Those who make me want to help change the world (Wed 06/03-Thurs 06/04)

Do you ever fall asleep feeling as though everything you thought you knew about the world is so miniscule and insignificant compared to what you still have to learn? That’s what is about to happen to me for the second night in a row.

The past three days have been very intense for us here in Joburg. On Wednesday and Thursday, we spent the majority of our time at the Central Methodist Church in downtown. We also taught for about an hour at the school the church has opened for the refugee children. The church is best known for providing shelter for some of the Zimbabwean refugees here.(For a background on what’s going on in Zimbabwe, check out http://www.somalipress.com/zimbabwe-overview/modern-history-zimbabwe-1142.html or the other 2 million sites that come up.)  Like in so many other countries, the issue of Zimbabwean refugees fleeing to South Africa is highly controversial. As such, the church has been a target of aggression from the SA community who feels that the church should not be caring for the refugees. When I say caring for, I mean that the church is attempting to provide a community for this traumatized population to be part of while the South Africans are marginalizing the refugees. Then again, looking at it from South Africa’s side, don’t they have their own crap to wade through? 

My experience at the church was not what I expected it to be. While in Egypt, we taught English to African refugees from Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, and other more northern African countries. I found my time interacting with these refugees to be very different from any evening I had spent in Cairo with our students. Our first hour or so in the church on Wednesday was spent with Bishop Paul, an absolutely amazing individual who is clearly dedicated to his mission. He briefed us on the background of the church and the struggles that it has faced, and it still facing. The details of the discussion would require their own blog, but his insight and personal accounts of the xenophobic attacks in SA were very powerful. The church community looks to this man for leadership, and he provides his congregation with what they are looking to him for. Between spending some time with the school children, exploring every corner of the church, being attacked with hugs by the most loving group of four year olds ever, sitting in on the evening service, talking with a 19 year old Zimbabwean refugee named George, and leaving the already full church only to see a thousand more refugees sleeping outside of it, I have been exposed to a community of determined and resilient people who are working to find where they belong. Truly amazing.

Seeing these people makes me appreciate what God has given me in my fortunate and blessed life even more than I have before. And you know what’s so intriguing to me? These people, these refugees whose families have been slaughtered, whose lives have been forever altered, whose stomachs probably growl all day and night with hunger, they never once made me feel uncomfortable for what I have been given. Instead, they just ask for help. They are not angry for what they do not have and what we do, but rather aspire to be more than they are. And THAT is what inspires me to do something about it. Baby steps of course, but these people, and those all around the world just like them, they have the drive and passion to move forward, and our job is to reinforce those emotions that are already there. 

Ukuthula (around the world),

Lynn

GEORGE: You are a muslim then?

ME: Yes

GEORGE: We all worship the same God after all.