A New Heart Beat?

It seems to me that I've got enough new things going on in my life right now and I'm not overly interested in adding more. But it seems that maybe God is inclining me toward still one more thing....a heart for the poor. Now I've been as sympathetic toward the poor as the next gal, but before now I couldn't honestly tell you that my heart was inclinded toward them. But I think I'm feeling a new heart beat for the poor. You've heard me mention our neighboring Oasis community before. On Tues, Thurs, & Sat we take some of our kids with us to Oasis and serve a group of mostly kids. We teach them songs, do a Bible story, and at the end we feed them. They bring their own bowl and we provide the food. Last Sat I was scooping out spaghetti (which doesn't much resemble spaghetti the way you and I know it). Usually the bowl or plate is plastic, sometimes it resembles a dog bowl, sometimes a container like we use for left overs. But last Sat, some of the people in line only had thin ply small black plastic sacks (like the kind we usually get a Wal-Mart, but thinner). They didn't have a plate or bowl. Wow...to have to eat out of a plastic bag!

Afterwards I was talking to Bobby about this. Bobby and his wife (missionaries here since Jan) are pretty well traveled in poor countries. Bobby told me about an Oasis family that he recently met. Like most in the area, they have a dirt floor and their roof is made from scraps of rusted tin that they've scrounged up and being upheld by poles. But Bobby said this family was really bad off and showed me pictures he took. The house is cut inside the side of a fairly steep hill. One wall is only made of rusty box springs of a queen or double size bed. There's no fabric or wood...just a rusty metal frame and rusty springs, turned on it's side. Another wall is made of a very old rotten mattress turned on it's side. Obviously the height of the house is as heigh as the width of the mattress and box springs. They sleep on the floor. They have 2 very simple basic chairs and a small table. Bobby said their 4 kids (10 yr old and younger) are the best behaved kids in the program. And when Bobby visited the house, the father and mother happened to be there. They too were very gracious and insisted that Bobby and our staff member come in their home and sit on the 2 chairs. Out of all the places Bobby has seen, he said this had to be among the poorest.

Somewhere between serving lunch into a sack and thinking about this particular family, my heart really began to ache for them. When I went to bed that night, I was still thinking about them, particularly when it started to rain really hard. It had been raining every day for more than a month...really hard at times. But this particular night, I was woken up twice by the sound of the heavy rain (and I'm in the bottom apartment!) The temperatures had dropped to the low 70s, and the wind was blowing. It rained ALL of the next day. To the best of my knowledge, there was not one minute of that day when it was not raining. As we came and went to church, our roads were sometimes blocked or partially blocked by mudslides and/or rock slides which are common here due to the heavy amounts of rain. When it was time for bed the next night, it was still raining. Think of this particular poor family...they've been in rainy season for 6 months now. Every thing they own is soaked and probably growing tons of bacteria and mold (including their mattress wall). I'm sure the roof leaks like a seive. There's no way for them to dry their things. There's nowhere to sleep since I would imagine their floor is at best several inches deep in mud or at worst a river of mud (if there house is standing at all since the likely hood of mud slides is high). There's no way to have any warm food since it's impossible to keep a fire going in this kind of rain. And without a fire, there is no warmth. Now 70 degrees genrally sounds like heaven to me. But if I'm soaking wet and everything around me is wet, and there's no way to get warm food or drink, and the wind is blowing....then I think I'd be miserably cold. As I went thru my day, this family and the Oasis community stayed on my mind. They and all the others in the community need help! For that matter, there are gazillions of other communities just like them. What can be done? That night all I could do is pray. Sleep was hard to come by. How dare I complain about my stinky moldy apartment when I think of them! Shame on me!