Causes

Among South Sudan’s many problems, the selling of young women as brides is one of the greatest. The culture within South Sudan is that women have only two main purposes: bearing children and taking care of the household duties. When we first entered South Sudan, we quickly saw the treatment of women and providing them aid became one of the most important items on our list for change and need. We learned that families would sell their teenage daughters to other families in exchange for livestock, money, or other things the families would negotiate upon. Some women have been sold as young as 12 years of age and forced to marry. For a woman in South Sudan, young or old, education is virtually nonexistent. The government of South Sudan charges tuition for schools, therefore most families are only willing to pay for the male’s education, either due to lack of money or simply because they feel a woman is not to be educated or considered at the same level as a man. This leaves many young women with no form of education and, as a result, they are forced into maintaining the home, cooking, cleaning, getting water from the wells, etc. Also, once a woman is sold, even at a young age, and forced into marriage, the male does not allow the “young bride” to go to school because her sole purpose, then, is to bear children. Therefore, we started: Giving Women a Voice. This cause is aimed at educating young women and paying for their first and secondary school tuition, and even on to college. For older women, who can no longer go to secondary school or college, we have started teaching trade skills so that they may have a career and provide for their families. We now have classes for textile and farming, health care, and much more. Currently, we are supporting a few women who have gone on to college and are studying to become lawyers to change the laws regarding women within South Sudan.

This project is not an easy one. We have seen young women run away from their homes and villages in order to escape a forced marriage. We have had many women come to us who have been widowed due to the on-going civil war and looking for some education so that they might provide for their many children. We have had one of our students go back to their village to visit their family after 3 years away only to then be forced into marriage and die during childbirth, being too young to bear children. Our goal is to help women like this find a better life.

Holding true to our mission of reaching those in need, there was a spiritual void that needed to be filled within the villages of South Sudan. As we traveled throughout the many villages in rural areas, we noticed that these individuals did not have the means to travel to our church facility, and most had never heard a sermon. It was then that we had decided to launch Imprint Radio of South Sudan. At launch, we were only able to broadcast a few hours on Sundays. We had partnered with Grace to You Ministries and Turning Point USA to receive sermons and content that could be broadcast. As Imprint Radio grew, we upgraded our generators, allowing us to broadcast for 24 hours a day without interruption. We upgraded our antenna and installed others to extend the range to just about a 100-mile radius. As electricity became scarce, we installed solar power panels that allowed us to become nondependent of South Sudan’s electrical grid, which would go out numerous times at night and during the day. We partnered with Gulcom Radios of Canada and created handheld radios with solar panels, with Imprint Radio’s FM station pre-selected, the full Bible in audio, and many sermons pre-installed. We than delivered over 5 thousand radios to many villagers that do not have any electricity so that they can listen to God’s Word. After just a few years, we are now broadcasting live 19 hours per day and are on the air 24 hours per day. We have question and answer segments with over 3k calls a week with various questions regarding Christianity and various important topics. An average of thirty individuals a week have called in giving their lives over to our Lord and Savor, making it a very successful outreach project.

The educational system within South Sudan is very challenging for those that are less fortunate. Attending a public school is not free, there is a cost per child that the government charges. There are thousands of young children all across South Sudan that do not have the means to pay for school. Most of the villages put these young children to work in the fields rather than pay for their education. We started F.I.S.H. Academy for a few reasons. The vision of F.I.S.H. Academy is providing the people of South Sudan a chance for a better FUTURE by teaching them INDEPENDENCE through SALVATION, which will give them HOPE for a better country. Currently 400 students attend F.I.S.H. Academy, with most living within the compounds of the academy. Due to the ongoing civil war, and the young girls that had fled their villages to escape being sold as young brides, F.I.S.H. Academy is patrolled by 6-armed security 24 hours a day. F.I.S.H. Academy was also created to provide a safe haven for the young girls being sold as brides by their families or villages. These villages see daughters as a commodity, selling them in exchange for livestock, money, or land to other villages as young brides. Some of these young brides (as young as 12 years of age) have died during childbirth due to their young age. Through F.I.S.H. Academy we had started the givingWOMENaVOICE.org campaign to help bring awareness to RMC Ministries’ cause of protecting and educating these young girls and providing them with a future. Due to the ongoing civil war, tens of thousands of children have become orphaned, and thousands of wives have become widowed. Through F.I.S.H. Academy we started various trade school programs to help and educate the widows so that they can sustain an income for their families. Some of these programs include textiles, jewelry, agriculture, farming, computers, and clerical work. As our first round of students have graduated, we started a college fund to support those that wish to further their education.

After the fall of communism in 1990, as a country, Romania had one of the highest numbers of orphans. Adding to this hardship, a large number of the orphans had disabilities. Orphanages for those over the age of 18 were either run by nonprofits or a very few by the government. Most of these orphanages did not have enough space to house the disabled orphans or even access to basic hygienic items. One of the first projects within Romania that RMC started was The Forgotten Youth project. Here we supported numerous orphanages that housed disabled orphans. With each orphanage, we took them out to various locations where they were taught about the Bible, and also given clothes, personal hygienic items, and books for reading. RMC also created a foster care system for the disabled orphans and the first implementation saw 200 children finding housing and families to care for them.

As RMC Ministries focuses on other countries it is important not to forget about the country that we are headquartered in. In 2018, we began taking a more active role in ministering to those who are in our own neighborhoods. Our ministry, RMC USA South Bay, located in Los Angeles County, California, was founded and led by Ishmael Agiba. This ministry focuses on fulfilling the great commission (Matthew 28:19-20) by doing one-to-one discipleship and reaching out to the community through tract and door to door evangelism. Each week, a team of people go to the streets and public places where they pass out over 500 tracts and share their faith with many people. Ishmael has seen the need in our nation to help build up and teach men to become better leaders, husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. As a result, he has begun meeting with young men one-to-one and mentoring them in how to grow in these areas. Most churches of today have become less and less evangelistic over the years; many people are too afraid to evangelize, or simply do not know how. To combat this problem, our team has held Evangelism Seminars where participants were taught how to pass out gospel tracts, initiate conversations with strangers, take people through evangelism surveys, and lead people to Christ. Many of the participants felt better equipped to share their faith and had a renewed fire to spread the gospel.