Day Eight: The Teddy Bear Sermon

Here are a few tastes of Africa for you: As I sat down to bang out this post a termite fell down onto my keyboard. I squished it with the backspace key.

As that was happening I looked in the mirror and saw that the skin had finally started peeling off my forehead from the massive sunburn I got on Saturday (day seven).

But before I could search my neck and ears for more peeling Dave said "Check it out" and pointed to a giant, bright red half-moth half-dragonfly bug that had lighted on our curtains.

These seem like uniquely African impressions right now. But so are 400 laughing kids, the shy smiles of little Lhomkosi, and the laughter of our new friends from World Vision.

Saturday started with stories. Everyone had visited their sponsored children on Friday, and the stories were being retold over breakfast. Lives had intersected and started to entwine, and there was real emotion in recounting these meetings.

Each of these stories deserve their own space, and they'll get it before this journal runs its course. There is a story in the relationship of Amanda and Thandiwe, the wide-eyed girl that became a shadow to her new American sister. There is a story in the relationship of Michelle and her two sponsored children, and especially her concern for Bekithemba, a boy in a troubling situation.*

There are dozens of these stories, and I promise they'll be told. They were the highlight that most of us had been waiting for, and brought new perspectives and new questions as well.

Saturday's agenda had us visiting garden projects and then meeting a couple hundred of the ADP kids at a school on a hill. The kids at CRCC had made a banner with their colored handprints and names under it, and we'd brought it to Mhlosheni with us. At the school we were going to make another one with the hand prints of our sponsored kids, and take it back to Oregon with us.

Our schedule is full here. We meet for breakfast at 7:00, arrive in the Mhlosheni office before 9:00, spend all day seeing projects or kids or both, and then get back to the hotel between 5:00 and 6:00.

When we arrived at the school there were already far more than two hundred kids milling around. If there's a party on for the Mhlosheni area, word about it travels fast. The kids sat or played in groups, and their parents or caregivers sat in the tall grass or on the few flat stones peeking out of the ground.

More kids kept arriving by the minute. The ones that the team had met in their homes the previous day found their sponsors from Oregon and began to stick to them. Dave had visited three kids sponsored by he and his family, and all three followed him around like little penguin chicks.

Some of the Mhlosheni kids broke into groups of four and five and did a traditional dance for us. They kicked their legs as high as possible and then tried to clap their hands beneath their practically upright leg. It hurt just to watch. Some were better at it than others, and when the little ones tried to do it there was applause and laughter.

We called all the kids together. We brought the ones sponsored by CRCC to the front (about 65 of the 72 who are sponsored by CRCC members were there) and Erin presented our banner with its handprints and "Love and Prayers from Oregon" message.

Then we set up another banner that read "Love and Prayers from Swaziland." The kids formed three lines and with the help of the sponsorship people and a few team members each one left their brightly colored handprint on the banner. Their names were written next to each one.

Bonginkosi led the children in singing Swazi songs --- we learned he used to teach Sunday school! --- as we set up lines for the gift packages from CRCC. These are the ones that Janel and team designed and assembled and came over in our five extra suitcases. Each package contained the "Somebody in America Loves Me" yellow t-shirt, crayons, drawing books, jump ropes, toys, and other games.

Karen and I set up two lines and took photos of each sponsored child with his or her gift package. Some smiled freely, thinking Christmas had come early, and some grimaced, not really knowing what was going on. You could see that half of them were waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to say "No, just kidding. We need that package back now." When it gradually dawned on them that it was THEIRS and they could KEEP it the air became pretty festive. For the 400 kids that didn't have a CRCC sponsor we handed out full-size teddy bears that had been purchased by World Vision.

It was when they handed out the teddy bears that you could catch a glimpse the passion these people have for their work. They were like children themselves, and every one of them --- men, women, office staff and field staff --- beamed like a kid. If God is at work in this land, and I'm certain now that he is, then he works through people like these.

Karen and I took hundreds of pictures of kids that day. As I lay here flipping through them on my camera, listening to the thunder and Dave's tired snoring, I think "These are the faces of Mhlosheni."

Some are giddy, some are surly, some are wonder-struck and some show the carefully cultivated boredom of the teenager. But viewed as mosaic they make up the face of our children in Mhlosheni.

Musa, the Mhlosheni ADP manager, approached me in the afternoon and took my elbow. "Don't worry. She is coming."

Musa had tracked down our sponsored girl Lomkhosi. When her last parent had died she had moved to an Aunt's house in South Africa, just across the border about 30 minutes away. He had gotten permission from the national office to send someone to get her and she was coming to the picnic by car.

I was amazed at how seriously Musa took the job of getting Lomkhosi to the Mhlosheni for a meeting. I had tried to explain that I would love to see her, but that I didn't want to put anyone out. There were also other reasons I had come to Africa.

But Musa insisted and she came bouncing down the red dirt in a white pickup truck about two hours into the party.

Lomkhosi has the same bright grin she wore in her World Vision photo. We sat down on the tall grass with some drinks and I gave her the presents and cards I'd carried from Oregon. She was amazed at Georgia's blonde hair and she giggled when I pointed at Joie and called her the boss of the family. I told her Kaelly was a dancer and Braden a lovable goofball.

When I pulled Gideon the stuffed bear out of my backpack I explained that he was Georgia's favorite bear, but that she had wanted her to have him. Her eyes got big and she held him close the rest of the day.

We had had a few cool and cloudy days in Swaziland. This one started overcast too, but by the time the banners were unfurled on the hilltop it was well into the eighties and the hazy sky did a wonderful job amplifying the African sun. Bald men without sunscreen or a hat (like me) should not hang out on a shadeless hilltop under a sun like this. We all got burnt, but I looked and felt like the lobster-colored bald guy in the beginning of "Lilo and Stitch" who's trying to eat the ice cream cone.

We gradually disentangled ourselves from our sponsored children and the crowd. Musa promised that as long as the ADP could keep tabs on her Lhomkosi would stay in the program, even if she spent much of her time in South Africa. He said this with great feeling and looking directly into my eyes and I could see how much he cares for these children.

When we left they had begun to serve a meat meal to the kids, perhaps the only high-protein meal they would have all week, or perhaps even all month.

As we watched the crowd receding in the rearview mirrors I had the strangest feeling that we'd witnessed a reenactment of Jesus' preaching from the boat, with the multitudes pressing in from all sides. But the ones reaching out for a cure for their brokenesss were children, and the sermons consisted of singing and playing games and insuring them that they were loved --- by World Vision, by the funny burnt-skinned strange-sounding foreigners from afar, and by God.

World Vision's ministry is seen more through their actions than their preaching. Even though their faith comes through clearly and passionately in their morning devotions and staff meetings, it's just as clear that their actions are their truest message. Love and care for the poor, the dispossesed, and the marginalized. For it's in the love we give that we're most likely to find our own salvation.

We did other things on this day. We visited two gardens where World Vision provides seedlings and assistance, one a community garden and one a small-scale commercial garden where produce is sold to wholesalers. We walked through the ever-present red dirt, made rich and refreshed by heaps of fresh cow manure and we ate carrots pulled raw from the African soil (Bonginkosi may have fractured a tooth on one!).

But the kids and the banners and the gifts were the highlights of our day.

* These names are probably miss-spelled. I promise to go back and fix them after I get home and have web access to the blog.