Lethabong

This past week has been a busy one - doing different practical ministries each day within the local area. One of these days I visited Lethabong - a very small township that lives in deep poverty, the houses are corrugated iron shacks that are (if you are living in the UK) probably no bigger than your bedroom and they are occupied by families of 4 or 5. There is no running water and no electrical hook up in the area.

The locals are dependent on truck-delivered water and cook on open fires. Any electricity they have is from personal generators. It is a place of great need. We were in this area partnering with another organisation that has started a pre-school in the centre of town for the education of the next generation and also so that the parents are able to look for jobs. We were there to paint the pre-school (also corrugated iron shacks) to make it a more colourful place and increase the longevity of the buildings.

Despite circumstance these people seem to have a richness in community and contentment in life that is a challenging thing to encounter. As I was painting and thinking to myself how little benefit a pretty looking shack is to people who have no water - a young man who was walking by shouted to me:

'yes! More! More!- Good! Good! Nice job! God Bless you!'

Then I started thinking how amazing these people are.

Where there are people the gospel of Coca-Cola is never too far away, it is in a lot of ways (somewhat ironically) a sad sight.

But it is nothing in comparison to the heart crushing sight of the church building...

This is very typically African in my limited experience and it makes me sad - in the middle of a town of maybe a few thousand who have nothing - the people who can bring hope and light into such a community instead bring a massive church building that probably has more monetary value than the whole rest of the town and then tell the people there that if they would just love God enough and give enough money then they would be laughing all the way to the bank.  Meanwhile they question how they will eat that night.

To those of you who read this and do not call yourself a Christian because you do not want to be associated with people like this - please know that these are wolves that dress themselves as sheep but that does not make being a sheep bad.

Title font used 'Henry'