Today’s thoughts and observations are brought to you today by Joey…
I woke this morning with the words to the song “Kings and Queens” running through my mind: “little hands, shoeless feet, lonely eyes looking back at me. Will we leave behind the innocent to grieve on their own, on the run when their lives have only begun? These could be our daughters and our sons.”
Being in Swaziland is such a paradox. Here we are, these wealthy Americans, a representation of wealth and materialism, though unhappy as a general population, to help and support these Swazis, who as a whole have very little, want very little, help each other and are generally very happy people. We take a lot of things for granted in the United States, but the things that make the biggest difference here are the things I least expected. Washing my face, for example, or singing in the shower, without the potential risk of getting the “runny tummy” from unfiltered water. Refrigerators–we’ve been drinking lukewarm water because it is our only option. Good coffee, Dr. Pepper, and absorbent towels are all luxuries that I look forward to having as soon as I get home…and yet somehow, I don’t miss all the things I have at home, because I am seeing firsthand what the world is like. It is greatly, vastly different than seeing poverty in pictures or on tv. It is so much more real, painful almost, especially knowing what waits for me at home.
We’ve talked about sponsorship at church every couple of weeks, and yet there are still kids here at the Njojane Care Pointe (let alone the other 20 care pointes, in Swaziland alone) that don’t have sponsors. In all honesty, it confuses me as to how we have unsponsored kids. It’s only $34 dollars a month. Almost anyone can find $34 in their monthly budget. So maybe you skip Starbucks 2 days a week. Or you pack a lunch one day a week instead, or your family decides against eating out just one meal. $34 is nearly nothing in the US…you can’t even buy a full tank of gas with $34, but it is such a small price to pay for what sponsorship does for a kid: she can go to school. She gets 2 meals a day. She has someone who is forever on her side, praying for her, thinking about her, loving her…even if only from nine thousand miles away.
We had the chance today to sit down with our sponsored child and present them with presents and KFC (which is a huge hit here). Khetokuhle, my kid, was stoic and quiet…not at all what I expected. After realization that I was her sponsor, she was overjoyed. I’ve never seen a more beautiful smile. She loves Jesus. She likes to read and write, to sing and dance. Both of us were overwhelmed to meet each other. I realized she is a lot like I was at her age, and then I realized I could have been her. I could BE her. We could have easily been sisters, or mother and daughter, and that kind of puts everything into perspective. Audrey Hepburn tells us that, “As you get older, you realize you have two hands: one for helping yourself, and one for helping others.”
I strongly urge you to put those two hands together and pray about sponsoring a child. These unsponsored kids could easily be your daughters and your sons. Let us love them like they are our own. Let us love the least of these.
Below is a collection of our awesome sponsor meetings today:
Wonderfully expressed and so true!
So good to see photos of you everyday and see your big smiles as well as smiles of all the children. You must feel so blessed to be doing the lord’s service in this way. We will continue to pray for you, your team and the children.