Sam Childers, the ‘Machine Gun Preacher

Sam Childers, the ‘Machine Gun Preacher’ speaks  about his work in Africa

I have seen the Movie and it pales in comparison to the man Sam Childers.  Sam is a tenacious, uncompromising Old tyme Fire and Brimstone Gospel Preacher.  His thoughts are..."If it needs to be done...DO IT!"   Don't talk about it, don't have meeting to discuss it, just DO IT!"

In the summer of 1992, Childers experienced what he described as a conversion during a revival at an Assembly of God church. Childers has claimed that was also the same evening that his pastor prophesied that he would go to Africa. At the end of 1998, Childers made his first trip to Sudan. In that first trip and the many that followed, he was exposed to the acts of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) which he described as atrocious.

Over 30,000 children have been abducted by Joseph Kony and the LRA in the region.  Relief organizations report as many as 50,000 children have been abducted and 1.7 million people have been displaced. The abducted children are generally forced to be child soldiers or sex slaves until they escape, are rescued or killed. Thousands of children have become orphans as a result of brutal LRA attacks on remote villages in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda.

Not long after his first trip to Sudan, Childers and his wife Lynn founded the Angels of East Africa, the Children’s Village in Southern Sudan. The Children’s Village currently houses and educates over 300 orphans, with over a thousand children rescued since its inception. The staff at the Children’s Village are primarily Sudanese orphans and widows themselves. This is currently the largest orphanage in Southern Sudan and is unique in its approach of leading armed rescue missions directly into LRA territory. The Children’s Village is the only non-governmental organization that does not pick up and leave when fighting breaks out in the area.