stirred inside of you to think, I'm going to stop what I'm doing. I'm going to pray for them for a second. And when we can learn to pray deeply for our brothers and sisters, that is so powerful. And so, speaking of which, like, how can we specifically pray for the people in Sudan and the Persecution Project?
Yeah, pray for the pastors out there and the Christian leaders in all the villages. I mean, One of the things we give them is backpack projectors so that they can show the Jesus film in Arabic. And some of these pastors are showing that on a Saturday night. And believe me, everybody in the village, when they hear there's a film being shown, These are also solar-powered projector systems. Everybody shows up.
So they see in their own language. The one that the gospel talks about. And then the pastor stands up afterwards and he says, Hey, If you want to know more about Jesus, this man that you've just seen in this film. Come back tomorrow. Come to our church service.
And the churches are filled after that.
So pray for the ministry outreaches. Pray for the Hospital staff as they minister to those who are suffering from that severe famine-like the conditions there. Pray for the peace that you were talking about, Emily, that it would just pervade their spirits because. They are under an extreme amount of stress because they don't know about these drones and the attacks and when it might be coming for them. It was hard enough before, but now.
The stress is a little bit more because the uncertainty of it all.
So just pray for God's protection and provision. You know, it has power to be upon the people there and pray for us as we try to support the existing church in any way that we can.
So, you know, we covet the prayers. Yeah. What are some of the tangible ways that we can help? Um help your ministry. Um I would say right now we're we're Putting about $150,000 a month into the emergency feeding program.
So, one way you could support us is by supporting the feeding program that we have. And how many people? We're actually putting that under medical services because the feeding program is going through the hospitals.
So, another way is we're trying to distribute 10,500 audio Bibles. And so, so far, we've We're up to about 6,100, I think, at this point.
So we still have a little ways to go. And so we need finances for each audio Bible. It costs us a little bit of money to cost us about $17 to buy an audio Bible, and then we have the distribution costs as well. And with fuel prices going up everywhere because of this Iran war, everything is costing more. You had mentioned the females in one of the countries.
One of the things I just heard this week is that the ladies are really wanting some of the hygiene kits that we provide to them. During that particular portion of the month, the young girls are not able to go to school if they don't have these, and the women can't go to the wells or even out into the marketplaces.
So, we're trying to provide the female hygiene kits as well. There's a lot of outreach that we're doing.
So, you know, any financial support, but definitely the prayer support is needed. Yeah, I know you were going to ask something about how many people it feeds. Yeah, I was just curious. $150,000. Kind of a multi-part question.
How far does that stretch? And then I guess the solution, the short-term solution to the famine is to bring in food from outside. But is there a longer-term solution towards? Indigenous growing or cultivation, husbandry of animals, anything like that? What's the long-term outlook for the famine?
Yeah, sure. Remember, this is an emergency feeding program.
So, this is for the people who are suffering so much from malnutrition that they can't eat the food grown locally.
So, we're trying to get them back to the point. Where they can digest and process the locally grown food. The hospitals are treating about two to three thousand. Children. Uh, pregnant women, lactating mothers, elderly each month.
So, that $150,000 is about $50 a person.
Some of these young children only take a couple of weeks to get them back to where they can live on the existing food that's there, but some take six weeks, you know. And it's not just the emergency food we're bringing in, it is also the IV solutions that are being administered and some of the other things that the hospital is doing.
So, but they are trying to grow their own crops so. Yeah, as long as the rain cycles, you know, are are consistent. They can do that. Yeah. Are there any other players in this space in the sense of like other organizations that are helping with this largest humanitarian crisis in the history of recording humanitarian crises?
What else is being going on? I mean, I know that Persecution Project does a lot of spiritual needs as well. But are there, I don't know, the geopolitical thing is I think that maybe a lot of people don't want to try to figure out the solution to that because it's a civil war that's being funded by massive countries. But as far as aid that's going in, I guess, to Sudan as a whole, but also the Nuba region, is anything else being done for that in that regard? Yeah, well the attacks on the Nuba Are threefold.
The reason is religious because they're predominantly a Christian.
Well, they're probably about half the population is Christian there.
So there's religious persecution, there's racial persecution, these are very dark African. People living in the Nuba, whereas you even said, Brent, and you were correct, that the government is really run by people that are more inclined towards. The Middle East, so they're lighter skinned, so there's a little bit of a racial type of thing, and then there's a political, they have a different political. party in the Nuba. Opposing the existing party that was in control of the government.
