What They Meant for Evil: How a Lost Girl of Sudan Found Healing, Peace, and Purpose in the Midst of Suffering

by Rebecca Deng, Ginger Kolbaba (With)

Overview

Many stories have been told about the famous Lost Boys but now, for the first time, a Lost Girl shares her hauntingly beautiful and inspiring story.



One of the first unaccompanied refugee children to enter the United States in 2000, after South Sudan's second civil war took the lives of most of her family, Rebecca's story begins in the late 1980s when, at the age of four, her village was attacked and she had to escape. What They Meant for Evil is the account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and purity of a child, Rebecca recalls how she endured fleeing from gunfire, suffering through hunger and strength-sapping illnesses, dodging life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles, and soldiers alike-that dogged her footsteps, and grappling with a war that stole her childhood.


Her story is a lyrical, captivating portrait of a child hurled into wartime, and how through divine intervention, she came to America and found a new life full of joy, hope, and redemption.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781546017226
Publisher:	FaithWords
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	407,220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

REBECCA DENG, of South Sudan's Dinka tribe, is one of the 89 Lost Girls who came to the United States in 2000 as a refugee after living eight years in Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya. The violence she experienced as a child during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005) has given her a deep empathy for children and young adults who face similar situations today. She became a US citizen in 2006.

Today Rebecca is an international speaker and advocate for women and children who have been traumatized and victimized by war. She has spoken at the United Nations and served as a Refugee Congress delegate at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Washington DC. She also led a sixty-five person team of referendum workers at the 2011 Out of the Country Voting Center for the South Sudanese Independence Referendum. She worked with the American Bible Society's Mission Trauma Healing program, formerly called She's My Sister.

She is married and has three children. She resides with her family in Michigan.

GINGER KOLBABA is an award-winning author, editor, and speaker. She has written or contributed to more than 30 books, including The Impossible, Your Best Happily Ever After, and The Old Fashioned Way. She has also written a novel series Secrets from Lulu's Café. She is a contributing editor for Focus on the Family magazine and a regular columnist for Positive Note magazine. She has published more than 500 magazine and online articles. Ginger is the former editor of Today's Christian Woman magazine, Marriage Partnership magazine, and the founding editor of Kyria.com, all award-winning resources of Christianity Today.

Table of Contents

Preface: A Lost Girl xvii

Part 1 Home

Chapter 1 The Joy of Innocence 3

Chapter 2 "They Are Coming!" 13

Chapter 3 What No Child Should See 25

Chapter 4 "You Must Go" 40

Part 2 Gone

Chapter 5 The Long Road 55

Chapter 6 The Sky Is Falling! 67

Chapter 7 Left Behind 88

Part 3 Stuck

Chapter 8 A New Place to Settle 107

Chapter 9 A Ray of Hope 119

Chapter 10 The Marriage Proposal 138

Chapter 11 At Long Last 156

Part 4 Safe

Chapter 12 Welcome to America 175

Chapter 13 A New Way of Life 189

Part 5 Promise

Chapter 14 Pursuit of a Calling 209

Chapter 15 Though None Go with Me 227

Chapter 16 Working Toward Peace and Healing 248

Chapter 17 No Longer Lost 265

Author's Note: How You Can Get Involved 277

Acknowledgments 279

About the Authors 281

Editorial Reviews

"War never brings healing," writes Deng, one of 89 "Lost Girls of Sudan" and an international speaker, in this affecting debut memoir. At six years old, Deng's home was attacked by marauders, and she was forced to flee, an escape she recounts in harrowing, riveting detail. Then, in the mid-1990s, living in a stultifying refugee camp with meager food, chronic depression, and constant violence, Deng found hope and fellowship with a makeshift church. After eight years in the camp, she was given the opportunity to move to the U.S. in 2000, but just two days before her departure she was raped by a man in the camp. She forged forward nonetheless, more excited than ever to be leaving after learning that her foster parents went to church. Once in America, Deng learned she was pregnant and, at first, felt a deep sadness. In the end, though, she writes that her love for the baby "made it possible for me to begin to forgive" the man who raped her. She adds, "What brings healing is honoring the pain, acknowledging its impact, trusting God to secure lasting justice, and forgiving those who have caused our suffering." Her gripping account attests to the power of faith and forgiveness to transform suffering into love.—Publishers Weekly

"A powerful story of determination and strong faith that brought a child out of the wreckage of war."
—Kirkus Review

From the Publisher

2019-07-01
A memoir from one of the Lost Girls of Sudan.

Deng was born in South Sudan, and the first few years of her life were relatively peaceful. She enjoyed her grandmother's cooking, the ghee she made from the cows they owned, and the lush vegetation that grew around her village. When she was 6, the civil war that had been raging in other parts of the country arrived at her doorstep, and Deng became a refugee of the Bor Massacre of 1991. Her village was destroyed, and she fled on foot with other family members to safety. She spent the next few years living in refugee camps, eating tasteless maize paste donated by the U.N. It was difficult to find joy under these circumstances, but Deng's strong Christian faith and community of churchgoers she prayed with helped her through her struggles. She also was able to attend school in the refugee camp, an act that ultimately led her on a path to the United States, where she was adopted in 2000 by a family living in Michigan. In this chronicle of her early childhood and subsequent years as an immigrant in the U.S., Deng shares, in mostly straightforward prose, the significant moments that changed her life. Not only did she suffer deprivation and hardship as a young child in the refugee camps; she also faced prejudice as an immigrant, struggling to maintain her Dinka heritage while assimilating to her new culture. Her difficult journey to adulthood and calling as an advocate for other victims of war makes for difficult, sometimes violent reading, but her story is important. In particular, Deng exposes the devastation of war on the innocent, especially women and children, who often bear the brunt of the brutality.

A powerful story of determination and strong faith that brought a child out of the wreckage of war.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 07/01/2019

“War never brings healing,” writes Deng, one of 89 “Lost Girls of Sudan” and an international speaker, in this affecting debut memoir. At six years old, Deng’s home was attacked by marauders, and she was forced to flee, an escape she recounts in harrowing, riveting detail. Then, in the mid-1990s, living in a stultifying refugee camp with meager food, chronic depression, and constant violence, Deng found hope and fellowship with a makeshift church. After eight years in the camp, she was given the opportunity to move to the U.S. in 2000, but just two days before her departure she was raped by a man in the camp. She forged forward nonetheless, more excited than ever to be leaving after learning that her foster parents went to church. Once in America, Deng learned she was pregnant and, at first, felt a deep sadness. In the end, though, she writes that her love for the baby “made it possible for me to begin to forgive” the man who raped her. She adds, “What brings healing is honoring the pain, acknowledging its impact, trusting God to secure lasting justice, and forgiving those who have caused our suffering.” Her gripping account attests to the power of faith and forgiveness to transform suffering into love. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly