News from Southern Sudan

Earlier this year, the people of southern Sudan voted to secede from the north and became it's own sovereign nation.  Although many aid agencies feared violence, the vote was a peaceful process.  The new country will become the Republic of South Sudan on July 9, 2011.  Please pray for a peaceful transition and for all the people of North and South Sudan.

Catholic Relief Services is all over it: Sudan is Knocking. Will You Answer?

and see this short video.

Children living in extreme poverty

I just got a chance to watch the film Slumdog Millionaire this weekend, and if you haven't seen it yet, you should.  It's very well done, but the beginning was extremely difficult to watch - thank goodness it has a happy ending.  We watched the first part, when the main characters are young children, on Saturday night and had to stop it.  At that point, I didn't think I could bring myself to watch the rest - the extreme poverty that those fictional kids lived in is what millions of children are dealing with in the real world.  To see that children are living that way, in trash dumps, searching for food, and being taken advantage of by evil adults, was heartbreaking.  I forced myself to watch the second half of the movie, which wasn't nearly as hard to watch - like I said, it has a good ending - because I didn't want to turn away from the ugliness of poverty.

Anyway, that night as I prayed I was crying, feeling guilty about my rich, western lifestyle but desperate to help and completely lost as to how to go about doing it.  What can be done, I pleaded with God?  Well, I still don't know - but I feel the Lord calling me to do something, anything to help.  I will be researching existing charities and people that are working on this vast problem - it doesn't seem possible, but I think Africa is suffering even more than India. Jesus left us with the task of doing His work here on Earth - we must not allow this to happen any more.  There really is no excuse great enough to exempt us from helping these people. 

I will keep you posted the more I find out.  In the mean time, please pray - for more Christians to hear the cry of the poor, for the children living in complete squalor, for the strength to persevere, for Peace.