I think about this little girl…
Yes, I’m guilty of complaining. Both with my mouth and in my heart. Even after coming home from the Race. You’d think after traveling the world and seeing people living in horrible conditions that I’d never have something negative to say or think.
Even just two weeks after coming home… I can’t remember exactly what crossed my mind, but while I was putting on some old shoes, I thought something like, Ugh! Why can’t I EVER find shoes that fit me?!?
Then, I remembered something that happened when we were leaving a little village in Mozambique called Nhambita….
We were trying to pack up our tents to move on, but before we left, we decided to eat what food we had. We knew before we arrived in Nhambita we wouldn’t have access to food in the village. So, a couple of my teammates had gone to a grocery store, literally hours away, the week before to gather all the food we needed for the week. Clean, running water is scarce in Nhambita, let alone refrigerators or other methods of preserving food, so we stocked up on rice, peanut butter, jelly, and a lot of bread. By the end of the week, all we had left was bread… nasty, stale, moldy bread.
There is no trash-control system in Nhambita. So, what do the villagers do when they need to throw something away? The only thing you can do, throw it in a ditch outside. So, we reluctantly threw our green, rotten bread into a ditch the villagers use for trash.
Then came the children, swarms of children. Like a colony of ants, multiple kids ran into the ditch, digging through the trash to scoop up our old bread. Then they passed it out to other children and adults and began to eat it. We immediately tried to tell the villagers the bread was moldy and not good to eat. They looked back at us with expressions saying, Why would you throw away perfectly good food? No matter what we said, they continued to eat. I saw one woman giving an old piece of bread to her baby girl. I gave her the one fresh piece of bread I had, which she and her baby shared and then they continued to eat the moldy bread. The little girl in the picture above is shown eating one of our old pieces of bread.
The hardest part about watching this was the fact the children seemed happy, almost excited, to dig through our trash to get the bread. It was as if they had found a hidden treasure.
So, why would I ever complain? What right do I have to speak negatively about my life when there is so much need in the world? All I can tell you is that I’m human and God is working on me.
One thing I had to remember on the Race is the fact I can’t do everything. I can only do my part and let God do the rest. He is able to do more in 1 second than I can in my entire lifetime. Learning to trust Him is a life-saver. He has already connected people like my ministry hosts and another church to help the villagers get the supplies and care they need. When I left the village I knew I needed to pray.
Will you pray with me for the people of Nhambita, Mozambique?
Children in Mozambique from Kelly Griffin on Vimeo.
