As I continue to travel, I am finding more and more that English-spoken words around the world have many different meanings.
For example, the world COLORED.
To call someone colored in America is very derogatory and means that they are black and insinuates slavery.
To call someone colored in South Africa just means that they have brown skin (not black, but mixed) and it is a cultural classification that is not slang or rude.
This month, I have the honor of living in a small beach city in the Western Cape of South Africa. For the first and last weeks of the month, we are partnered with a ministry called Living Hope. With Living Hope, we are working at a Holiday Club (VBS) in the colored community of Ocean View. The community is westernized, and looks similar to Highland, Ca. But, on the inside, it is very poor and the children do not live in highly structured homes.
The story of how living hope got a buiding in Ocean View is amazing. The building was once owned and run by sex trafficking and ‘tuk’ (crystal meth). To make a long story short, the community basically lashed out on the owner and through a series of circumstances, the owner was removed (praise God!). Living Hope asked the bank if they could purchase the building and the bank said they would give it to them for R100 (15USD) and then made the first donation to Living Hope for R100. So, the building was FREE! Talk about awesome!
Every morning we start our ministry by walking the streets of the community doing, ‘call-outs.’ We invite all of the children hanging out in the streets to come and do Holiday Club with us where we’ll play games, learn about Jesus, sing songs, and eat a good meal.
It’s really cool because the kids coming running to you for love and attention, and they follow us back (as though we are living and walking jungle gyms) to the center for VBS.
On our very first morning, I met a little boy named Jason. He is from the Rastafarian community up the hill. His little personality stuck out to me instantly. He speaks Afrikaans and only some broken English, nonetheless, we became instant buddies that morning as he followed me around everywhere.
Within 30 minutes of the kids club starting, he turned to me screaming… and before i could even think, there was blood everywhere. He had head-bashed with another child (on purpose!) and had a bloody nose. We cleaned him up and he was fine in a matter of minutes. Next, I turn around and a little girl named Phoebe is yanking on my pants and pointing to her ear. She had a terrible wound that was oozing. I glanced in another direction and a little girl’s fingers were burnt and blistering… another direction and little Luke opened his mouth to show me his hurting, partially missing, decaying teeth.
LITERALLY within a matter of 2 minutes, my heart was flattened like a pancake.
I realized that even though I was standing amongst a westernized culture, it didn’t change the fact that i was standing inside another room full of harsh realities. I instantly had a flash-back to home… and to the children that I’ve seen and thought weren’t THAT hard-off. Western doesn’t mean lack of harsh reality. It just means DIFFERENT harsh reality.
I instantly prayed for God’s strength because in that moment, all i wanted to do was lay on the ground with the children and cry with them. But I knew that was not the solution, and in the back of my head I could hear my good friend from home’s voice saying for me to embrace their situation and to not be taken down by it.
So, that is what I’m doing. I’m loving these children, I’m playing with them, I’m feeding them, I’m holding them on my lap, I’m touching them, and I’m singing to them about Jesus’ love.
