The Beauties and Challenges of Africa
One such example is Khayelitsha, the biggest slum area in Cape Town with about 800 000 black people living mostly in shacks, stretching about 10 km long and 5 km wide. About 80 % of these people are jobless and alcohol, drugs, prostitution, AIDS, criminality etc are rampant in these informal settlements.
Our team here is helping in the schools of two of the squatter camps with free eye tests for the children and is trying to get them as many free glasses as possible, which they cannot afford otherwise. They also bring food to a local soup kitchen which cares for the homeless people. We visit the University and help the students who have no goals and need new motivation. People here as everywhere else need spiritual help and support to gain new strength and to approach life with new vigor. We also want to - similar to Mexico - visit hospitals to give comfort to the needy and pray for the sick as well as distribute good educational and character building material to the children in the slums to give them a good foundation for their future lives.
The highlight in the humanitarian sector which we would like to achieve is to make a trip to the Congo as soon as possible as our assistance there is urgently required.
We would like to share with you two excerpts of emails which we received from Kinshasa just a few days ago; they speak for themselves.
Pastor Theophile wrote us: "… The situation of children in Kisenso isn't good, food situation is even worse. When you were here, we had 150 children (orphans), since you left, 52 died because of lack of food. Now, we have 98 children. Some of them (37 children) try to go to school but they don't have possibilities to continue studies because school in Congo is too expensive for them."
Another friend of ours there wrote us and explained how important it is to pray for the situation: "… We hope very much, that God will answer all these prayers and will show mercy to this country. He already did just that so many times, like on June 30th (2005, where elections were supposed to happen and got postponed). Unrest was planned and predicted. Many foreigners had already left the country. And NOTHING happened! God protects this city in an unexplainable way. Please pray with us for the coming year, which will be decisive with the coming elections. At the end of next June everything should be over."
Thank you for your prayers for the situation in Congo. Our thanks goes also to those of you who are actively helping through your donations to change the sad situation of the poor children there. We appreciate your help very much and wish you a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS and His blessings for the coming NEW YEAR,