South Sudan (MNN) — Medical clinics run by Christians in South Sudan are offering gospel hope and help to refugees and people forced to flee their homes. 

A gospel worker named *John serves with a ministry focused on Sudan. His team’s work crosses borders because many, many people have fled Sudan to escape conflict.

Yet when Sudanese people enter South Sudan, they aren’t leaving trouble behind. Humanitarian crises face that country as well.

Patients from an Islamic background watching the Jesus Film for the first time. (Photo courtesy of John, a gospel worker)

John says one of the issues centers on South Sudan’s planned December elections — the first since it gained independence in 2011. Key parts of a 2018 peace accord have not been fully implemented yet, leading to election credibility concerns. 

“If what’s happening in the country isn’t handled correctly, there’ll be a return to violence on the scale of civil war,” John says. 

The sheer scale of conflict, displacement, and food insecurity across South Sudan and Sudan makes it a God-sized problem. Not only does South Sudan host hundreds of thousands of displaced people, John says it’s costing the most vulnerable. 

“Additionally, there are 2.2 million children in South Sudan that are acutely malnourished,” he says, “and an estimated 825,000 children under the age of five in Sudan are expected to suffer acute malnutrition this year.”

John adds, “It’s hard to see what the world’s response is to this.” 

Sudan has been in civil war since April 2023. South Sudan has faced crisis levels of hunger and low funding from United Nations partners. 

Christians in South Sudan have stepped into the troubles. Praise God for the opportunities they have had to serve thousands of people in a recent 14-month span.

“We saw 8,013 people receive free medical care, 2,266 received trauma healing counseling, and 1,344 Muslims gave their lives to Christ in 14 months,” John says. 

Pray for more gospel hope and help to reach South Sudan. God is willing and able to move!

“I’m reminded of when Isaiah said, speaking of Israel, ‘In all of their affliction, he’ — God — ‘was afflicted.’ He is not indifferent to human suffering,” says John. 

*Pseudonym

Header photo: A woman arrived with her children, who were suffering from coughs and skin infections. (Photo courtesy of John, a gospel worker)