Light trumps dark in one small African community

I swallowed hard to choke back the tears of what I had just witnessed.  The place was Section 19, Swaziland, Africa.  The year was 2011, my first mission trip to Africa, and God was revealing many things to me in every stop, and at every work of our hands.  We saw many pains, hurts, smiles, joys and tears on that trip.  My view of God exploded within my heart to a measure that I had never seen before.

The love of Christ, when expressed in the sense of true compassion, always goes further than you think and leaves a lasting imprint on all those His power touches.  What I didn't realize then was the endurance of His love that transforms a community after you come back home.

God's power remains when sown and planted.

This particular CarePoint that had just been established in the middle of the sugar cane plantations in Swaziland.  The dark culture in that small two block wide community was palatable.  The heaviness of oppression was felt within every fiber of my being.  It was a squatter camp with abject poverty oozing from each mud hut threshold and every dirt doorway.  Poverty showed no mercy except in a corner of the lot.  A new feeding program established there.

This faith project had been activated by the prayers of many.

The team walked slowly to greet the down trodden with all the smiles we could muster.  My mind raced with questions.  "How do you raise children in the middle of this?  How can kids play in mud huts and broken spirits?"  How could a mother wrap her love around all the animosity that was felt there?"  "Where do they see hope?"

My strong questions demanded answers but my weak, broken heart had none.

The team stopped and I looked down to see a naked little girl sitting in dirt, staring wide-eyed and hungry, as if she was in a trance.  All of time stood still.  I couldn't move. I was paralyzed by fear, and as I looked deep into her big brown eyes, hers locked on mine.  I saw a reflection of the emptiness of my soul.  I swallowed hard and wanted to bolt.  Frozen in time, I couldn't even raise my arm to capture the moment on my camera.  I just stared as if staring would deliver her from that place of squalor.  

As if I could do something, anything, to love her like she needed to be loved in that moment.  My momma heart broke further.  I saw the face of my grandson, Avery, and then everything went blurry.

God was counting my tears in that moment.

A holy spotlight shone down and God quieted my spirit and my raging questions.  He whispered, "These are my children too, love them as I love you."  My heart, by what was strung together by a thread, snapped.  Anytime you hear His voice is changes you.  That's when I knew that Africa would always call my name.  This place was desperately hungry for God.

Teams bring the love and light as they show God's mercy and kindness to those who need love and care so desperately.  We are carriers of God's light and love to all we meet, there are so many love-hungry people in need.  I was one among them who needed God's love and care to put my perspective back together.  I heard Him loud and clear, "This is my family too."

I was overwhelmed by the light and power of His voice but remained fearless when I saw God's light emanating from the new CarePoint there.  I saw it glowing, gleaming in the sun with it's new coat of paint, absolutely stunning, shiny and most definitely a bright spot in a dark, dim corner of Swaziland.

I was encouraged by the Light that the psalmist David wrote about dark places once I returned home.  Psalm 132:15-16  "I will bless this city and make it prosperous; I will satisfy its poor with food.  I will clothe it's priests with godliness; its faithful servants will sing for joy.  Here I will increase the power of David; my anointed be will be a light for my people."  I thought back to the moment I crouched before that small child and received the annointing from God to pray for an increase of God's power and light from that day forward.

This small plot of a African community has such a big presence of God.  I was always stirred that it didn't have a name like the rest of the CarePoints that we had visited.  So I prayed over a new name for the Light we carried there.  "God give it your blessing of peace and love to those little ones that look to you to for hope, for food, for the love that they are needing.  Give this place your name, Lord, your blessing of favor and mercy."

From that first Africa trip,I have continued to carry God's light everywhere I go by the name I was given by our team translator.  She spoke a SiSwati name over us as evidenced in the teams strengths in us throughout the week.  My given SiSwati name was prophetic.  You may have noticed my different "middle" name on my Facebook profile is "Khanyasile" which means "bringer of light" or "has light shining".

Jesus teaches about being the light wherever we are.  Matthew 5:14-16  "You are the light of the world-like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.  No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket.  Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father."