So you've got three reasons for the persecution, but the Christianity has been going on for, you know, the persecution against the Christians has been going on for a long time. There are a few other organizations there, not too many. I mean, you'd be surprised in this large area, there's not that many. That's really surprising. I thought you were going to say, oh, yeah, we got these, you know, the Red Crosses there, whoever, you know, but that's in 2011 when South Sudan gained its independence, Sudan, you know, this area we're working in, Southern Kordofan, was supposed to also have their right to self-determination.
So they were supposed to have a vote. They call this a contested area because they weren't given the, they fought really with South Sudan against Sudan. But they weren't given the right to vote.
So it's a contested area, still under the con in the confines of the Sudan region. They want independence and they weren't given it.
So, in 2011, the Sudan government put a humanitarian blockade around this region.
So, they wouldn't let any kind of supplies get in and the airspace. There's been no air, you can't fly a plane in and land because the government was watching the airspace. And so, everything does have to go in. covertly, you know, and uh So that's how we've been doing it.
So there aren't too many groups going in there. There are a few. In some of the groups Like Doctors Without Borders used to have some medical facilities in this region. They actually physically gave the government of Sudan their longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. And they said, We're a medical facility.
Here are our coordinates. Don't bomb us. No, the government used those coordinates to actually bomb the facilities.
So, yeah.
So, the Doctors Without Borders groups, they left the area.
So, they haven't been there for a while.
So, yeah, there's a handful of organizations. We've been there so long that we have great relationships. With the people there. And so, yeah. And we're not leaving because we do have those, we do know the people.
Ed, have you guys lost anybody on your team? To the violences out there. We just lost somebody a couple of weeks ago. He was one of our photographer videographers. Um his name was Yassin and uh he was killed.
Um He was shot on a Sunday and died on a Monday just a few weeks ago.
So he leaves behind a wife named Teresa and two young children, a boy and a girl.
So that was just a few weeks ago. Wow. So we can be praying for that. Our logistics officer is a guy named Abul when he was very young and in elementary school. His school was bombed because the government attacks high density places and schools are one of them.
And his school was bombed while he was in there. He lost his brother in the bombing. And I think 40 some odd children were killed during that bombing.
So, you know, he's our logistics officer, and he's the one that says, you know, about half of the population is extremely, you know, we call it post-traumatic stress disorder here, PTSD.
So we have that over here. Yeah, that was one of the things that struck me when we were talking in Nashville a few months ago, is just that. Tragedy is so deeply ingrained into every Christian's life over there. They have all Uh lost A child, a family member. I mean, it's if you took a church in America and you said every family in that church has lost a child, it'd be like, well, what?
That doesn't exist?
So just the depth of suffering and sorrow and Um the the pains over over death over there is just kind of unfathomable for for the for the American mind. It really is. There was one woman that we rescued out of Khartoum in 2023. Her name was Honey. Uh honey was She had four children and a husband in Khartoum.
And the bomb struck near where she lived. Honey lost one of her legs. Two of her children were killed. Her husband couldn't be evacuated with her.
So she and two of her children made their way on one of our buses later in the year. to the Nuba region and She hasn't seen her husband since then. And she lost two of her children, and she lost one of her legs.
So, I mean, that's just an example of one person suffering. And did she give you any testimonies of, I mean, after the fact when you talked to her, I mean, how did she process that? I mean, tell us maybe a little, drill down a little bit more on that. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because when she was in the IDP camp.
She was even there. You know, we were interviewing her and we were providing her with shelter tarps, you know, to put over her home. She had a temporary home, and of course, you know, the grass is only good for a little while. And when the heavy rains come, the rains can get into your. temporary house, so we would give her a tarp.
We would give her cooking utensils and things like that, but What struck me was she came to us and she said, Would you bring me? Yarn. And knitting needles. And apparently, Honey had a gift for knitting. And she said, There are a lot of young.
girls in this camp with me. that have nothing to do. And I would like to teach them knitting. And so we did. We brought in some of those things.
You know, suffering so much like this, you would think I'm not sure how I would react to that suffering, but in honey's case. She wanted to still help other people and she saw her gift, you know, what her gift was, and she was using it.
So that's interesting. Yeah, interesting you say that because maybe a lot of times the solution to suffering is to go be around other people and minister to them. A service. We talk about that actually here on Hope in the Morning, and not that there is necessarily. A solution per se.
