Hope For Women and Children of Southern Sudan

Meet my friend, Theresa Yaak, a Sudanese lady that resettled eight years ago to Grand Rapids Michigan after her husband was murdered by mercenaries in southern Sudan. She was pregnant at the time and also brought her husband's younger brother and his three older sons by a previous marriage when she fled the danger in h...er homeland. She was not only escaping danger but also abject poverty. Theresa confided to me that multiple times during her life as a child and also as a married woman she was homeless. She often took shelter under trees and spent countless hours in a desperate search for water just to sustain her life.

She has acculturated to American life beautifully but her life is still difficult by American standards. She works a third shift job at the local hospital in housekeeping and attends college classes during the day. She struggles with this because she wants to be a nurse so she can go back home to help but language is still a barrier for her; especially in the classes that include medical and biological terminology. Theresa has had the dream to be a nurse since she was a fifteen-year-old girl and forced to deliver a baby for a woman because there was no midwife or doctor to assist. Theresa says that she sat with the baby in her arms for hours with the cord still attached because she didn’t know what to do.

In her spare time, she gets sporadic sleep and is raising her four boys and looking after her brother-in-law. She has been frugal and managed to purchase a home, but her financial circumstances mean that she lives in a less desirable part of Grand Rapids. However, she fiercely protects her boys and is vigilant about drugs and gang violence. She has managed to get her younger boys into a quality Christian school and the oldest of her husband's sons is in college. To quote Theresa, he is very bright and is going to be a "surgeon doctor".

Even with all she has to contend with, Theresa counts herself totally blessed and has great concern for the widows and orphans back in southern Sudan. She knows first-hand the agony of homelessness and starvation and the intense grief of losing a child due to lack of proper health care.

Theresa is working with a group of local Sudanese women and has pretty much single-handedly established a charity called “Hope For Women and Children In Southern Sudan.” Theresa picked this name because she says, “All they have is hope.” The purpose of this non-profit is to raise money for the basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter for the women and children disenfranchised by the war. She also wants to offer health care and instruction so these women can learn about proper nutrition. She said some women there are so destitute that they don't even have undergarments to protect them so during their monthly cycle, they walk around with the blood flow on their thighs.

What most of us would consider an untenable situation, Theresa sees as an opportunity and with the help of God and hopefully many friends, she aims to use her good fortune to alleviate the suffering of many in a war-torn place she calls home.Read more