Pure religion is this…

Tear down the walls, see the world. Is
there something we have missed? Turn from ourselves, look beyond,
there is so much more than this. And I don’t need to see it to
believe it cause I can’t shake this fire burning deep inside my
heart. Look to the skies, hope arise. See his majesty revealed. More
than this life, there is love. There is hope and this is real. -Tear
down the walls, Hillsong United

Right now I am staying in White River
but we are doing all our ministry in a Suswati community called Back
Door. It is a very poor community located on the upper part of one of
the many mountains located in this region of South Africa. The Iris
Ministires base we are working with has a church in Back Door, along
with a bible school and a feeding center. We were helping out at the
feeding center up until the week of Christmas, and we will start back
up again in January. We hang out with the children for a bit then
everybody gets together and we spend 30 minutes or so doing a
discipleship lesson. We will sing a couple songs in English and in
Suswati, chuck FULL of body motions. Then we will give a devotion on
something that kids ages 1-18 yrs old can understand equally, which
is extremely difficult to come up with. After the lesson, the kids
all run to where the women from the community serve the food. I am
always up front helping the little ones (the one to two year olds)
get their plates and bring it back to a non-crowded space of dirt to
eat their food without spilling it everywhere. Everyone gets the same
portion of food, whether or not you are a 1 year old baby girl or a
60 year old go-go. There is always pop, something that probably has
cabbage in it, and sometimes chicken (the chicken isn’t at all what
you and I are used to. None of the white people can eat it because it
will make us really sick. The people who receive food at the feeding
center are used to that quality of food and it doesn’t affect their
digestive system). The first day we were there, there were over 200
kids receiving food.

The first day, while I was trying to
keep the little ones from falling on top of each other at the front
of the line, Blair (one of my leaders who are spending time with us)
came up to me. He was holding a baby boy, who couldn’t have been more
than 18 months old, and said to me, This one was being squished in the back. ” So I brought him right up to the front of the line and got him his plate and found him a spot on the ground to eat.

After all the kids had received their
food, I was walking around the center to see where the Spirit would
lead me. While I was walking around, Jenny (my teammate) came up to
me and asked me to follow her. There were 4 boys all sitting around
one plate of food. Three of the boys had to be from 4 years to 6
years old. The other boy was an infant. Four brothers. They were
sharing their plate because they thought they had to share their food
because that’s what they always had to do. Eat a little bit of food,
and share it amongst themselves. Everyone else had their own plate to
themselves, but they honestly thought they had to share it and hide
it. Like it was something to be ashamed of. Like it was something
they were guilty of. Guilty of eating food? Ashamed of having the
first meal they’d had in a few days?

After getting them all set up to leave,
I sent them on their way and finished my walk over to where the kids
were finishing their food. I found that baby boy that Blair gave to
me earlier and he was covered in dirt (which is sand here). I cleaned
the sand off his face, but he continued to lose his balance and fall
over, since he was still learning how to walk steadily. He was
holding something in his hand that he kept trying to eat. I thought
it was a rock, but even a baby would know not to eat a rock! I took
it from him to find out what it was and to clean it off for him, and
I found out it was a chicken bone. I gave it back to him not knowing
what to do because he had been working on that thing for a long time.
He fell down again and started crying. He wasn’t crying because he
scraped his knee, or because he hurt himself. He was crying because
his chicken bone was covered with sand, and he couldn’t eat it. I
picked him up to comfort him, but I was so preoccupied with not
letting the tears welling up in my eyes fall down my cheek.

This was one of the hardest days I’ve
faced since being on the field. Hands down. I am not positive of what
I learned from this. All I can think of is: LOVE. This song was playing in the background of my mind the whole time this was going on.

Jesus
loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones
to Him belong;
they are weak but He is strong.

Religion
that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look
after orphans and widows in their distress. -James 1:27