Overwhelmed by injustice we fight for what should be a right of every human being. The right to eat!
Over the past few weeks our team has really been dealing with what we should do about the hunger in the community we live amongst. We eat 3 meals a day; the kids around us eat 1. Maybe 2 if they’re lucky! We have a variety of foods to choose from when deciding what to eat for the week; they get porridge. Most nights there are at least a couple kids that hang around the house hoping to eat with us, and we have to say no.
We didn’t come to Swaziland to feed an entire community, but what do you do. AIM and Children’s Hope Chest are doing the best they can to get food for the Care Points so these people can eat, but it’s so hard to watch kids run around with pot bellies because they aren’t getting the food they really need! Our minds are exhausted from thinking about this ever present problem. Jesus commands us to feed the hungry, but we just don’t know where to even start. Our budget was made to feed 5, not 500!
I’ve had 3 good meals a day for as long as I can remember, I have no clue what that kind of life is like. We come and preach that God provides, but I’ve never really been put in a position of starvation and been told to trust God! Maybe we’re just struggling to relate with what they’re going through because we’re broken. The thing is, we keep coming back to the issue, and we have to live in it for the next 5 months. How do we live like Jesus in this? Do we pray over a sack of rice and start passing it out?
Hope is a hard thing to keep when you live in a country that should be renamed Oppression. If we begin to think about how big the problem is here, we rapidly become overwhelmed. The whole thing is about people, and if we take our eyes off of the people and try to focus on fixing the bigger picture, nothing will ever change. Our God is greater than hunger, it’s about His Kingdom. This is reality, how does it change? People die because they don’t have anything to eat!!!
The question we’re fighting with is, What Would Jesus Do? Will sharing a little food over the next 5 months really make a difference? It doesn’t change the situation; it just brushes it under the rug for a while. Will that even help some of these people, or will it make them worse off once we leave because they decided to depend on us for food?
I guess the only solution is Jesus. In the words of Blair, one of our leaders, “People just need Jesus, man.” We raised enough support to be able to come here, not to feed a country. So, what now?…
Your comments and thoughts on this blog will be greatly appreciated. Please pray for us.
In Christ,
Jon
That is one of the hardest questions you can ask. That is always the dilemma when you live your life on the mission field or when you go on a one week mission trip. The only encouragement I have is to read Exodus and see how Moses handled the situation with the Israelites. “Lead, and be led.” I know you are doing this, but prayer and listening/waiting on the Holy Spirit for His direction will give you all that you need.
Oh I could definitely imagine that’d be difficult to see children getting less than you do. But you’re right. Sharing the food would only brush the problem under the rug for a while, as you said. These are some tough situations, Melo! But you seem to be putting your experiences to good use. I hope you are having a blast! You still owe me a safari! Oh! And I still wanna be a nurse with you and travel the world!
Love ya!
-Em
😀
This has been something I’ve struggled with for a long time…Obviously, you may it a little harder since you’re right in the middle of it all, staring hunger in the face. But I don’t understand why its ok for some to have so much and others to not have enough. I don’t even know where to start, but I just want to fix it all.
Remember to never confuse the effects of the gospel with the gospel itself; people are provided for by His grace, not their (or even our) works.
Love you man!!
-Kirsten
Jon,
I was working to catch up on emails and saw a link to this in one of Katie’s blogs. I know that this is one of the hardest situations to be in. You may not be able to feed everyone, but encouraged to know that by feeding just one you are changing that one life. I pray that God would show your team how to best glorify Him in this.
Erin