The Light of the Gospel shines bright wherever it goes.  It floods the dark places and powers the weak, feeds the hungry, and reaches the least, the last, and the forgotten.  God's light trumped the dark parts of Section 19, now there are many communities glimmering with Hope.

Fast forward to December 2014, God answered my prayer for a name for the feeding site.  My dear missionary friend, Mitch Hildebrant, messaged me with the most exciting news.  Section 19 had a name, and is now known as "Khanyasile".  This news came right before I was due to leave for Africa to celebrate Christmas with kids in Swaziland.  On that Tuesday,  Mitch and his crew were singing and dancing in celebration of the new name "Khanyasile" with the kids at Section 19.

Also on Tuesday of my week in Africa, just several miles away while in Swaziland, my team was singing and dancing with kids in celebration of the Light of the World has come down for Christmas at the Christmas at the CarePoint parties.  I am amazed how Light births light and multiplies it in a powerful way.  What a beautiful partnership of so many bright futures for many kids this year!  Only God knew the timing of these two celebrations evidenced by His brilliant provisions!

The light of God's love is a big topic to tell but it's easy when our hearts swell with His Love that brings Light!  Such a good word to speak everyone!

Thanks to the churches of Beach, North Dakota who have truly sent and supported God's light in the Khanyasile community. Their support have also birthed two well run preschool programs to seed more light with bringing the gospel to so many children and enhancing their education, as well as feeding hundreds of kids. Truly God's light and favor has rested on this once dim and gloomy place.

Mitch had this to say about the impact:   "We watched as previously drunken men in the community who used to harass us and shout at us now stopped, took their hats off and said 'thank you for caring for our children'."

Evidence that God's Light and Love are definitely alive and active in a once hopeless and uncaring place.

God's arresting Light trumps darkness every time.

There's a peace that God comforts your heart with after being wrecked by poverty.  I am always changed by God's genuine disclosure of truth when I see my own poverty through the lens of someone else's.  It is true today, no matter where you are in life when you encounter the Light of Christ, as it meets with your dark parts of your story, "Remember this is where the healing begins, where the light meets dark, when you come to where you’re broken within." ~ Tenth Avenue North.

Let God enlighten your world, lighten your load and be the Light for all the world to see.  His Light and Hope changes lives!

Hope Meets Poverty

I wasn't prepared for this.

I wasn't prepared to see depravity face to face nor ready to see life in the middle of hopelessness.    It's striking, shocking, and full of contrast.  In it's raw forms it's always honest and revealing.

There is no way to get into this broken scene gently.  What I saw was one of the most heart wrenching glimpses and certainly a dark look into the lives of the Dalits, dwelling in the most despicable living conditions...you could ever imagine.  I was smack dab in the middle of a slum in India.

I am not sure that anything could have prepared me for what I saw that day.

Through many trips I have experienced poverty at different levels and the face of poverty looks different each place I go.  Poverty has different degrees and levels to it.  It's very definitive of each culture and has life altering circumstances with each face that dwells.

I might be oversensitive to this, but I always walk away changed because of deep look at poverty's face.  It's in these stories that I wish I could turn into a super-hero and save every last child that is forever found there.  But I know that is not what they need.  They don't need a loud white American to sweep away their slum life.

So my question to God is why He wants me to care about the least of these.

  "Because I care about the least of these.  These are my children too".  

This class of people are untouched and unnoticed, segregated and separated.  Such contrast from high rises on one corner flanked by expensive apartment buildings to make shift "homes" made of whatever they could find in the trash pile.  For some it's just a piece of ragged cloth.  

How do you raise kids in someone else's trash?

I saw a 10-year old begging for money, the money wasn't for food, it was for his tobacco addiction.  Almost every street corner was littered with young lives peddling something in bondage to a mafia boss.  Slums filled with hopelessness, block after block, on every street corner, poverty at different levels on display.  It was hard to walk into the slums that day.  

"God, please guard our hearts and help me to see with the eyes of your heart."

Maybe a better description would be the condition of my heart after I walked away.

