Before we got to Swaziland, Seth Barnes sat my team down and briefed us on what we were about to encounter: extreme poverty, overwhelming pain, broken families and the continual presence of death swirling in and around the lives of these children so desperately loved by God. Today we went to Mahangeni, a Care Point that’s under scrutiny for spiritual darkness, and we walked head first into everything Seth had described.
As we pulled into the center, the first thing I noticed was that these kids were not the same as the other Care Points. Usually we hardly get out of the van before we’re bombarded with pushy toddlers, all vying for attention. This time, though, as we pulled in, we were met with vacant stares from tiny Swazi children, who followed us with their eyes but otherwise showed no recognition of our presence. As we filed out, it became apparent that these children were the reason Care Points existed. The tiniest were led by children under the age of 5, most were so hungry they were falling asleep on each other, many were covered in the sores that denote an HIV positive baby. Children were barely clothed in rags, without underwear and there were multiple incidents of children peeing on the floor. They ran around barefoot in the dirt, dodging broken barbed wire and shards of glass in a space better equipped for a junk yard than a playground.
Being around these kids was absolutely heartbreaking. They were afraid of us because we were white, so it was hard to get too close, and every child was covered in filth and snot and sores and pee, swarmed by flies and disease. These children were the closest I had ever come to being surrounded by dying kids, and it was quite possibly the hardest ministry we’ve done so far on the Race.
On the way home, Evan noted that children require the least bit of excitement for joy. All it takes is a smile and they’re usually laughing with you. But these kids often refused even to smile, no matter how much energy and life you poured into them. “What have they gone through, what have they seen,” he mused aloud, “to make them like this?”
What have they gone through?
Many of these children have no living parents and are raised by elderly go- gos or older siblings. They hardly get any food; they can’t afford preschool so they can’t go to grade school (paid for by the government). Their lives are marked by death, and as the average lifespan in Swaziland is 30, it’s not long before they, too, succumb to the grave.
Where is the hope in a place like this?
The hope is here, in these moments, when the children gather to pray, when they cry out their thanks to Jesus who saved them, who gives thema life that starvation and disease cannot steal, that evil men cannot destroy, that a sinful and fallen world has no claim on.
It's a hope that both breaks my heart and strengthens it.
Do you have this hope?
