by Sam Childers
Sudan and Uganda are home to me now, every bit as much as the U.S. In some ways it’s actually easier for me over there than it is in America. I’m as well-known in the Sudanese bush as I am at the grocery store in Central City. I was helping Sudanese rebels before helping rebels was cool.
In those early days it was hard crossing from Uganda into Sudan. You had to have a visa and also a special permit. The Sudanese government wanted to know where you were going, what you were doing, and who you were doing it with. You couldn’t just go into Sudan and start running around on your own; you had to be tied into somebody who was already there working.
When I first started coming to Sudan, none of the other nonprofits or NGOs wanted to help the SPLA. But I helped them with money and military assistance. Since I carried truckloads of food into places where nobody else would go, the story got around about this white guy who was a preacher and helped the SPLA in various ways. People got to know me, and as I would come up to borders, I would say my name right away. A lot of border guards would even salute me and wave me through with, “Go ahead, Reverend, go ahead.”
These days I cross back and forth between Uganda and Southern Sudan and never have to show any paperwork. I always have a couple of soldiers with me, so most of the time they wave me on without even stopping. Because I supported the southern freedom movement, the army gave me a membership card to the SPLA. To this day I have an up-to-date SPLA card. When we bring teams in, the teams have to report at all the borders, but I hardly even get out of the car. Sometimes if I get out, I start talking with so many people I get tied up for an hour or so visiting with them. The people just consider me one of them, and so do I. I’m going to be there until the day I die; I’m sure of that.
Whichever side of the Atlantic I happen to be on these days, there’s always somebody who thinks he can scare me or slow me down or even take me out. Just like when I was in high school, if somebody thinks you’re a tough guy, he thinks beating you will make him the tough guy. In the U.S. I was being interviewed on the radio, and some radical Muslims with their noses all out of joint called in and started making threats. I told Lynn and Paige, “I don’t want you to get scared, but I believe we could have some trouble at the house.” I made sure I had enough firepower to take care of anything or anybody that cared to come into my house uninvited.
I got some short little 12-gauge riot shotguns—seven-shot, vented ribs—and put them within easy reach around the house, loaded and ready to go. I have ammo secured all over the place; our church is protected too. There are six armed men there on Sundays, every one of them trained. I wouldn’t be afraid for an intruder to have a gun to my neck or my head. Any of these men could take him out at twenty yards without giving me a scratch.
The sound room in our church is upstairs in the back. The men running the sound equipment have TV monitors for surveillance cameras at the basement door and in the nursery. If I need to get down there in a hurry, there’s a hidden door I can use. Unless you know the church, you’d never know it was there. I usually carry a gun on me, and there’s another one locked up in my office.
The outside of our church still isn’t finished. The insulation board is all up, but there’s no brick or siding on it yet. The inside is all done. It’s a high, wide room, almost square, with a stage area up front that has room for a drum set and all the musicians, including the singers. The three wide steps that lead from the floor to the platform are made of diamond plate steel. The pulpit is diamond plate steel too, welded together. It’s the solid rock I stand on every time I preach. I like it, and the congregation likes it too. I’d guess that 70 percent of the people who come to our church share my type of background in that they’re bikers, recovering addicts, or both, which means they tend to share my taste in interior decoration.
My wife always carries a gun. When I preach I never have one, but my wife sits right in the front row, and she has one. So I can grab it just as quick as I could grab one out of my side. It’s not that I’m afraid, because I’m not. It’s just I believe God gives us the wisdom and knowledge that we need to be ready for all things.
Even in my wildest years, I had a passion for fighting another man’s war that continues to this day. I know now that Christ was working in my heart long before I became a Christian. I had no idea at the time, but God was molding me and preparing me to fight a real war overseas. The “wars” I knew before were between school gangs or drug dealers or turf battles in tough neighborhoods. In time, I got involved in a real war between African governments, between lawlessness and right, evil butchery and compassion, brutally brainwashed soldiers and helpless, innocent children.
There was a time when I fought in schoolyards, backyards, hallways, alleyways, ball fields, barrooms, backseats, orange groves, and pretty much everywhere else. That fighting was bad because it was fighting for the wrong reasons. What it did, though, was teach me how to fight anybody or any bunch of people under any conditions and win. I loved fighting then. And I still love fighting now. The difference is that today I’m fighting for the children and families God sent me to protect. Fighting for nothing more than the right for them to live in peace, worship in freedom, and wake up in the morning knowing they’ll be alive and safe at the end of the day.
Blessings continue to pour down on me and our ministry. The Children’s Village is the largest orphanage compound in Southern Sudan, and we’re still building it, still expanding. Probably within the next year we’ll be putting in a runway for our own airplane.