You know, if you lose a loved one, if you lose your children, you're going to live with that grief forever. That it's not going to just go away. It really is not. And I don't know. I know that's not what you meant.
Right. But, um, but. There is so much healing that can be done when we turn our suffering into service. And I mean, you see that time and time again. I think that's exactly what you were talking about.
It's like you see that time and time again where. You are able to use whatever God has equipped you in. And I guess part of it is like, then you find purpose. You see, okay, the Lord still has a purpose for me. Even while my heart continues to be broken, I was going to ask you to do you guys, at the Persecution Project, Knowing how much trauma the people that you're working with have endured.
Do you guys offer any form of counseling? Or do you find that that is still just as helpful out there? Or what does that look like out there? We do. We actually host three trauma training workshops each year and have done that for the past, I don't know.
Maybe even as many as 10 years. At least for the last five or six years, we've been doing three Now, what's this training look like? Um These training sessions work with the local church.
So it might be a pastor, but it might be a leader in a church that wants to. Reach some of the individuals in their villages who are suffering from trauma. And they want to restore them, help restore them. And so the whole process is based out of scripture. and we bring them together, the people who want to go through this course.
We bring them together and teach them from the scriptures how to approach. These individuals and families who are suffering severe trauma in their villages and using scripture to bring hope and healing to them.
So we do actually do that. There was another man that we met in a village Quite by accident. We were in the village just having, we were on our way somewhere else and we were having coffee and tea. Um In this village, as we passed through, we just stopped. It was about midday.
And there was a man screaming in the middle of the marketplace. He was just screaming at the top of his lungs. And when we looked out, we saw him. He was just kind of rocking. He had extreme.
Uh trauma. And so we invited him in. To have tea and coffee with us. We wanted to know his story. And he kept saying they've taken everything from me.
And he was referring to the Sudan armed forces. He said, They've taken everything from me. And it turns out that they came in and they came into his village. He had a shop of some sort in the village. He had a home in the village.
He had a wife. He had children. They destroyed his house. They destroyed his Workplace, whatever he was involved with, they abducted his children and took his wife. And so he's all by himself.
And he's been like this for years. And so then we were talking to some people in that marketplace. And we asked, how long has this man been coming to the marketplace? He said, they said for years. He's been coming in every day, and he's just screaming at the top of his lungs.
They've taken everything from him. He's just suffering severe effects of trauma. And so while we were with him, we prayed for him, of course, and then we offered him an audio Bible. And we have earphones that go in, so he immediately put the earphones in and started listening to it. And uh fast forward a couple of years and we're going through that same village.
And we stop again, and we see the same man, and He's actually more in his right mind.
Now, he's not screaming at the top of his lungs. He's not rocking. Back and forth, and we invite him in again to have coffee and tea with us. And he's got that same audio Bible, he's been still listening to the audio Bible. And he tells us, he says, you know, these scriptures that you gave me, he said, they've really provided healing.
Uh to what I've been going through.
So In that case, it it wasn't a um It wasn't a planned outreach. But it was the word of God going into this man and giving him peace in the midst of his circumstances.
So, you know, and thank God he's still got the audio Bible. He's still listening to it. Have you found that there are certain scriptures that seem to be a comfort to the Sudanese people time and time again? I think the same scriptures that speak to us, you know. Yeah.
Psalm 23, you know, and uh I don't know, even Psalm 91, where it's God's protection over you as arrows are flying, you know, that you're not going to be harmed. All of those, my peace I leave with you. you know my piece i give you I don't give you as the world gives you, you know. All of those scriptures that talk to us talk to them.
So There's nothing new under the sun. We're humans. We have the same human nature and we have the same God that loves us, as you've mentioned, and wants to provide healing through his Son, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I think that shows it gives way to the power of scripture, too, that no matter where you're at in the world or what your circumstances have been, it's the same scriptures that comfort us. And obviously, there's hope in the whole of scripture.
But as you mentioned, there are some that are just balms to our aching hearts. And those are ones, even, I mean, if you're listening and you're going to be praying for this ministry or be praying for people in your own local church, pray scripture over them. That's an amazing thing. I know sometimes we think, I don't know how to pray for them. They lost their leg.
They lost their wife. They lost their place of work, their children. I don't know how to pray. Pick a psalm and pray it over them. I think that's a powerful thing.
