Highlights of Africa - Part XVII

Next we visited a feeding center supported by ATC. The center has grown from it initial capacity to serve 20 children to now serving 50. But there are so many more outside the gate who are hungry and alone. I saw children as young as 4 or 5 carrying smaller infants on their backs.

We were welcomed in to the feeding center, where a screening process is used to determine the most vulnerable children, the youngest ones, the sickest ones, those who are crippled and least likely to be able to run from a soldier or other danger.

And again, we were blessed by the music of the children’s voices as they sang the praise songs. Again, we were given the honor of handing plates of beans and rice to these children who sat on a tarp spread over the ground under a tin roof to keep them cool from the sun. I sat on the ground at one edge of the tarp just because I wanted to be right there with them. One of our team members, one of the media personnel who is a young father, was so moved by this scene – very small children with no parents, waiting to be fed, with hundreds more for whom there was no room peering through the thatch from outside the center, looking longingly at the food – that he asked to be the one to deliver the blessing for the meal. I think he was feeling a very strong urge to ask for blessing for these children. He struggled to get the words out as his voice faltered and cracked several times. And again, I wished every American could experience this.

The feeding center now has a farm where they grow their own food and sell any excess to support further expansion. Hopefully someday those children hanging around outside the walls of the feeding center will be allowed in and be fed.