South Sudan
The country of South Sudan achieved independence in 2011 but was plunged back into civil war soon after. Today, famine has been officially declared and over 100,000 people are at risk of starvation.
God Led Us
In 2018 the Lord told us to fast and pray for 40 days for both Liberia and South Sudan.
Following the fast, Mommy Emily ran into her old team leader from four years earlier who told her about the needs in the South Sudan refugee camps. Lulu Uganda sent a team to the South Sudan refugee camps and eventually they met Pastor Santos, a man who’d built his ministry under an actual Lulu or shea nut tree. Pastor Santos subsequently introduced Lulu to Pastor Francis across the border in Nimule, South Sudan. Both men are visionaries who are actively caring for hundreds of people — running schools, implementing agriculture training, starting microloan programs and adopting orphans.
Partner with us
About South Sudan
Over 2 million people have been displaced, fleeing the violence that has taken the lives of close to 400,000. The country is facing a serious humanitarian crisis and is number 181 out of 188 on the Human Development Index. Just over the border in Uganda, 1.4 million South Sudanese refugees are living in tents—hoping to return to their country, but facing an unsure future. They have been through unspeakable trauma, and 84% are women and children; many households are child-headed, with no adults to protect them.
Currently, a cease-fire has been declared and there is hope that South Sudan may be able to welcome its people back one day soon.
South Sudan has gone sustainable!
As of February 2021, South Sudan has gone sustainable! All glory to God.
What God is doing
in South Sudan
Equipping villages with sustainable farming
Sustainable Farming
In the South Sudan refugee camps, and across the border in the town of Nimule, South Sudan, both Pastor Santos and Pastor Francis are teaching sustainable farming techniques to local villagers, in addition to sustaining their own ministry through livestock and agriculture. Below you will some mothers and widows from the refugee camps who’ve started a poultry farm and are thanking God for the provision. Also seen below, is the field that Pastor Santos is harvesting groundnuts alongside the orphans he’s adopted from child-headed homes in. Oxen and plows have also been purchased to plow the land and prepare it for planting. We praise God for the wisdom He’s given these men, as well as the provision of cows, which have made it possible for them to not only care for their own communities, but for villages beyond them.
Equipping families by microloans
Microloans
Many parents in Africa struggle to make ends meet, not because they don’t work hard enough — they work sunup to sundown, trying to sell fuel or purchasing a few items from the market to sell in their village, or doing neighbors’ washing, or selling whatever food they grow in their garden — but because they don’t receive fair wages or fair opportunities. This unfairness makes it difficult to help provide for their children, and may mean they have to give their children away.
Microloans invest in a family business, giving parents the honor of providing for their own.
Equipping families with affordable education
Educating Mothers
Pastor Santos has started a training school, and is equipping parents through a six-month hairdressing and tailoring course.
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Widely respected, Santos is an active reconciler amongst tribes and people groups. In 2016, before knowing anything about The Lulu Tree, this man of God and his team began their ministry by gathering regularly under a real Lulu (or shea nut) tree. We were so moved by this testimony and the fact that God led us to partner with him, nearly three years later.
Pastor Santos runs a training school for parents of all tribes to attend, where they can learn hairdressing and tailoring. Next-door to this school he also operates a free kindergarten for the children of these families. Santos is deeply involved in the pastoral and agricultural training of other pastors and personnel, and is greatly respected amongst the South Sudan camps. It is our desire to encourage and equip this man of God in helping him to help his people.
Equipping villages with biblically trained pastors
Training Pastors
Pastors in the South Sudan refugee camps and across the border in Nimule, South Sudan are being equipped with solid theological training.
We are proud to partner with Pastor Santos, the first pastor to found a church in any of the three refugee camps on the border of South Sudan. Read Pastor Santos’ story here.
Preserving families the gospel way
Our goal is to preserve families whenever possible, equipping communities to care for their own children through the local church. Poverty and abandonment pose a threat to the family unit and can create orphan situations, even when a mother’s deepest wish is to care for her children.
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In South Sudan, the civil war has ended the lives of many parents, and in the refugee camps, thousands of children live in what is termed “child-headed homes.” Children as young as nine are put in charge of younger siblings, even as their mother’s grave sits freshly dug beside their clay hut.
In the summer of 2019 Pastor Santos decided to take in 18 of these children, in addition to the 6 he was already caring for in his tiny “turkool” or thatched-roofed hut. You can read more about this man and his heart for the orphans of South Sudan, in a post, here.
Additionally, Pastor Santos is caring for the “jajjas” or elderly widows in the camps by pairing them with the children; so he is putting a jajja or grandmother with each child-headed family, with him acting as a father to them all.
It is our hope that many pastors in the camps will join Santos in being a father to the fatherless and a defender of the widow (Psalm 68:5).
USA Location
9808 Dolomite Lane, Sandy, UT 84094
Phone
801-651-0189 (US)
info@thelulutree.com