And even I love this. I heard this. I don't know where I heard this, but years ago, I heard. Like, repeat God's promises to you back to God. I love that.
Because it's a reminder to us. God doesn't need the reminding, but for us to go to God and say, God, you promised you would never be faithful, never be unfaithful. You promised you would never leave me or forsake me. You promised to be my refuge. And we can pray those for others too: be their refuge, be their safety, be their peace.
And do that faithfully.
So, I mean, as we conclude this episode, I wanted to ask you, where can people learn more about the Persecution Project going forward? Our main website is persecutionproject.org.
Okay. Okay. Persecutionproject.org. You can also go to some of these that we've been talking about. NubaFamine.com talks about our efforts to provide the emergency therapeutic feeding.
And nubaexodus.com is where you can see a trailer about the Exodus film, about Musa and Emmanuel. Yeah, and tell us a little bit about how you go about churches, you visit churches and show them this film. If we have any churches listening that might be interested in giving their congregations maybe a 15-20-minute presentation on this, this, and exposing them to what's going on. Tell us how a church can get involved with this. Yeah, I do.
That's what I do. I go around churches throughout the U.S., and that's the reason I go over there to see that we're doing what I'm telling people we're doing.
So, yeah, my main job is to disseminate the information about what's happening, to get the word out about the church and the attacks against the Christians there in the Nuba. And I would love to come to any churches that were interested in seeing the Exodus film. It is a very short film, it's 24 minutes, and I could do a question and answer afterwards. My email address is ed.lions, L-Y-O-N-S at persecutionproject.org. O-R-G.
Yeah, and I would encourage people to have Ed to their church because we watched the film and it was just incredible. And I have to admit, I did not know. I mean, I don't know if I had my head in the sand or just, you know, I only read what comes across my Apple news feed, but I did not realize how. bad the problem was in Sudan. Big expands into the geopolitical arena, and especially what the Christians are going through over there and have been going through.
It's just, I think every church. person in America. Every Christian in America should know about this. Yeah. I mean, these are literally like we talked about.
These are our brothers and our sisters. And so, just like if you had extended family in a war zone, I mean, you think about when we had people in our own church that had family in Ukraine when that war was happening, we invested in those members in our church. We were invested in knowing how are your family members doing? Are they safe? Are they okay?
How can we pray for them constantly? And it's so important for us to remember that. These are our brothers and sisters across the world, and so can. care for them like family.
So that's I agree with you having the churches Learn more about this would be so powerful and exactly what we should do: you know, being the hands and feet of Jesus to one another. Yeah. And Ed's in Ed, you travel all over the U.S. Are you only on the East Coast? What do you do?
No, I do. I travel all over the place. I've been out to Soldotna, Alaska. That's like familiar with Soldotna. I was on the last road going west.
Wow. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, okay. Wow. Yeah, I've traveled all over.
Yeah, so wherever you're at listening, I mean, Ed can come and tell your congregation about this and expose them to. To this wonderful ministry, yeah. Yeah, and it's a powerful video. I mean, when we went and watched your video, and then when you came and talked about it at the NRB, that was like for us, we're like, man, we really want him to come and talk on Hope in the Morning because it's powerful. And I mean, you're a very impactful storyteller, too.
And it takes you there, it takes you into the lives of the Sudanese people, which then gives you a heart of compassion and empathy. And that's, you know, that's what our ministry is all about. And I think that's what your ministry is about too: is having this heart of compassion that stirs you to action.
So, thank you so much for joining us today on Hope in the Morning. It was such a pleasure. Yeah, thank you, Emily. Thank you, Brent. Appreciate you guys very much.
And God's working through you to. Highlight a lot of ministries. Yeah, you have a powerful ministry reaching. Your viewers and just keep it up, you know, be encouraged.
Well, thank you so much. And I would say, if you're watching this on the podcast or on the YouTube, subscribe to those so that you don't miss any of these amazing testimonies and so that you will be reminded to pray for our brothers and sisters. Thank you for joining us today on Hope in the Morning. Hope in the Morning is a non-profit ministry that seeks to encourage the hurting. Equip those who walk beside them, and evangelize the lost with the hope of Jesus Christ.
To partner with our ministry or to make a donation in your loved one's honor, please visit hope in the morning.org. Your donation helps keep these stories of hope on the air and helps tangibly meet the needs of the hurting.
