A Reminder: The majority of the people in the world go to bed hungry!
Every Monday night we have Community Prayer that is facilitated by one of the members of our community. Last week Erica was in charge of the prayer. She had been impacted by the poor nutrition of the children in the school and felt that we all needed to be reminded of how blest we are to have all the food we need....and more. We have 3 meals a day here--with plenty of snacks. We can afford to go down to the store and get Diet Coke and beer. We have plenty of food for all of us with left overs for lunch. While we sometimes feel we are "suffering" because we only get meat once a week, or we are eating the same vegetables every night, we have way more than the people we are walking with here.
The people of the Batey are lucky to get 1 meal a day, which usually consists of beans and rice, cooked in water from the river. The children of the school receive one meal of milk, bread and a vitamin. They cook on fires made in a stone pit.
Yesterday, my heart raced as I watched an unattended baby of about one year old, with no clothes on, stirring a pot of boiling food on the ground with a large knife. The image haunts me still.
Back to Monday night prayer! Erica decided it was time for a " Hunger Feast". For our friends at St. Lukes, you know this as a Third World Dinner. In the real world, about 3% is First World, 20% is Second World and the rest is Third World. For our dinner that night every one picked a "ticket" out of a hat.
One person picked a First World ticket-Greg was the lucky one. He got a steak dinner with wine and dessert.
Two people got the Second World Ticket--Kathleen and Catie. They got to eat beans and rice.
The rest of us were Third World-we got rice and water. I have done this exercise so many times before....except this time, I didn't get to eat all I wanted when the dinner was done (Greg did share a drink of wine, a bite of steak and I got a piece of apple cake). I was hungry when I went to bed that night.
I couldn't help but think of the children coming to school with growling bellies and wondering how they can possible learn!
One thing we can all do is sit with our next hunger pang for awhile and thank God for our blessings ... and say a prayer for those who live with hunger for most of their lives.
A view from our morning walk to the Batey
