Three years ago my life was comfortable. The ministry was thriving. I was settling into a comfortable routine with teaching and speaking. Or, so I thought. Then I went to Lesotho, Southern Africa. Surprisingly, once I was home, I wanted to return to Lesotho. What would draw me back? It’s not a likely place to visit – poverty and AIDS have ravaged this tiny country. There’s little hope for the people with a life expectancy of 35 years. And yet, I have returned 2 additional times in the last 2½ years. I touched poverty in Lesotho and saw…
- Filthy orphanages where flies swarmed on the bodies of infants.
- Children abandoned by parents who are unwilling to uphold their parental responsibilities.
- Twenty 2 year olds left to care for themselves daily because of limited childcare workers.
- Eyes yearning for hope behind bodies of flesh and bones.
- School children with potential, but with torn, tattered and dirty uniforms and lives.
- Infants, 2 or 3 to a crib, dying at a hospital nicknamed the “slaughter house.”
My prayer before the first trip was “God, break my heart with what breaks Your heart.” He did. The real price of my trips to Lesotho is that I can no longer act like those kinds of conditions don’t exist. I can’t erase the people’s faces from my mind. The children’s eyes yearning for hope keep haunting me. The voices appealing to us to “come back and help” echo in my ears. What drives me? What compels me to return? Simply, God broke my hard heart and I’ve never been the same.
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