Today I went to my first care point. These are the food distribution centers for the orphans here in Swaziland. Before you get a picture in your mind what this looks like let me help you.
The dirt is blowing. It gets into everything. When you get out of the truck you have to close your eyes to keep from getting a face full. There is no grass. And the few scrubby trees you do see have inch long thorns on them. There is no shade and no place to get out of the wind. You walk to the building itself and you see that there is no glass in the windows, just an opening. Then as you get closer you realize that the larger of the two rooms only has a roof and two walls. The rest is covered by wire fence. Most of the floor is made of dirt. The large room they use for a kitchen has nothing but a large caldron over a fire. They have bowls but no spoons so the kids eat with their hands. Before they eat the kids wash their hands in a small tub of water but it is brown by the time the third kid is done.
Lets back up to the moment you got to the care point. When you pulled up the first thing you noticed wasn’t the dirt or the wind. It was the thirty small faces that greeted you singing a song you know very well. It is a song that one of the previous World Race teams taught them. You have no choice but to get out of the truck and sing the song with them. The kids hang on your every move. You stop and draw a face in the dirt with a stick and you have totally captured them. Next you try a giant game of hopscotch in the dirt. The kids catch on and continue the game all over the ground drawing circles everywhere for them to hop to. Some have huge smiles while others have a permanent frown. You can’t blame them for the frowns many of them wear, look at the life they live. They have rags for clothes and eat food with muddy hands. None of them have seen a bathtub in their lifetime and many of them have sores. And yet the smiles still out number the frowns.
Being my first time at the care point my job was to love on the kids and help serve the food. It’s so hard to love on the kids and brighten their day when you’re crying on the inside. I often wonder how to be Jesus to the people I meet. This is one of those times it was easy. Love on the little ones like he did. This must be one of the hardest easy jobs in the world.
