This month I have the enormous pleasure of working with an organization called New Chapter. We go for two hours a day to the community center in a slum called Puhmlani. Surrounding this community center are shacks made of sheets of corrugated metal, or cinder blocks in a very few cases. We run an after school program for the kids who live here. On the first day, we watched a documentary that talked about life for the people living in communities like Puhmlani. South Africa, Africa’s most developed economy, has an unemployment rate of about 30%, and this affects the people living in poorer communities the most. South Africa’s slums share the challenges that many of the slums we’ve seen around the world have. Malnourishment, absent fathers, lack of hygiene and health care. But among the slums of Cape Town, we learned that a drug called “tik” has a huge grip. Tik is a type of meth, and thus is highly addictive. And like any addiction, once a person is caught in the grips of it, nothing else matters. Theft is common. Gangs are also really common here. Some of my teammates have the opportunity to work at a rehab that helps people recover from addictions and get out of gangs. To read more about that ministry, check out Stephanie Higgins’ blog, or Kaitlyn Keyes’ blog.
So, the kids we serve are products of living and growing up in this kind of communities. Many of them have been neglected and abused, and because of this have a whole lot of behavioral issues. There are six of us and sixty of them. Add on to that the fact that this culture is one that does not view women as authority figures, and we have a perfect recipe for chaos. Last Tuesday, a little girl who couldn’t have been more than nine literally punched through a window pane (To be fair, the guy in charge, Malcom, wasn’t there that day). It’s nuts. But I love it.
I love each of these kids, not because of what they do (I don’t know if that would be possible), but because of how the Lord has changed my heart over the course of this trip. He’s given me a new lens with which to see these kids. In the middle of such tangible and visible brokenness, he’s given me the gift of seeing past the behavioral problems to the heart issues that are causing them, and getting glimpses of who they were created to be. I see a kid who is constantly getting into fights, disrespecting the leaders, and bullying other kids not as a problem child, but as one who has probably been abused and never dealt with it, which has caused a deep anger that explodes from him and could ruin his life. But then I see this same child helping to translate for me in order to resolve a fight between two other kids, or being the first to apologize when he’s done something wrong.
Most of the time we see “problem kids” and are likely to judge them by their actions. This causes us to not take the time to really figure out who the kid actually is. But that’s not really how God works. He looks past our actions, past our sin, forgives, and calls us into greatness. I am so thankful that he does not love us according to how “good” we are, because I certainly wouldn’t have made the cut. Instead, he loves us because he made us and he sees the potential that he has given us for a more abundant life in him. So, for this month, I get to return the favor and love kids because of Christ inside of them instead of their outward actions. These kids don’t have anyone willing to do this, but the Lord has provided them with six of his daughters who know what it is to be loved far beyond what we deserve. What a gift. 1
Thessalonians 2:8 “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.”
