Cindy lay face down on the concrete floor of a guest house in Gula, Uganda, weeping and crying out to God. “Lord, I don’t know what I can do, but whatever You want me to do, I’ll do it.”
The year was 2006, and Cindy Cunningham had spent several days among hundreds of desperate children in Northern Uganda — children of war, sex slavery, starvation, and mud huts. “Little kids ages two to 15 — like ghosts. I could see every bone in their bodies,” Cindy said. She had arrived in Gulu at night, no electricity, in a darkness so thick you could feel it. “Night in Uganda is unbelievably black,” she recalls.
Rose Aber, a Ugandan Christian, age 23 and in a full-term pregnancy, showed Cindy around Gulu. Rose was a trauma counselor with World Vision International. At night, she slept under a large former UNICEF tent with terrified children — their tent surrounded by a 10-foot-high fence with barbed wire and guards lining the perimeter with AK-47s.
Every night, children came to the tent from nearby villages because “God is there,” they said. A 14-year-old girl told Rose, “If I don’t come here, they will abduct me, and if they don’t abduct me, they will kill me.” Brokenhearted, Rose listened to the stories. Eight-year-old Joseph said, “They put a machete in my hand and said, ‘Kill that boy, or that boy will kill you.’” Another said he was ordered to kill his mother and father with a machete.
Rose cried out to God to help her endure and listened more. She understood fear and suffering. When Rose was young, she escaped capture by hiding among trees and bushes while her father was abducted.
Both boys and girls were kidnapped by the terrorist group the Lord’s Resistance Army that was led by Joseph Cony, a Ugandan who claimed to be God. Boys became soldiers; girls became sex slaves. Mostly at night, LRA came into small villages, burned, raped, and abducted children between ages six and 12, some younger, some older.
If they had shoes, the shoes were taken. The children’s hands were tied to their waists and to other children and marched away. They walked for days, drank their own urine, and in the first two weeks were often ordered to kill someone with a machete. No guns were given to the children until they were fully brainwashed into the LRA.
Hundreds of Internally Displaced People camps (IDPs) sprang up during those years of the worst of the LRA siege. IDPs sheltered mostly women and children displaced within their own country by the LRA. Men often fled. Some joined the LRA.
In 2007, one year after that first visit, Cindy founded Village of Hope Uganda. Rose resigned from World Vision and became the boots-on-the-ground national director of the village. Eighteen children lived in Rose’s home those first years. By 2010, they had built four homes for 96 children on a hundred acres of land.
Through prayer and obedience to the Lord, two women from 8,000 miles apart birthed Village of Hope Uganda among the Acholi culture surrounding Gulu. Their mission was, and still is, to rescue and nurture mistreated, orphaned, and terrorized children using six resources: safe homes, nutritious food, education, medical care, trauma counseling, and Christian discipleship. “We restore childhood to these children, knowing only Jesus can transform hearts so terribly mistreated.” Cindy says. “We give hope, and hope changes everything.”
Today, Village of Hope Uganda has two campuses for about 800 day and residential students. Bobi Village serves elementary children on 50 acres, and Bweyale Village ministers to high school and trade and vocational school children on 180 acres. As children graduate from primary school at Bobi, they move on to Bweyale Village to pursue high school or vocational training.
“Children do not age out at Village of Hope,” Cindy says. They stay until they are healed physically and psychologically, have spiritual guidance, are educated, and are prepared vocationally to sustain themselves or move on to college. About 50 graduates are currently training in various fields in college. Several have returned to the villages as staff members, including teachers and librarians.
Free Will Baptist Foundation Director David Brown reports a beautiful new library is a recent addition to Bobi Village, thanks to a Foundation grant in 2022. American churches collected and shipped 3,000 English-language children’s books to the library. (English and Swahili are the two official languages of Uganda, which was a British Protectorate until it gained independence in 1962.) Brown, along with International Missions Director Clint Morgan and their team, visited Village of Hope Uganda last September. IM is a partner with Village of Hope.
Farming plots at both Bobi and Bweyale are designated for cultivation and animal husbandry to meet part of the food and firewood needs. Farms also offer agricultural training for students as well as a small revenue stream for the two villages. In addition to agriculture, the vocational school at Bweyale offers certification in construction, auto mechanics, tailoring, and hair dressing.
Tabitha Artisans in Gulu is the Village’s micro-economic program for women and girls who escaped from the LRA but became “child mothers” because of torture and rape. Often, they and their “rebel babies,” as the community calls them, were rejected by their families and communities. The Village provides trauma counseling and hope through business and skill training in sewing, jewelry-making, and basket weaving so these child mothers can provide for themselves and their children.
Though Village of Hope Uganda is thriving, much remains to be done. Cindy notes, “Eighteen villages or camps are waiting to be helped,” and the need for financial sponsorship is great. “Rose and I ask for ‘joined hands’ to help us meet the needs of those villagers.”
Cindy first felt the call to Africa at her home church. She was 18, and medical missionary Dr. Laverne Miley spoke of his and his wife’s work in CÔte d’Ivoire, West Africa. “I was called at 18, but I was 44 before I set foot in Africa the first time,” Cindy says. But those long intervening years prepared her to found Village of Hope Uganda and the work that has followed.
After graduation from Welch College, Cindy taught kindergarten in a Free Will Baptist missionary school in Hawaii and then led high school work with another church. Later, she did relational evangelism at Youth for Christ’s Campus Life Clubs. Still later, she worked with the Josh McDowell ministry for several years and finally was sent to Africa in 2006 by that ministry.
As for founding Village of Hope Uganda, Cindy says, “Those long years and all that other work were ‘stepping stones’ that prepared me. I love people, and connecting people with Jesus was the most important thing I did, but I never felt I was a number one leader. At Youth for Christ and Josh McDowell’s organization, I was a ‘second’ person. I did logistical assistance, so to speak, taught, organized events, and other ministry work. During one short period I even worked in my brother’s accounting firm in Arkansas, learning to keep books, do budgets, and financial things. I didn’t know I’d later need those skills. But God prepared me.”
“When I founded Village of Hope, I still didn’t know what I was doing. My brother filled out the 501(c)(3) paperwork. Others came along to do a website or pay for this or that. I asked friends and acquaintances to advise or be board members. I now look back and say I jumped out of an airplane, but Someone gave me a parachute.”
“Like I said, God prepares you! Nothing is wasted.” Not even trauma or pain, and Cindy’s had plenty of that — seizures, a brain tumor the size of a tennis ball, no insurance, a second tumor, and meningitis that almost took her life. “Even stupid little jobs. God uses everything to prepare us for something else. He does far more, abundantly more, than we hope or ask or think. Ephesians 3:20 is my life verse.”
Cindy and Rose…2 women + 1 village = hope.
About the Writer: Bill and Brenda Evans live and write in Ashland, Kentucky. Their email is beejayevans@windstream.net.
