bulembu update #6

GREETINGS!

Dear Friends and family,

Happy late Easter! I hope it was a time for of profound rest and restoration for each and every one of you.

The last month has been a bit hectic to say the least, but Easter was a wonderful and healing time for God to just speak into my life and restore all the broken places in my heart. It was nice to have a chance to just sit before my king and lay everything bare and be filled up with love again.

It has been awhile since the last time I have written and I have a lot to say. I therefore decided to break this email up with subheadings so that you could read bits and pieces of it and so that if you decided to read all of it that you wouldn't feel the need to do it all in one sitting.

Thanks so much!

PERSONAL UPDATE

In my last email I mentioned things were a bit difficult right now at home, and I cannot begin to thank you all enough for your prayer and support during that time. This last month I have really struggled with a lot of grief at the death of my friend, worrying about my mom's health, and most particularly the loss of my grandfather... My uncle also had a heart attack last week and wasn't expected to live, but through a miracle it appears he will pull through (Praise the Lord)... but it has been a very very difficult time to be away from my family, knowing that I couldn’t be with them in their pain really was hard on my heart. When I came here I knew that leaving my family and home was part of the sacrifice required to follow God's call and I really felt the weight of that sacrifice this month. But I also know God said count the cost to follow me, and he is blessing me as I follow him. I have really seen how God looks after the ones we love when we cannot be there to do it for ourselves (and he does such a better job!), and I trust him to continue to lift my family and most particularly my Grandmother out of the miry place. Please continue to pray for them though, as there are some tough decisions ahead for my parents, and they are still really hurting in the midst of all this.

Personally, I wasn't very mentally present this month as my mind was literally thousands of miles away. Finally I decided to take a couple days off work to just pray and sleep and I was really blessed when some friends from South Africa took me to Mozambique for a couple days. Just being near the ocean with good friends poured a lot of peace back into my soul. I was very blessed to be able to go and just rest even if it was just for a couple days.


SPIRITUAL UPDATE

I have been learning a lot about trusting God and relying on him for all my needs in this season and giving up everything in order to follow him, to have no ties - especially not to material things, as although I don’t think there is anything wrong with material things I think I have ties to some of them which God is asking me to remove. I am learning the value of "Lord give us THIS DAY our daily bread", I am learning that since we don't even know we have a tomorrow to share what we have today no matter how scary it seems if God asks. It's been a huge lesson since I tend to like financial security and I like to know where my next meal is coming from or my next rent check but I trust God and there is a comfort knowing my next meal relies on him totally, as I have no doubt he will meet and exceed all my needs. Your incredible support has allowed me to bless a lot of people who couldn't afford their next meal, or who couldn’t afford schoolbooks, or who couldn’t afford to support themselves in the crucial voluntary roles they had come to do in Swaziland and so although I cannot even begin to express how incredibly grateful I am for supporting me, you have no idea how much gratitude is directed at you from all of these other people that you have blessed in such beautiful ways. I have learned a lot this last month about the difference between desires and needs.... for instance I would like a laptop battery since its a pain in the butt that every time my computer unplugs it shuts off and I have to plug it in and re-boot it... this life I am striving for is uncomfortable and inconvenient, nevertheless, if I have to have a little inconvenience and a little discomfort so that someone can eat that’s a sacrifice I have learned that is well worth making. So thank you so much for the support you have given me, I will continue to use anything I receive beyond meeting my needs to bless those in the community who have so much less than I have.

Bulembu Update

So many new and exciting things are happening in Bulembu at the moment. Since Jan 1/10 we have opened seven new homes for the orphan, with 3+ houses scheduled to be opened in May. We have also taken over an organization in Bulembu focused on looking after babies (Abandoned Babies for Christ), and thus have had an influx of over 50 new kids at once, on top of the children we are getting every week from social welfare. It is a wonderful time for Bulembu. However to say it's been busy would be an understatement. We are often working to all hours trying to finish the things that need to be done. I have been mainly focused on putting together child profiles for future donors and inputting children's information into our system so that we can keep track of all of them and their information.

As I go through the children's history I am once again struck by what an incredible impact Bulembu is having. Often as I read the profiles it takes ALL of my self-restraint to not start weeping in the office, more than half the stories I have read so far begin with the statement, we first discovered this child after his or her mother tried to kill them, or was planning to kill them. It is truly horrific what these children have been through, and what children all over Swaziland call their everyday reality. I know this is something I have written about many times before, but I cannot emphasize how shocking the places these children come from. A five year old should never have to be "street smart" and know how to survive on his or her own at such a young age because they have been abandoned. A twelve year old should never have to bear her first child after being raped repeatedly by an Uncle. An eight-year-old girl or boy should never have to sell their innocence in order to provide for their next meal... and yet they do every single day. It kills me, because I want to rescue all of them. I desperately long for Bulembu's growth so that more and more children can be picked up out of these horrible places and brought to a place of safety and love where they can just be children. But it is really exciting to see what is happening right now. I feel so blessed to be part of the growth happening in Bulembu!

Reflections

"I have come to realize more and more that the greatest disease and the greatest suffering is to be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, to be shunned by everybody to be to be just nobody to no one."

Below is both my thoughts and several excerpts from in a book called Invisible Children, Rescue the perishing by a beautiful friend Jason (and Cara!) Mitchell, who I work alongside with everyday here in Bulembu, and I will continue to quote much of this book throughout this email as I have been struggling for the last month trying to find the words to write an update that would begin to convey all that has been happening in my heart, my words have seemed so inadequate. When I read the opening of this book though I thought "Yes! This says it exactly" there are no words I know that are more true to describe what I feel about what is happening here, and if you get the chance I strongly encourage you to read this book (http://africarevolutionstore.bigcartel.com/product/invisible-children-book-by-jason-mitchell)....


