A Journey They Pray For!

Travel Destinations

Audio By Carbonatix

Not every journey is stamped in a passport. Not every border crossing is celebrated with champagne or panoramic views from 30,000 feet. Some journeys begin in terror, walk through hell, and somehow—through the thinnest thread of hope—arrive into the light.

For ten years I have spoken on the air about the women and children of South Sudan who remain enslaved in the north by Islamic raiders. More than 150,000 of them were captured during Sudan’s brutal civil wars—sold, traded, violated, beaten, and stripped of everything except the image of God that their captors couldn’t kill. They were taken as children, as young teens, and thrown into a nightmare no civilized heart can comprehend.

One of them is a young woman named Abuk.

She was stolen from her village as a girl, ripped from her family by northern militias who raided her community with guns and machetes. She was marched north with nothing—no water, no shoes, no protection. And when she arrived, she was given a new identity: slave.

Her days became long hours of forced labor under the scorching Sudanese sun. Every task came with beatings, starvation, humiliation, and degradation that no human being—especially a child—should ever endure. She was fed little more than scraps. She was forced to self-circumcise in an act of barbarism intended to break not only her body but her soul.

And then came the worst day.

A gang of men, fueled by a theology of domination and cruelty, took turns raping her—over and over—until her screams stopped. She was not a person to them. She was an object to be used, a thing to be broken.

But they failed.

The human spirit is stronger than any chain.

In November of 2023, Christian Solidarity International—an organization I trust, support, and have seen operate with my own eyes—intervened. Through a painstaking network of peace negotiations and safe extraction, they purchased her freedom and escorted her back across the border into South Sudan.

When she walked onto free soil again, she collapsed to her knees. She wept. She laughed uncontrollably. And the first words she spoke were these:

“Thanks God for CSI and the people who liberated me.”

But Abuk carried a secret.

She was pregnant—carrying the child of her captors, conceived in violence, born in trauma, but held in love. Today that baby girl is about to turn two years old this December. And there is nothing in her mother that wants revenge. No bitterness. No desire to give suffering back to the world that inflicted it.

She wants to be a good mother.

She wants to raise her child in safety.

She wants her daughter to know dignity and faith and joy.

She wants her daughter to live the kind of life—filled with hope and possibility—that you and I casually assume we will always have.

This week in America, we gather around tables overflowing with food. We celebrate traditions, football games, laughter, and the comfort of those we love. We take flights home, we book getaways, we search for the perfect destination for the holidays. We live lives of extraordinary privilege, often without even pausing to notice it.

For millions around the world, the greatest journey imaginable is not to Paris or Palm Beach or Amalfi—it is the journey out of bondage and back into freedom.

Few people on earth have more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving than Abuk. And out of her gratitude—her faith, her courage, her forgiveness—we have a choice to make.

I am unapologetically asking you to help liberate another woman just like her.

Another daughter.

Another mother.

Another priceless soul created by God and imprisoned by evil.

For $250, you can rescue one woman from slavery and bring her home.

You can literally rewrite the ending.

You can be the miracle she never thought would come.

BringHerHome.org or 888.342.1010

This holiday season, let our thankfulness be more than words.

Let our freedom mean something.

Let our abundance become someone else’s rescue.

Because the most meaningful journey any of us will ever take is the one that leads another human being from darkness into light.