When I compare our situation now to what we were going through a few years ago, the miracle of it all becomes crystal clear to me. I almost lost my home; my stepson was killed; my wife had a nervous breakdown; my marriage was on the rocks; my business collapsed. Yet when I was losing everything I had, I still got up behind my pulpit and preached that Jesus is the only way, the only answer, and I did it with a smile. A couple of years later, when I told some of my congregation what I was going through then, they said, “Why didn’t you ever tell?” And I said, “Because how could I tell people about all the crap I was going through and still tell them that Jesus was the only way?” I had to go through the storm with my head up high. I couldn’t complain about the one I was preaching for.
And the journey has been worth every moment, every bruise. Worth every tear.
Those years of sacrifice seem a long way off sitting at dusk in the Children’s Village today. When the sun’s going down, it’s the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see. The stars start to come out, and even before it’s completely dark, the sight takes your breath away. I’ve looked at those stars so many times at night all by myself, thousands of miles from home, and thought about how great it would be to have my wife and daughter to look at them with me. Sights like that mean so much more when you have somebody to share them with. The skies are so beautiful, and inside the compound fence you can feel the peace. Once the generator is turned off for the night, the world seems so dark and still, quiet and vast. It’s as if God has spread a huge, soft blanket of protection over all the children and the people who care for them. Outside the gate, there’s evil in the air. Danger and devastation can be hiding around every corner, in every clump of grass. But our compound is an untouchable refuge. The children feel safe. They greet the morning with joy.
Some of the guards that protect Sam’s orphanage in Southern Sudan
The guidebooks talk about Africa being a land of contrasts. What they’re talking about are the contrasts in scenery, climate, people, and cultures, among other things. There’s also a tremendous contrast between the safety of one place with another. There’s so much beauty in some parts of Africa, but then you can be on a road to Juba, where ambushes occur so often, and your life can suddenly be in danger.
I walk that road with a gun in each hand, always ready to return fire from an attacker or sniper. Outside our compound, danger is never more than a step away. Yet every day I’m there, everything I do, is all worth it for the children—their smiles,
their giggles, their runny noses, their innocent trust in a big-bellied mzunga with a pistol on each hip. Being with them, protecting them, helping them find their way to peace and a new life of hope . . . this side of heaven, life just doesn’t get any better.
There’s a special place in the human heart for children. Jesus loved them and used them as examples of his care over all of us and of what it takes to be a Christian. Mark 9 says that Jesus’ disciples were arguing about which one of them was the greatest. To answer, Jesus “took a little child and set him in the midst of them. And when He had taken him in His arms, He said to them, ‘Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but him who sent Me’” (vv. 36–37). Later he added, “‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.’ And He took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them” (10:14–16).
Christianity is a hard path, but it’s also a very simple one. Hard because we all sin and fall short of God’s perfect standard. Simple because almost anybody can understand what Christianity is all about. You don’t have to be educated. You don’t have to understand theology or King James grammar. All it takes is an innocent, trusting faith that Jesus died for your sins, and that by confessing to him you will have eternal life. It’s so easy even a child can do it. I’d say it’s actually easier for a child than for an adult.
Not long ago I was at a rock concert, hanging out in the VIP room backstage where everybody was drinking and partying, and some of them were getting high. I had come there with a motorcycle group and was dressed in my usual biker gear: jeans, leather jacket, chain wallet, boots. If someone I know from Africa or your average middle-class American were to walk in there and see me, they’d probably think, What on earth is Reverend Childers doing in that place? With all those people? He shouldn’t be seen in company like that. But that’s not what Jesus taught.
During the concert, a woman came into the room where I was and stood by herself, alone in the middle of the bustling, crowded room. She moved around aimlessly on the edge of a dozen different conversations, looking down at the floor. Nobody came up to talk to her or offered her anything to drink. One of the partiers told me the lady was a big fan of this particular group, and she was dying of cancer. They had invited her backstage to meet the band after the show.
I walked over to her and said, “Ma’am, I’m a pastor. I know I don’t look like one.”
She said, “I know you’re a pastor. Everybody’s been talking about it, but everybody’s afraid of you. They all think you’re one of the Hell’s Angels.”
I said, “Nah. I rode with all the motorcycle gangs, but I’m a pastor. Do you want me to pray with you?” She said she did. When I started praying with her, she broke and started crying. She said that the last couple of months God had led her to this little church down the road from her house. “The prayer that you prayed is almost identical to the prayer that the man in this little church prays for me too,” she said through her tears.
When I opened my eyes after praying, there were six or seven people crowded around us. They had all put their drinks down and they were crying too. “Are you really a pastor?” one of them asked. “What’s the deal about Christ? Is he real?” asked another. The little circle of questioners expanded as others in the room angled in to join the discussion. I stayed there almost two hours, long after the concert was over, telling the story of Jesus to people who were hungry—starving—for a little good news in the world.
