A Life by the Spirit: Outreach in Shai Hills

This Saturday morning, everyone (well, the staff and older kids) here at CORM loaded into the bus and headed for a church in Shai Hills to do a community outreach event. It was a short trip, because we are only a few miles away from the church. The event was a partnership between City of Refuge and the church's pastor, Rev. George Gbeki, and was primarily focused on children. Two CORM volunteers who are working on internships planned the event, and we all helped wherever we were needed. We started by checking all the kids in according to age groups, and gave them wristbands so that they could receive lunch. Then we had songs and worship for the kids, and worked on memorizing the theme scripture, which was 2 Corinthians 5:17 -"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come."
Then Robert and Aaron, both teens at CORM, gave the morning message, sharing about Saul's conversion on the Damascus Road, and how knowing Jesus makes us a new creation. Both of the boys say they want to be pastors, so it was really neat to see them get to start living out their calling!
Then we broke them into their age groups (as best we could!) and began passing out meals. We had enough food for 300, but knew we would be short because we used up the 300 wristbands well before all the kids arrived. It was hard having to turn kids away, but it happens often at this kind of event because it is just so hard to know how many kids to expect. I believe there was easily 400 or more, and probably at least another 100 adults.
The main thing is that we were able to share with them the Gospel of Jesus, and show them the love of Jesus as well.
Cayle

As the bus was taking us to the outreach, Kassidy commented on the houses we passed on the way. She commented that most of them were "mud huts". She was right and it was a good opportunity to talk about how blessed we are at City of Refuge. Our home here is simple by many people's standards, but so much more than most in this country can afford.
Many of our school children come from the Shai Hills community. Some of our teachers. as well, and it was good to see faces faces that we recognized and have little ones give us sweet hugs. I was helping with the 3-5 yr. olds and as we started worship, one of the little boys in my group was crying pretty hard. I asked a couple of children (that could understand me) to ask him what was wrong. I hesitated to touch him or pick him up as some of the children at the outreach seemed afraid of the obrunis or foreigners. (This is one reason I think it's a great idea to have our teens from CORM to help with outreaches.) He still did not stop crying, so I finally just scooped him up in my arms and held him. He snuggled his face right into my neck and after about 5 minutes calmed down so much that I thought he had fallen asleep. I was frustrated at first because I could not speak his language to figure out what was wrong. But in the end I realized even if I could not speak verbally so he could understand, my arms and hug conveyed the most important message of all: that he is loved, not only by me, but by Jesus. I hope his heart at least understood that.
Dawn