Wrecked.  Something inside me breaks hard. 

My heart is moved by the emotional assault that keeps replaying in my mind.  I don't want to forget.  Dear God, let me not forget.  Let their silent cries penetrate my heart.  Let the poor among us not disappear from my deep thinking....let it not go unnoticed in my daily intentions.  Let it not fade into the background of my somewhat ungrateful and comfortable attitude that slips easy into my heart once back home.  God, please guard me from the sin of entitlement.  God, I saw desperation.

As I loaded up in the back seat of the van, the tears again fell for knowing that I was the "poor in spirit". May the slums scenes replay in my heart to break the blind spots to the hurting, the poverty stricken, the lost and lonely, the homeless, the child slaves, sex trafficked juveniles, the homes of the broken.  

Maybe it's me...and you...too.

Now that I have seen this, what do I do about that?    There is really only one response that comes down to meet poverty.

Hope.  Hope meets poverty.

The problem is that they are the not invisible, or untouchable, or hidden.  GFA supports slum ministry that brings Hope to the faces of the Dalit poverty-stricken people.  Hope meets them in them right where they are at and gives them the gospel message, shows them the face of Christ and gives them a hand up, not a hand out.  I am so thankful that God's hope transfer takes place even in the slums.

"Invisibility is not a real superpower -- but listening, seeing and learning may be."

Now that I have seen...may my walk through the slums serve as a catalyst to move my heart into a deeper level of compassion.  Society likes to hide and tuck poverty away silently, and put slum-band-aid-labels on their lives.    

"Blessed are those at the end of their rope because they can be tied to God.

Blessed are the broken for they can be gathered into His belonging.

Blessed are those who find themselves wholly empty, 

because they have space to be holy filled with God." ~ Ann Voskamp

I am moved by their desperation, and how God meets them in their vulnerable state of emptiness with His fullness.  When there's nothing left but God, there you find the true Hope.  

Love Music - Love Monday {Proof Of Your Love}

Don't be a clanging symbol.

This week's song from For King & Country is getting high remarks.  People are wanting to hear it more and more.  So am I.  The Message version of 1 Corinthians 13 certainly brings the song to life.  Infusing God's words into song lyrics is always a win in my book.


The song centers around the perfect love of God and because of that love, we are to give it out to everyone we meet.  But not only give love, but live love.  God's love has to be center.  It has to be our why.  It must be our motivator to be the "why we do what we do" and our compelling reason for reaching out to everyone.  Christ's love is all and if you doubt that, read Colossians.  Paul has set that truth straight.  Because Christ's love is all, then we as followers of Christ, must and are called to, speak love.  If we don't share with the love of Christ, then we are just clanging symbols...making unnecessary noise.  Make your noise in name of Love.   

If I speak with a silver tongue
Convince a crowd but don't have love
I leave a bitter taste
With every word I say

If I give to a needy soul
But don't have love then who is poor
It seems all the poverty
Is found in me

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-7, The Message)

Dear God, may the words of my mouth be always filled with your Love.  

Five Minute Friday - Give

Give it all away

We give of our time, talents, and our finances.  We give blood.  We give thanks at Thanksgiving and at Christmas we give gifts.  We are a giving people. Some people are very generous, some are stingy.  Some just give to impress.  Some give to honor God.    


Luke 21:1 tells us one who gave it all.  The poor widow came to give a gift to the temple treasury.  Jesus was there with his disciples watching, as many came to give alms.  The woman simply offered her best, two very small copper coins.  She didn't make a big deal about giving.  

From what she had, she gave it all.  She gave it all away.    

Luke 21: 4 "All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

With it being so small was it significant?  The widow gave it all which is in contrast to the way most of us handle our money.  When you consider the tithe, we are returning a portion of it back to God through the church.  But if we give a certain percentage of our income and consider that a great accomplishment, do we resemble those who gave "out of their great wealth"?  


The widow gave, but she gave extravagantly.  That's admirable.  That's honorable.  That's giving an offering.  That's giving like none other.  That's giving like Jesus.  That's giving it all away. 


How do you give?