Local group prepares for Sudan trip




HELPING OUT- Members of a Calvary Community Church team hand out supplies to residents in the Darfur region of Sudan during a humanitarian mission last year. Another team will leave soon.

HELPING OUT- Members of a Calvary Community Church team hand out supplies to residents in the Darfur region of Sudan during a humanitarian mission last year. Another team will leave soon.


A team of six Calvary Community Church members is preparing a journey to carry out a humanitarian mission known as “Road to Sudan.”

The group will continue the work begun last year by three Calvary ambassadors to Sudan.

“When I saw what was going on in the Darfur region of Sudan, I wanted to do something to help people there,” said Agoura resident Dan Nicholas, who is leading the team.

Together with fellow church members Kevin McCloskey and Jackie Youngern, Nicholas traveled to the wartorn region of Africa in April 2007. The trio visited a Sudanese refugee camp in northern Uganda (Ikafe) to minister to the children. They also went to Yei and Juba in southern Sudan to help a woman who runs an orphanage and to help jumpstart a ministry.

“They (the Sudanese refugees) are such welcoming people. They have no agenda, they’re proud and want to get on with their lives and provide for their children like we do,” Nicholas said.

The limited resources of the government and various aid groups cannot sustain the thousands of Sudanese who are making their way back to villages that have been virtually destroyed after 20 years of civil war.

“To ease the plight of the returnees, we need to provide them with basic items such as tools, seeds, blankets and (water containers, all of) which are of limited availability in Sudan,” said Youngern, a Moorpark resident who has been to Africa several times in the past few years.

Those items are vital to a typical Sudanese family, she said.

Along with sustaining the physical well-being of Sudanese people, the team will honor the request of young Sudanese Christian leaders to provide pastor training that will include starting new churches, leadership and Bible education.

“People in Uganda and Sudan are humble and they have such great hearts that my faith grows more when I go out on missions,” said Youngern.

“Africa and especially African children have stolen my heart,” she said.

Youngern is trying to raise funds to help orphaned children stay in school.

“If this generation gets educated, they will think with their brain versus with their fist.”

The team will leave for Sudan on July 19 and return on Aug. 4. Members include Jim Azbell, Westlake Village; Joe Oberg, Camarillo; Tony Williams, Thousand Oaks; Roman Wyden, Los Angeles; Youngern and Nicholas.

They hope to raise additional funds for the mission and to transport supplies from Uganda to Sudan over hundreds of miles of difficult terrain.

“A $2,000 donation would provide us with a rented truck and driver to carry the items most needed to sustain Sudanese families,” Nicholas said.

Anyone interested in donating time or money to the Road to Sudan mission may visit www.roadtosudan.com. A taxdeductible donation may be sent to dannichola@gmail.com via PayPay. Mail checks to Calvary Community Church, 5495 Via Rocas, Westlake Village, CA. Attn: Community World, Sudan 878.

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