Let me just share a snipet of the family situations I heard today and yesterday. These aren’t sob stories; these are real people whose houses I entered into and whose voices I heard tell these stories. Please do not just read these for entertainment but PRAY for each family.
One little girl was 3 grades behind because she was really sick. She has a kidney infection and/or disease that caused her incredible pain from eating. Her family could not afford the better foods for her, so she suffered everytime her body processed them. Many times she missed school because she was in too much pain to walk the long distance. The only true solution is surgery to remove her kidney, but her family cannot afford that. Her family has 10 children living under a small roof, 7 brothers and sisters and 3 nephews taken in from a broken relative family. This isn’t some small size house you think of in America. This means a roof that has to be replaced every few years and one to two rooms to fit everybody. The house is made out of wood straight from trees, not processed like at home, and is similar to a bamboo hut. The father works as a coconut farmer, but the owner pays him very little. Sometimes he struggles for a week to even find work and provide for his enormous household.
In this community, every child, including the young ones, walks to school. They walk along the rocky, muddy path while rain pours down on them. The road to school is 3 km, which they walk 4 times a day: once to school, back for lunch, back to school, and then home at the end of the day. That’s 12 km, which for you runners, you know that’s more than 7 miles everyday. Most of these children do not eat 3 normal meals, let alone extra to give them the strength to make it to school. So many children shyly asked for prayer to have enough to eat because they were so hungry.
One family had 3 daughters with the father staying home. The mother had moved to a large city hours away to be a maid for a rich family. She only saw her family every other month. Many mothers from the Philippines move to other countries for years to send money home; most of them become nannies or maids for rich families.
Another family had the father working in a mine, and his son in high school sometimes worked as well. Just last night there was a minor earthquake here that could have caused a mine collapse on people. The family lives in fear that they might not come home because of the danger. Even that line of dangerous work doesn’t provide enough financially.
So many mothers burst into tears because of their brokenness when I asked for prayer requests. Every family just wanted to be happy and provide enough food for their children. My heart grew more sorrowful at each prayer with every family. I am so thankful the Holy Spirit gave me the words to pray. How do you pray for a family that God provides when they have been starving for days? How do you tell them that He hears their prayers when they struggle so much? It's so hard.
[The Bible tells us that this brokenness is a result of the garden of Eden through Adam (Romans 5:11-21) . The world is a sinful place because of that brokenness, and poverty is one of the many results of that. The hopeful piece is that the Church as a body is commanded to care for those in poverty; that's one of our callings. God also hears their and our prayers, but He is sovereign and knows how He will answer certain prayers. We may be the answer to somebody's prayer or He may speak to them in a different way.]
