This month, my team had the privilege of participating in the Unsung Heroes program under the World Race umbrella. In order for future World Racers to have ministry contacts, teams need to go out into the field within a given country to search for and identify Kingdom-minded men and women who are faithfully serving, but may need more support. This can be in the form of fundraising, publicity, awareness, or service. In the past week, the Lord has brought to our attention several individuals with incredible grassroots ministries among the urban poor.
In the Ngombe slum (called a “compound”) of Zambia, Africa the stories are heartbreaking, the children are heartwarming, and the heroic women of God who make their dwelling amongst them are faithful keepers of that heartbeat. The majority of the men are alcoholics who cannot support their families, sustaining the cycle of poverty and abuse. “Family” is also a loose term as men and women are known to be unfaithful to their spouses, blurring the line between spouses, parents, children, and siblings. HIV infection rates are high, so children end up being the primary caregivers for their parents and siblings. For a child in this community, survival comes before education, and any education available is in the form of community schools – elementary education set up and organized by women in their community (most of whom are not high school graduates). But what they lack in credentials, they more than make up for in passion. The following are organizations we visited that have made their places in our hearts, along with the men and women behind them that run this race on borrowed strength and new life from Christ who overcame. And so, with prayer and petition, shall they overcome.
Chikumbuso (www.chikumbuso.com):
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” Isaiah 49:15-16
Chikumbuso means “remembrance”. This community school is sustained by the nimble hands of widows who crochet handbags and bracelets out of plastic bags. After losing their husbands (to AIDS, alcoholism, etc.), many women in Ngombe are left to support their children. Many seek employment performing odd jobs in which they are also abused. They usually make barely enough to feed their children, let alone educate them. Chikumbuso was founded to meet the needs of these widows by providing them a place to learn and profit from a skill (crocheting handbags and bracelets), a community to lean on, and a school for their children to attend. Seventy percent of the money earned from selling their finished products goes to the woman who makes them to support their families, and thirty percent goes to the community school their children attend.
My team had the opportunity to hear the songs of victory and hope in Christ from these women as they remembered where they came from, and shared about how they experienced deliverance from their circumstances. I also had the opportunity to buy a bracelet made of pink and red plastic bags, and take a picture with the woman who made it. Her name is Kamwengo.
Impact One Initiative (www.impactoneinitiative.org):
There are over 7 million children in Zambia. Only half will finish 7th grade. Whitney Morreau is the incredible woman who is working to change that with her organization, Impact One Initiative. Through teaching classroom management and school administration to local teachers in Ngombe, she equips community schools to impact the future by transforming the community one child at a time. Whitney provides adequate training to enable women who have passion for education but lack higher education credentials to thrive as instructors and administrators within their school system. As she builds close relationships, she is also working to disciple these women in a strong foundation of truth in the Gospel.
We had the privilege of visiting Fountain of Life and Needs Care, two schools Whitney works closely with. When we walked into Fountain of Life, the children were learning about the digestive system. With permission from their teacher, Margaret, I had the opportunity to teach an interactive lesson about the nervous system, specifically the different lobes of the brain. Several of the girls in the class have dreams to become doctors. With God’s blessing and the support of donors, Whitney’s organization will empower these young girls to become the much needed salt and light in their community.
Special Hope Network (www.specialhopenetwork.com):
Within every population around the world, the intellectually disabled are the most marginalized group. And like every nation, Zambia has an overlooked, significantly sized group of children who have cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus, fetal alcohol syndrome, Down syndrome, autism, and untreated febrile seizures that result in brain damage. In Zambia, 4 out of 5 children who are intellectually disabled will die before the age of 5. The reasons behind this high fatality rate run from ignorance to intentional neglect and starvation. In a large family of children, the one who is intellectually disabled is not the one who receives attention, care, and resources. Many are sexually abused and left to waste away, as there is no hope for them to provide support to their families in the future. The intellectually disabled are seen as burdens to their parents, not blessings. Special Hope Network, founded by Eric and Holly Nelson, seeks to reverse that mindset. By establishing community centers in the Ngombe and Garden compounds of Zambia, they provide care and education to parents and children with special needs. Therapy sessions are conducted throughout the week, and parents are invited to bring their intellectually disabled children in for physical therapy, evaluation, and basic skills training (counting, colors, hand-eye coordination, etc.). Since there is very little incentive for mothers in this community to care for their special needs children at all, let alone bring them in every other day for therapy and stay with them throughout, the organization offers food packages to each family with a child who attends.
Visiting the community centers with my team and seeing the children interact with the Zambian staff was a rewarding experience. I was struck with the realization that through having a special needs child in this incentive program, the parents of Ngombe were able to experience the joys of parenthood in a way that parents without special needs children were not experiencing. Children without intellectual disabilities begin life strapped to their mother’s backs while they work all day, and by the time they can walk, parents will forgo parental responsibilities as the children usually spend their days running in the streets trying to escape from home life. Parenting is not a joy, and children are not a joy. The gift of dependency – the blessing of caring completely for one who lives and thrives on your love – that parents experience from having children is absent in this community. But I find it fascinating that it is through the stark vulnerability of special needs children and the satisfaction that comes from seeing them grow and progress through intimacy that Ngombe parents will perhaps desire to embrace the gift of dependency once again. And in this way the picture of the Father who provides and loves His children who are so dependent upon Him is slowly becoming evident in this community. Despite all things, Jesus still proclaims, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” Matthew 5:5. Somehow, heavenly wisdom dictates that it is a blessing to be dependent and to care for those who are (especially the intellectually disabled, as their dependency is clear, and never diminishes but only changes through every life stage). When Jacob begs God to bless Him, the Lord allows him to limp away into the sunrise with a weakened hip socket, thus making it clear to all nations the nature of the relationship he desire with Israel – vulnerable and dependent, providing room for his glory to become evident.
