Imagine you live in one of Africa’s largest cities.  Your husband earns less than a dollar a day.  You have just given birth to twins, two more mouths to feed on starvation wages.  Who will provide for your children?

 Contrast this situation with my 9 month old friend Shepard.  She’s named after her grandmother Shepard.  Little Shepard’s father, Emmanuel, was a childhood friend of mine.  Emmanuel and his siblings grew up in a home where parents obeyed and loved God.  Emmanuel named his first daughter Shepard in recognition of the fullness of life he gained from his mother’s witness, and in honor of her example.

Yet, many of Congo’s children are not as fortunate as Shepard.  At the Kintambo Health Center recently, our nutritionist Mrs. Ritha, stepped into the consultation room with a bundle in a thin, white sheet.  I peeked under the corner to discover a tiny infant with dark, sallow eyes peering at me from sunken eye sockets.  Two months old and weighing 4.4 pounds, she pursed her thin lips when something brushed her cheek.  Ritha handed this bundle to me, and returned to fetch a second one, the twin sister – the same size.  The infants’ mother held a frail 13 month old sister in her arms.  The father, we were told, eeked out a living pushing a wheelbarrow in a Kinshasa market where clients gave him the equivalent of a few cents for the service of pushing their loads.  Cradling the second infant, Ritha wondered aloud, almost rhetorically, who will provide for little girls like these?

Ritha knows the drill.  She’s a nutritionist, with expertise in the basics of treating severely malnourished children.  She weighed and measured the girls and calculated quantities of a nutritional fortified milk powder they would need called “F75”, distributed by UNICEF.  But clearly, these twins will need more than an “F75” solution, and they are far more typical of Congo’s children than my friend Shepard.

Since coming back to Congo in 2004, I and a determined team of Congolese health professionals, church leaders, and caring lay people, have been seeking solutions for Congo’s children.  It’s a slower process than handing out “F75”, but with potentially sustainable results.  We begin with Jesus Christ, the Source of Life.  Our training teams know a relationship with Christ makes a huge difference in the way people live.  We fight malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea with the gospel and with local resources and community initiative. We seek out ‘good neighbors’ within communities.  Good neighbors share the good news of Jesus with their neighbors, or the benefit a “kitchen garden” offers, or that breast feeding protects baby’s lives, and that God is good, and that water sources need protecting, that Moringa leaves are a super supplement to the diet of a young child, that using insecticide treated bed nets protects against malaria, and that the solidarity of a small group brings resources together for the creation of an income generating activity.

Good neighbors make regular visits to neighbors’ homes.  In Camp Luka, where nutrition of children is critical, a team of neighbors began weighing children once a month to find those not gaining appropriately.  In the between weeks, they visit the homes of each child, especially those whose weight is stable or has decreased.  In some households, they find teen mothers who hardly know how to care for themselves let alone their children.  Elsewhere they find children abandoned to the care of grandparents. Other children they find fending completely for themselves while their parents are across the city trying to earn the day’s bread.  Who can provide for these children?  When parents connect to Jesus, the Source of Life, they are transformed and live differently and join a community of faith, and abundance begins to replace deep poverty.  When our volunteers pull up a chair in someone’s yard, they bring Jesus and hope to the very heart of Kinshasa.

There are many neighborhoods in Kinshasa like Camp Luka, where hope is a rare commodity.  Would you like to join our team as we work in the heart of Kinshasa in favor Congo’s children?  You can help make it possible for us to be here, and you can pray to increase the effectiveness of our team. Please pray for our trainers and the community volunteers they mentor.  The problems they encounter are overwhelming.  Pray we will find many ‘good neighbors’ willing to care and to share about a true connection to the Source of Life.  You can also make a difference in your community by being a ‘good neighbor,’ and getting involved in people’s lives and sharing the hope you have in Jesus Christ.

Katherine