South Sudan is introduced into big screen

By Steve Paterno

October 2, 2011 — It is so rare that the plight and story of the suffering people of South Sudanese ever reaches large audience through a big screen. However, an inspirational movie trailer, Machine Gun Preacher just does that. Machine Gun Preacher is premiered on September 28. It is a Hollywood feature film, starring Gerard Butler and directed by Marc Forster. The movie is base on a book, “Another Man’s War,” a true biography of an American Preacher Sam Childers, also known as the Machine Gun Preacher. Childers transformational life story is as just inspiring as his mission to save lives in a faraway land in Africa, South Sudan to be exact.

The Machine Gun Preacher grew up in the hills of Pennsylvania, but by his teen years, his path drifted into a lowlife drug addict, drug dealer, a biker gang and eventually a convict. Upon his release from prison, the Machine Gun Preacher found refuge at the church, due to advice of his wife, Lynn. After establishing relationship with God, the Machine Gun Preacher discovered his true calling. He then traveled to the war ravaged South Sudan in 1998. His first tragic encounter was when he was stumbled over pieces of a blown up child, who was hit by land mine. Since then, he had made pledge with God to support the children of South Sudan.

From 1998 and onward, the Machine Gun Preacher has devoted his life and mission to the suffering children of South Sudan. He built a shelter to house the orphaned children. He then found out that a brutal Ugandan rebels, known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who were operating out of South Sudan to be responsible for the abduction, enslaving, and killing of children. The LRA, which is still well active today is estimated to have abducted over fifty thousands children, where they are forced to be child soldiers or sex slaves until they escaped, rescued or killed in the process.

In such dire situation, the Machine Gun Preacher had no choice, but to go and rescue the children from clutches of the LRA. In order to do that, he has to go with a bible on one hand and an AK 47 on the other, along with the South Sudanese freedom fighters, the SPLA, so as to fight the LRA and rescue the children under their custody. That was when he earned the name, the Machine Gun Preacher.

The Machine Gun Preacher method is hardly conventional in comparison with missionary devotion. Others referred to him with contemn as a mercenary as oppose to a missionary. Nonetheless, his unconventional method produced astounding results, because of the many lives that he saves. He had rescued countless of children from their abductors, the LRA. His orphanage fed more than a thousand kids. Today, more than 200children proudly call the Machine Gun Preacher orphanage their home. The Machine Gun Preacher set chartable organizations, the Angels of East Africa and the Children’s Village, specifically to cater for his mission in Africa to save lives, particularly of the children.

Inspirations come from different sources, and obviously, the Machine Gun Preacher trailer is one of them. With such wide exposure to large audience, there will be those who will be inspired by the movie, whereby they will make efforts for the interest of helping the suffering children of South Sudan. Today in South Sudan, the children are at most risk. Children mortality rate in South Sudan is among the highest in the world, due to malnutrition, diseases, and conflicts. A fifteen year old girl is more likely to die in childbirth, rape, enslavement, than finishing a primary school. Child soldier and child labor are not in the vocabularies of those who subject these children into the harsh conditions. If anything, the Machine Gun Preacher movie must worth you bucks, because if it does not inspire you, it will at least move you.

Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Romain Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]