lafon County
South Sudan
Orphanage, primary & secondary school, trade school, agricultural training center, garden-market farm
Lafon is a remote county in Eastern Equatoria and the home of the Pari tribe of South Sudan. Its people have been devastated by the wars that have plagued the nation for decades. The result is a severe lack of food, water, shelter, and basic medical care.
Poor infrastructure makes every one of these problems worse. During the wet season, the few main roads flood and become impassable, and Lafon village can be reached only by bush plane. Very few people have access to a quality school or to biblical teaching of any kind.
Thousands of people in the county have been displaced by food insecurity. With no other option, many are forced to live in camps where conditions are harsh and abuse is common. When food runs out, violent cattle raids between neighboring tribes often follow.
In 2024, a Hoplon team traveled to South Sudan to assess the needs firsthand. We met with government officials, members of parliament, community leaders, spiritual leaders, and displaced families, all from Lafon County.
We also visited a camp for internally displaced persons in Juba, where more than 10,000 people from Lafon County have lived for over a decade. We were blessed with the opportunity to sit with families who had been forced to flee their homeland and to carefully document what they told us. When we asked what Lafon needed most, the answer was the same from everyone:
Lafon Mountain
“Our people need to learn how to farm so they can survive, but they first need to know God.”
Farming training with “Farming God’s Way”
From there, our team traveled to Lafon county to meet with community leaders from across the region. We listened as they described the spiritual needs of their people, and their agricultural struggles.
There we spent time sharing our own desire to serve God in that region and the calling he had placed upon our ministry.
After careful deliberation, and by the grace of God, the community leaders chose to donate a sizable portion of land so that we could establish an orphanage, primary & secondary school, trade school, agricultural training center, and garden market farm. In the years ahead, this compound and farm will also serve as a regional headquarters for relief work and for sharing the love of Christ throughout the country.
Church destroyed by the Government of Sudan prior to south Sudan’s independence
Hoplon now works through local partners who are themselves from the Lafon area. As children, they were displaced from their homeland and orphaned by the fighting. They grew up together in an orphanage in the south of the country, surrendered their lives to Christ, and came to share a passion for the Gospel, for orphans, for education, and farming.
Today they are back on the ground in Lafon leading this project, ministering to their people and to the surrounding communities, representing Christ, and tearing down the barriers between tribes through the blood of Christ. They serve alongside the pastor of the local church who was orphaned by the same conflict and raised in the same orphanage. Years later, by God’s grace, they have been reunited to care for the needs of their own people. Hoplon is proud to support them as they set out to serve God boldly.
Bible distribution in Lafon
A critical part of the mission in Lafon is our collaboration with farmers trained in program called “Farming God’s Way”. This is a holistic model of agriculture built on three integrated spheres: biblical, management, and technology. Together, these principles treat farming as an expression of the Kingdom of God, both physically and spiritually.
At our training center, our teams have began using this program to address the food insecurity and poverty facing agricultural communities across the wider region, so that families can feed themselves, remain in the land they call home, and god willing, create an environment where their displaced kinsman can finally return home.
This program focuses on the mandates given by God in the book on Genesis regarding stewardship. It is also infused with the Gospel thought the curriculum.
To date, we have had 65 people come through the training who have taken it back to their communities, and there have been 30 professions of faith in Jesus after hearing the gospel message presented during the course.
Support the Lafon Project