Peer to Peer

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Mark Herndon at his office in Vero Beach

Mark Herndon is a computer guy with an altruistic heart. Father of two and grandfather to 10, he puts family, faith and helping others above all else and claims, “I am unbelievably, overwhelmingly blessed.” This attitude of gratitude has been the motivating factor for much of his life — as a youth worker at his local church, First Church of God in Vero Beach, as the owner of Autobahn Communications, and as a businessman dedicated to assisting clients with technological challenges. Next month, Herndon will board a plane loaded with laptops and software for his third mission trip to Uganda, Africa, where he will help empower Ugandans in their thirst for technological knowledge. In his own words, he will, “help local people to be the best that they can be.”

A landlocked country, Uganda is abundant with wildlife and warm-hearted, hospitable people. Bordered to the north by the Republic of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west and Kenya to the east, it is approximately the same size as Great Britain and one of the most bio-diverse places in all of Africa. But it is also one of the world’s poorest, ranking 146th out of 177 for life expectancy, education, and standard of living. The years of strife, civil war, and persecution perpetrated by tyrants Idi Amin and Joseph Kony, who tortured, maimed and killed civilians by the thousands, took their toll leaving many young children without families. Some as young as 6 had been trained as child warriors to slaughter their own family members and are still trying to cope with the trauma today.

Their plight wasn’t even on Herndon’s radar until he began following the mission of a young man named Chris Vogt whom he had pastored as a youth. In 2006, Vogt joined New Hope Uganda, a ministry focused on tackling the country’s monumental orphan crisis. Now in its 30th year, the organization serves more than 1,000 Ugandan children from Lake Victoria to Kampala to the borders of Kenya and seeks to be a “father to the fatherless.” Vogt served to train local pastors in their ministerial work with the children.

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