Shack-A-Thon

Back in April the WT Alliance (7 of the WTAMU ministries)sponsored an event to raise awareness of poverty in Southern Sudan and raise money to buy goats. GOATS? What? yes goats. What can a goat do?
Many organizations like Heifer International have caught onto an amazing tool to fight poverty and hunger. They raise money for goats or cows or chickens to send over seas. With the whole ARK principle, the natives can mate a couple of them to multiply a herd and give away the offspring to others in their village. They can use the milk from these goats for all kinds of things. They usually don't slaughter the goats, but rather use the goat's milk.
Well, last year we held the 1st annual Shack-a-Thon. Over 150 students came out and built shacks out of cardboard, pallets, and duct tape on the lawn east of Old Main. All seven ministries were represented as well as other student groups. News stations came out and interviewed us. We were on all the radio stations around here, and we ended up raising over $21,000.00 to buy these goats.
At the evening service, the president of the Christian Relief Fund, Milton Jones, spoke about what that 21,000 dollars did last year. It bought over 300 goats which were dispersed across the Southern Sudan region around Nimule. The money paid for the goats, vet shots, and herding them into the villages by strong Christian evangelists via motorcycle.
Milton told of one family who received three goats last year. Those three goats multiplied into seven. The family then gave away the four new goats and STILL HAD THREE!
This year we raised about $16,000.00 for goats between all the students that came to the Shack-a-thon!!
This year a friend of mine named Majur, whom i met at our free lunch that we host on Tuesdays at the Wesley, came and spoke of his experience in Southern Sudan. He was one of thousands who have been deemed the "lost boys."
Lost Boys were children during the civil war between northern and southern Sudan, Muslims and Christians.
He came by the Wesley shack as we were finishing up and i invited him in. he said, "wow, this looks just like the shack i used to live in." I told him to take a seat in one of our lawn chairs and began to ask him about what it was like to be a lost boy.
He told of how the shack we'd build was about the same size (10ft by 10ft) as the one he'd lived in with various other kids, about 10 to a shack. He wasn't sure how old he was, but he was told that he was about 6 when he and other children in his village had to flee their homes during an air strike. He saw the mortars exploding all around as he fled into the jungle with these other children.
This group of children fled together to the border of Uganda, but were turned around and sent back home, so they fled to Kenya where he lived for 10 years in an IDP camp, and thus they were deemed the "Lost Boys." The United States funded relief for Internally displaced people or (IDPs), and the Red Cross helped get him and thousands of other Lost Boys to the U.S. with refugee status.
Amarillo Texas was one of the refugee receiving centers and thus many ended up here. He worked at a meat packing plant until he had enough money to go to college. He didn't know that his parents were alive until recently. he hadn't seen them since he was 6.
At Red Cross Stations in these IDP camps they have huge walls where families can put up pictures or letters for lost relatives. These walls are covered for miles with un-opened letters and pictures that never found their loved ones. His parents found a picture of him and the Red Cross gave them his address in the States. They sent him a letter after nearly 20 years of not knowing if he was alive or dead.
It was incredibly surreal to sit in a shack, like the one he'd lived in, and hear the the story of a Lost Boy, but yet be on a lawn at WT. It was like two worlds had collided.

I've always had a heart for Africa. As I prepare for Kenya, my heart breaks more and more for the Lost Boys, the IDPs, the starving, those who've lost their parents to AIDS only to find they have the virus themselves. I'm not sure what seeing this with my own eyes will do to me, but it's something I think I need to see.