Send Me Your Shouts

Please feel free to send me your ideas, what your church or organization is doing for Sudan. Anything from your personal prayer life to something big and organized. You never how your ideas might spark someone else's creativity and get them involved. Please send your submissions to
shoutLOUDnow@gmail.com

Worship Resource

Here is a great worship resource (PDF, Adobe Acrobat required)from Catholic Relief Services. This resource can be easily adapted to fit any number of Christan denominations and is perfect to use in worship to help make your congregation aware of the need to pray for Sudan.

Shout With Others

Here is an online petition that comes from Faithful America and Africa Action. They are trying to gain 400,000 signatures.

This is a simple way to get involved, plus you can e-mail the link to family and friends and get them involved.

A Somewhat Less Easy Way to SHOUT

Last summer, my brother convinced me to train for the Richmond Marathon. As I was preparing for it, I ran a couple of half-marathons. I had an idea to get people I knew to sponsor me per mile for one of the 13.1 mile runs.

I was able to raise about $100 per mile, which I gave to UMCOR's work with refugees.

All in all, I was able to get in shape, have a lot of fun, and help people in need. If you are looking for motivation to start an excercise program, this could be it.

Runners' World has a feature at their site that allows you to find races in your area. You can start with short races like a 5k (3.1 miles) and walk it if you want. Races are fun, social events for all ages, and you get a t-shirt!

Take Action (How to SHOUT)

Here are some easy ways you can make a difference in Sudan:

UMCOR

Support the United Methodist Committee on Relief Sudan Emergency Advance #184385. Funds given here provide help to Sudanese refugees fleeing into neighboing Chad. One hundred percent of what you give goes to people in need. No kidding. No messing around. No relief organization on earth can make a better promise.

That local United Methodist congregation in your neighborhood has already helped pay the all the administrative costs of UMCOR's work.

Amnesty International

Amnesty provides an "activist toolkit" that can be downloaded (some items require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, found at www.adobe.com). This toolkit includes posters, stickers, and ways to get involved locally.

Write your Senator or Member of Congress
The late Senator Paul Simon once famously remarked that

"If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different."

For a mere fifteen minutes of time and a thirty seven cent stamp, you can change the world. You can find the name and address of your representatives using the links on the right of this page.

These are great projects for women's groups, men's groups, and youth groups. Using the information found here, you can put together a presentation and then offer your people the above opportunities as ways to take action.

Sudan: Learning the Basics

Here (the link above) is an easy way to learn some basic information regarding the history and background of the conflict in Darfur. Includes pictures.


From Amnesty International.

Mission Agency Calls for Prayers that Peace Will Survive a Sudanese Leader’s Death

General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115 Contact: Elliott Wright Tel: 212/870-3921 email: ewright@gbgm-umc.

From the United Methodst News Service

NEW YORK, NY, August 1, 2005—The international mission agency of The United Methodist Church today called for prayers that a peace agreement in southern Sudan will hold in the wake of the death of one of its principal architects.

“Let us pray that the peace accord will be respected despite this great tragedy,” said the Rev. R. Randy Day, chief executive of the General Board of Global Ministries.

Dr. John Garang, 60, the U.S.-educated leader of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army, who had become the first vice president of Sudan only three weeks ago, was killed in a helicopter crash late on Saturday, July 30, as he returned from a trip to Uganda. In January, 2005, the peace agreement forged between the north and the south in Sudan ended the longest running civil war in Africa. Some 1.5 million people were killed.

“We watch developments in southern Sudan carefully because of the protracted conflict there and because we have about a dozen congregations in the area,” Day said. “We are also praying for the peace and prosperity of all the people of Sudan.”

The mission board’s call for prayers came partly in responded to a plea from Angelo Maker, who was one of the thousands of “lost boys of Sudan.” In the 1990s, these children and teenagers walked hundreds of miles to escape the turmoil in southern Sudan, going first to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, and then to Kenya. The United States agreed to accept 3,000 of the “boys,” 52 of whom were resettled by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) in 2001 and 2002.

Mr. Maker is now a student and attends a United Methodist church in Virginia. He was a guest at the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference last June.

“The situation in southern Sudan is very critical,” he said in his e-mail, that encouraged people to pray that the peace accord will hold steady.
The conflict in southern Sudan is distinct from that in Darfur, a western region of the vast country where UMCOR provides humanitarian services to displaced people.

Appeals to respect the peace in the south were also made by the New Sudan Council of Churches, the Sudan Catholic Bishop’s Conference, and the All African Conference of Churches. Dr. Mvume Dandala, a South African Methodist who leads the latter organization, issued a statement calling upon “the people of Sudan to be calm and demonstrate that commitment to peace that Dr. Garang had wished for when he signed the peace agreement.”

John Garang was a member of the southern Dinka ethnic group and was from a Christian family. A member of the Anglican Church, he was graduated in 1969 from Grinnell College, a school with Congregationalist church roots in Iowa. He also received military training at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Christian population of Sudan is concentrated in the south.

Darfur Violence Through the Eyes of Children

Darfur Violence Through the Eyes of Children

by Dina Temple-Raston

From NPR and Human Rights Watch

Enlarge

A Sudanese child's drawing shows men on a camel firing their weapons. Dr. Annie Sparrow/Human Rights Watch

• See More Drawings

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This drawing shows a helicopter and plane attacking a village in Darfur. Dr. Annie Sparrow/Human Rights Watch

Morning Edition, August 1, 2005 · Earlier this year, aid workers at a refugee camp in Chad, on Sudan's western border, passed out crayons and paper to children while Human Rights Watch officials interviewed their parents. Without prompting or instruction, the young artists put pen to paper and produced some harrowing images -- the visions of an unfolding genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.

Minky Worden, the media director at Human Rights Watch in New York, describes one of the pictures: "You see the government helicopters bombing the villages. You see armored personnel carriers rolling into the villages… And the amazing thing about this drawing is the ability of this child, age 13 or so, to make stick figures show absolute terror."

Some of the drawings, made by children aged 8 to 17, are on exhibit at New York University's Edgar Bronfman Center through Labor Day, the first stop in a national tour.