"This morning brings another day of trial and survival for the children living on the streets of southern Africa. Waking once again to the harsh reality of loneliness, hunger and desperation already has most of them feeling exhausted. The dawn has brought only for them the warmth of the sunshine as the cold night has stolen their restful sleep. But the cold is not the only thing that keeps them awake. Their bones ache from lying on their beds of cardboard on top of the cold, hard concrete sidewalk, and they are plagued with worry for the safety themselves and of their smaller friends and relatives that huddle close to them. One cannot help but think they are too young to feel so old and broken down.

So often when they find it hard to sleep, when they find themselves alone, with only their thoughts, they remember a day when someone cared for them, a time when the nights were not nearly so cold and the days not nearly so lonely.

Each of these children carries a story, a terrible story, each of which will undoubtedly break your heart into pieces.

When I meet these orphans on the streets of Africa I know my life has changed forever. Everything that used to seem important to me before, now so often just strikes me as silly. Why have I spent so much of my life pursuing my own self-interests? Why have I spent so much time trying to accumulate more and more stuff? Why do I require so much while these children have absolutely nothing? How could I have missed seeing all the need in the world?"

How can one begin to describe what it feels like to have ones heart repeatedly broken by the things one sees here in Southern African, how can one begin to describe each of the moments I have cried in bed asking God what is happening in this beautiful continent, how can I explain how tempting it can be to give into despair when you are faced with the same tragic pictures every day...

...And yet in Lamentations 2:11 God says:

I have cried until the tears no
longer come;
my heart is broken.
My spirit is poured out in agony
as I see the desperate plight of my
my people.
Little children and tiny babies
are fainting and dying in the streets.

.... and I know that God too sees his people and his heart is breaking for them, with a more profound grief than I could ever even contemplate because it is his children who are dying...

I also know that when I weep a righteous anger burns in me, and a desperate hope emerges in my heart that something can change, and because I know that the grieving in my heart aligns with the grieving in God's heart, I also know that the righteous anger he has and the desperate hope to do something to make things different for these children is even stronger. I know that God already has victory on this earth and that he is already working to redeem these broken countries and their broken children.

... When we ask God for something I know that we are to pray in joyful expectancy, because just as lamentations shows, God has already seen the plight of his children and he is working to redeem all this brokenness that we have built by bringing his kingdom to this broken world....

I know something can change because I am seeing it change in front of my eyes every single day. I see how this organization helps change things, I see how God uses people to touch the destitute and change them, I see how a group of university students in south Africa give up so many comforts to live in solidarity with the poor, I see how people like Jason and Cara write books and reach their hands out to spread their passion for changing Africa, I see how the girl I sit with in my office every day has sacrificed the comforts of home, money and family to come volunteer in a country across the world, I see that things are changing here in this continent because beautiful people such as YOU who aren't confronted with harsh poverty every day still acknowledge its existence and fight it by supporting me, and people like me, and my organization, and organizations like mine, and you offer up prayers for hope....

I am even seeing myself change as God reveals to me the brokenness of his children, and stirs a passion in me and pulls me past all my selfish desires and into the hearts of others.... and I am filled with a passionate hope.

Something that has really challenged me over the last month is in Luke 12:49 when Jesus said, "I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish that it were already burning!"... I was forced to ask myself if I was setting the world on fire, and if not, why not? I was forced to look at myself and ask AM I dramatically transforming the world's cultures through the message of Christ's love (to live in solidarity with orphans and widows), or am I here working in Africa to make myself feel better when I go to sleep at night. Why is it that I can say that I desperately want something to change for the poor I meet and then can spend money on things I don’t need but I have learned to take for granted.

This last month I have realized that I want to be dramatically different then the person I am and just give to god whatever he wants whenever he wants... all of you have so generously provided for me, and yet what do I have if I cannot share it with the broken around me... if there is one thing I have learned from Africa is the value of today as I do not even know that I will have a tomorrow, I believe that there is a time for storing, but right now God is teaching me the value of "give me this day my daily bread", and I have realized that as I try to hold onto things and money that they will just slip through my fingers, and I have been blessed not to just selfishly enjoy but rather so that I can bless others who are in so much obvious need (a lesson I have learned from all of your generosity) so I am giving all I have to the point of extreme discomfort to chase God. So that I can move with him towards stopping all of the brokenness I have seen in the hearts of the children in Southern Africa. Because I can’t just cry out for him to do more, I have to do more and I believe I can help stop what is happening across the globe. I believe things can be different. But in order for things to be different we have to be different. So I want to be different then what I have been. Mother Theresa said "“I found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more LOVE”, now I am not going to kid myself and pretend even for a second I know what it is like to give as much as she did, but God has been given me a glimpse of what this looks like, to love until hurts, which in turn produces more love instead of pain, and I think I want more of it, because I have a suspicion that this is the kind of different that changes the world. This is the kind of different that causes one to act when one is filled with righteous anger at having seen the atrocities and injustices that have been done to these beautiful children. This is how I pray that I can learn to love and out of that love - live.


Prayer

- I would love to ask you to all pray with me about where God is leading me after Bulembu, I think I feel him drawing me to law school but I really want to be sure
- Please pray for the children of Swaziland and South Africa
- Please pray for the situation in South Africa
- Please pray for Bulembu that we would continue to grow as an organization.
- Please pray for my family and particularly my grandmother at home, for a deep rest and a new season of restoration for them

Last but not least: THANK YOU for all you do for me, for the other volunteers, for the children. I am so blessed to have your prayers, thoughts, and support....


Much love,

Heather Davies