📌🌍Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)
Today I travelled to Lundzi village, fifteen miles outside of the capital city of Mbabane. Within those fifteen miles, the landscape dramatically changes from an urban center with asphalt roads to a remote community with rough, rutted dirt roads that prove impassible during the rains.
In Lundzi, I had the privilege of meeting Sarah. Sarah, her husband, and their three young children share a one bedroom, mud walled structure covered with a rusted tin roof. Their windows have only a piece of fabric to ward against the cold nighttime temperatures.
Still, this is their home where they love each other and the community around them.
Sarah’s husband is disabled and as a result he is unable to work. Without disability, food stamps, or other social assistance, the reality in Eswatini is like that of other majority world countries – if you do not work, you do not eat. There are no safety nets here to catch Sarah’s family amid their great need.
Sarah works hard to provide for her family. In addition to the demands of living in a remote area where she has to carry water long distances, search for firewood, and care for her children, she also tries to help out her neighbors with jobs, like washing clothes, to provide food for her family. In return, Sarah sometimes receives Maize porridge to feed her children. This fills their bellies but does not provide the nutrition needed in order to grow physically and cognitively.
In this area there are no available jobs and roundtrip transportation to town on a rural bus is too expensive. Sarah has done whatever she could in order to provide but even still, food insecurity and malnutrition have been a reality in Sarah’s home in the past.
However, because of your support, life now looks different for Sarah and her family.
Today, Hands Against Hunger high protein meals are delivered to Sarah’s home regularly and her family is thriving as a result! She mentioned noticing a great difference in her children’s health and well-being since meals started arriving. This is made possible through a unique partnership that we are grateful to God for developing. This partnership includes Christian Life Center in Dayton, Challenge Ministries Swaziland, and you, our ACHI family of supporters.
This partnership allows for a local pastor on the ground in the community, Pastor Clement, to deliver high protein meals to Sarah while building a relationship that allows for caring for spiritual, emotional, relational, and physical needs of her family. Together, we can ensure that Sarah’s family witnesses the Gospel being lived out in practical ways every single day.
Sarah had a message that she wanted to send to our ACHI family.
She said, “Thank you. I am very grateful that you send rice packs to my home. It helps a lot!”
*Name has been changed for safety and privacy.
