Troubled Days

Imagine that in your neighborhood, one of every 20 families is composed of children-just children, no parents, no guardians. Sounds outrageous, right?  Now extrapolate this to the entire US-1 in every 20 families in the United States is a child headed household-this translates to tens of millions of families! This however is the reality in Mhlosheni, Swaziland, where 5 percent of households have no parents.  The AIDS pandemic has reconfigured an entire generation in Mhlosheni and left children vulnerable and often at a loss on many levels. Today was the hardest day the team encountered, as we visited one such family.  

There were four children that were living alone.  But this family in particular was very alone. The children had no one to speak for them from extended family or from the community as they relayed to us how desperate their situation was.  They were disconnected from their community, marginalized, and forced to pay for the actions of their parents-actions that apparently transcended the passing of their mother and father.  Their deep humiliation at their isolation and was apparent and painful, and we felt it without the padding of the usual buffers we often encounter in our daily lives here in the US.  But it wasn’t just the pain that was difficult to encounter, it was the blatant challenge to our sense of justice, to our sense of what God can or will do in this world.   

In this world, we will encounter pain and injustice. This is a certainty; we only need to look just outside the inner or outer doors of our lives to confirm this.  We cannot fix all of it, or wipe it away completely from our experience here on earth.  What we can do is continue to advocate, giving voice to justice and helping out where God leads us. 

Christ tells us we will encounter hard moments in life-John 16:33 states “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart because I have overcome the world.” 

Our team cannot fix the problem of child headed household here, but because we all felt that this family, in this place, needed us to advocate for them, we are doing what we can.  We can all advocate in our homes, communities, our world, and when the opportunity is available, if we act on behalf of those who do not have a voice, we can help bring about a transformation.  Transformation is what Christ intended for all of us. 

-Angela