I don’t believe you force-feed sinners. I believe you give a quick answer to the direct question and let it go. You give them time to ask another question. A lot of people think they’re witnessing, and before you know it they’re preaching, and that’s why people don’t go to church—they don’t want to be preached at.
As I was leaving, driving through the field with the truck and trailer toting the African Bike, I started to cry and said to God, “You know, if people back home knew where I was tonight they’d think I totally backslid and walked away from you.” It was as if Christ was sitting next to me, because I heard the voice say, They thought the same of me when I ate with those sinners and tax collectors. As we got a little bit further, I felt him say to me, There were Christians at this concert tonight, but there was only one Christian who brought the Son of God with him, and that was you.
If I hadn’t gone there, those spiritually hungry rock fans might not have heard about Christ for a long time or ever. There’s nothing wrong with a Christian going anywhere, as long as you take the right company with you. I’ve been in some rough, tough places these past ten years. Maybe I wasn’t always ready and didn’t bring God with me. But I know one thing: since that night I’ve never gone anywhere else without him. And I never will.
The whole way through this book, you had to make a choice whether to continue or not. Chapter by chapter you decided whether to go on reading or stop, to believe or not to believe, to begin seeing a vision for your life or turn away. Now that you’ve made it to the end, remember what I shared with you here—the pain, shame, hurt, forgiveness, change, and most of all, love for others. If I can change, if I can walk away from my old life, if I can become something, so can you. You’ve read about the choices I had to make to get here. Now don’t put this book down without making the simplest choice you’ll ever have to make. You only have to believe, not in me, but in the creator God who changed me.
Romans 10:13 says: “For ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’” Have you ever called on him? If you haven’t, say this prayer with me right now: “Father, forgive me. I have sinned. I have made a choice to believe in you. Amen.”
Our sin is all about our past. I have cried many times during the process of remembering and writing down my story. But I cry for the past, not the future. Take a look at your past. All the bad and darkness, all the awful things that people did to you are behind you. If you can see your past, then you can change your future and do something good with your life. One man or one woman can help change a nation, and you’re that one. If God can use me, think of what he can do with you!
I’m not saying there won’t be hard times. But when those hard times come, face them along with the good times. In Matthew 5:3–5, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” God loves you so much that he doesn’t want to leave you the same way you were when you started reading this story. In his hands you can be a tool for working miracles. Since he created you, he knows every fault in your life, every bad thing you’ve ever done, every bad thought you’ve ever had. You think whatever you’ve done is so bad God can’t forgive you? Then you’re selling God short. You’re defining and limiting his power. There’s nothing God can’t forgive, no sin he can’t bring you back from. He knows your potential for good because he put it there.
Part of my story is what I did in Africa. But the far more important part is what Africa did in me. God used my experience in Yei and Nimule to transform my life.
When you look at my life overall, you can see that I was being prepared over the years for work other people couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Yes, I was tough and mean in a way that caused a lot of harm, but that toughness and meanness prepared me to survive in a hostile environment where very few preachers could go and come out alive. God was toughening me up and training me to be his man in Southern Sudan and Uganda. I can’t reclaim the years I lost, but God can. The Bible tells us he can redeem the years the locusts have eaten, and I believe he’s doing that in me today.
I’m living proof that you can salvage your life no matter what you’ve done. And not only can you salvage it, you can make it a triumph. In God’s economy there is no second best. You are number one with him, and there is
no limit to what you can do. You might even end up in Africa like I did. “No way!” you say? Remember, that’s what I said too.
One of the greatest tragedies of our time is being ignored by the world. The devastation in Sudan and Uganda should create a global reaction, but it’s out of sight, out of mind. Children are being brutally tortured and murdered by the tens of thousands, and all the world does is sit around and talk about it. Look at the pictures. How can you stand it? How can politicians stand to spend months and years negotiating and quarreling when children are dying horrible, preventable deaths every day?
Don’t ignore them. Help them.
An orphan Sam rescued near Juba, Southern Sudan—the whole village was slaughtered by the LRA.
World governments, ours included, are more worried about oil and our relationship with China than they are about genocide. Whenever you can, steer the conversation toward people and humanitarian aid. Sudan is exporting farm products at the same time her people are starving and the United States is supplying millions in food aid. What sense does that make?
Orphans at the school in Kampala
Even better, come to Africa and help us. It will change your life. Maybe not as dramatically as it changed mine, but I promise you will never be the same afterward. These people need everything, and there’s a long list of organizations on the ground in Southern Sudan and northern Uganda that need you. You don’t have to have special skills or insights, only a heart to serve.
Now, I know that most of you for one reason or another can’t make it over there in person. If you can’t do that, send financial support. Money is almost always the limiting factor in determining what we can do in our ministry. We’re working hard to be as self-sufficient as possible. Since we’ve had to learn to do everything on our own, we’ve started marketing those skills to other people.