What’s the best Christmas present you’ve ever received?
I’m sure we could all answer that question in a lot of different ways. My parents told me that when they were little that the older people in the community use to give them fruit for Christmas and I just thought that was crazy. Well that was until I came to Swaziland.
For the last two weeks, my fellow World Racers and I have been handing out about 2,000 cabbages and small bags of candy to children in Swaziland as their Christmas presents – possibly even their only Christmas presents.
I’ve never seen a kid so happy to get food. Children in the states worry about if the will get the phones, clothes, or games they want, but these children simply just want to survive. They are completely happy with just their cabbage and candy.
For this month’s ministry, we’ve been working with Adventures in Missions, which has a base in Manzini. AIM has various care points, or feeding sites for children and youth, set up in both the urban and rural parts of the city. Each care point serves as a place where impoverished children from the surrounding community can safely have their need for food met. Normally, about 250 children per day are fed at each care point. Several of the care points also teach basic lessons and Bible stories to the children.
Because the care points are not in operation during December, AIM has been hosting care point Christmas parties during this month of November, and we have had the joy of helping facilitate the parties.
Christmas is for me this year will be hard, so when I was told that we’d be doing Christmas parties as part of our ministry in Swaziland I imagined myself being completely overwhelmed because all I would be thinking about was my family and my grandmother that past last year, five days before Christmas.
But instead God has given me complete joy to share with these children. We’ve been singing songs about bananas, eating beef stew, rice, cabbage and beets for Christmas dinner, and playing games that have nothing to do with Christmas.
Needless to say, Christmas does not look the same here as it does in America, although I have seen a few Christmas trees popping up around the city.
The traditions are different. The songs are different. And obviously, the presents are very different.
But ultimately all of those things are not what makes Christmas what it is. Christmas is about God’s Kingdom coming to this world through Jesus Christ, and ultimately that is our goal here in Swaziland. We are bringing God’s Kingdom to these kids in the name of Jesus, and God can use whatever He sees fit to accomplish that.
He used His Son, He uses us, and He can even use cabbages.
