Dinner for Two, Please

A treat for those who sponsor children with Mission of Mercy is the opportunity to meet our kids when traveling on mission trips.  In Africa, I got to meet my two daughters.  


I am always struck by insecurity when meeting kids that I sponsor.  It was the same feeling I felt in the Dominican Republic.  Inadequate.  


As I met them both, I tried to say their names and as expected I was pretty clumsy with the pronunciation.  I told them my name and they couldn't say it either.  We then sat down and I gave them both a backpack that was loaded to the brim with mostly toys that I knew they didn't have.  They peered through everything looking at it all like it was the first time they had ever seen it.  It probably was.  It was interesting instead of leaving it all out on the cloth that we were sitting on, they crammed it all back in and zipped it up for safe keeping.  

We ate a picnic lunch from Kentucky Fried Chicken.  There were two pieces of chicken and some fries.  In Swaziland fries = chips.  Nhondodozu ate her two pieces of chicken and enjoyed every spec of meat and gristle and then laid the clean bones down in her KFC box.  Nomphilo ate only half of her chicken, just one piece and half of her fries.  After lunch we played with a couple of frisbees that I had brought for them.

When it was time to go, Nomphilo picked up her box of food and looked inside.  There were ants crawling all over her leftovers.  I started to grab the box from her to throw it away, but then I realized that she was saving the leftovers for later.  That's when it hit me...

One ate what she needed to meet her hunger, 
the other sacrificed hunger to meet a need.

First time I saw their smiles was in this picture

Hunger is ever present threat in their lives.  I would like to believe that Nomphilo was saving her leftovers for someone at home.  The other one, with hunger being a immediate need, she couldn't spare any leftovers.  

I was convicted about all the food that I scrape off my plate at home.  I thought about all the scraps that I so readily throw away and waste.  I don't have to worry about eating lunch out of an ant-infected fast food box either.  Plus I know I will have food to eat tomorrow.  They don't have enough, and I have too much, yet at times it's not enough.  Now ....I know... I can live on less.  Can you? 


P.S.  You can be a part of pouring into a child's life by sponsoring a Mission of Mercy child.  Email me at janelle@thehousefm.com for more information!