Thirty seven children have been rescued from areas with conflicts in Magwi County by the Machine Gun Preacher organization.

Some of the children’s parents were killed in the fighting in Juba, while others were displaced by the clashes between the SPLA and militants around Magwi.

The children have been taken to the orphanage center in Nimule, operated by Sam Childers’ Machine Gun Preacher organization.

The organization is named after Sam; an evangelist and an inspirational speaker, who has sometimes had to carry a gun to rescue hundreds of children from war zones in South Sudan and Northern Uganda since the 21 years of civil war in Sudan.

In an interview with Eye Radio, the Machine Gun Preacher, Sam Childers told Eye Radio that some of the children were found in the bushes, while others were living in deplorable conditions in Magwi.

“Many of them were sick from bad water down to not enough food; they were not eating properly,” he said.

“There were a few of the children who we actually have seen the graves of their parents, but a lot of these children were actually displaced from Juba,” he said.

“So we brought 37 of these children to our orphanage in Nimule. The main thing that we want to do –before we do anything – is to get these children healthy again.”

Sam said his organization will search for relatives and parents for some of the children in the refugee camps and in other parts of South Sudan in order to reunite them.

He called on South Sudanese leaders to end the circle of violence to allow the children pursue their studies.

Who is Sam Childers?

Sam Childers arrived in Yei in 1998, after being urged by his Pastor in America to come help build houses damages by the civil war in the town, as part of a missionary’s work.

While constructing, Sam said he stumbled across a body of a child torn apart by a landmine. It is at that moment he said he decided to dedicate his life to help children in South Sudan.

He returned several months later and opened a clinic and decided to build an orphanage center in Nimule, during the height of the abduction, maiming and killings by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army.

With a Bible in one hand, and an AK47 in the other, Sam Childers began to lead armed missions to rescue children from the LRA. It was at this point when the villagers started referring to him as “The Machine Gun Preacher.”
A movie based on Sam’s biography, “Another Man’s War” was made into a Hollywood film 2011.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in South Sudan in 2013, Sam has received more children in the World Missions Shekinah Fellowship, Children’s Village in Nimule.

Last week, the Machine Gun Preacher and security personal led a 48 hours mission to retrieve children displaced by the conflict in the bushes and some villages in Magwi County, Imatonga state.