Machine Gun Preacher

While I was scanning the blogosphere today I came across a post about a movie coming out this fall about missionary Sam Childers. Here's a quick summary of his story.

After giving his life to Christ, Sam went on a missions trip to help repair damaged huts in Sudan. During this trip Sam stumbled across the body of a child torn apart by a landmine. He fell to his knees and made a pledge to God to do whatever it took to help the people of Southern Sudan.

Rev. Sam Childers is a former drug dealing, outlaw biker who now risks his life to rescue children in Southern Sudan from one of the world’s most vicious terrorists.

For the last 13 years Sam has been battling to rescue children from horrific violence in Southern Sudan where Joseph Kony and his rebel army known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have been relentlessly terrorizing thousands of innocent people. Over 100,000 children have been captured and enslaved into Kony’s rebel army. These children are often forced to kill their parents or be killed themselves.

Sam is on a mission to rescue as many children as he can and put an end to Kony’s reign of terror. He fights on the front line of the war zone, at times sleeping in the bush with an AK-47 on one side and a bible on the other. The people of Sudan call him the “Machine Gun Preacher”

To date he’s rescued over 1000 children and reunited 700 of them with their families. The other 300 children live in an orphanage that Sam built, where they are protected and rehabilitated to reclaim some semblance of their childhood.

This is a truly remarkable story and Sam’s biography, Another Man’s War, is currently being made into a Hollywood feature film starring Gerard Butler. The film is due for release in September 2011.

Anyone else encouraged that Hollywood is starting to tell more stories about real people and their encounters with God? Shouldn't people in a relationship with God have the best stories to tell?