Connor’s Africa Service Trip

Yesterday we headeda out to a remote village for our first Super Kids Camp. We rounded up 186 kids from the village for the day’s activities. We were greeted with some songs and dancing, and we joined in the fun.

We split up the kids between a craft and some recreation activities, and then after a while, switched. The kids enjoyed it, and we all had a good time.

It was so interesting being around these children, many of them orphans. Most of them had dried snot running down their noses, had no shoes, one dingy set of clothing, nappy hair, and dirty everything else. But the eyes… oh man, the eyes. So much pain, so much emotion, so much heartache.. yet at the same time, so much friendship, so much yearning to be loved, so much affection and openness.

It was great. We had a lot of fun and made new friends. I got to put on some of their local getup and dance inside a circle w/ about 100 kids as we all sang and played on the drums. Good times that I’ll never forget.

We’ll do two or three more Super Kids Camps while we’re here. Today we worked on the new land all day long, moving dirt, hauling water, making bricks, and clearing land. The local men we work with are awesome. I’ve been nicknamed “Mavudu” by them (which apparently means “problem child”), and Brennan is “Mutale”, which I guess is just a common surname here in Zambia.

We have nightly team meetings after our long, emotional, trying days. The 28-30 of us each take a turn sharing our “one good thing” about the day, which often ends up being a quasi testimony meeting, as we each have often shared personal, intimate details about our lives and thoughts in an effort to explain what we are feeling and learning.

Zambia is amazing. The people are so loving and accepting. They have bigger smiles than anybody back home, hands down. I’ll definitely be making a future trip here to continue to help this work progress. As I talk to the orphans at the Resource Center and learn about their lives, I can’t help but wonder about the apparent disparity in life, and why they’ve had to struggle. And so often, all I can do to help is to smile, play with them, and give them some sense of what it’s like to just be a kid.

And yet it feels like it’s not enough.. that there’s so much more we can do. There IS so much more we can do, and we should do it. We shouldn’t waste time, money, or energy. We should concentrate on what is most important in life, and then act. My being here is only one of many acts that allow us the humbling opportunity to serve God’s children and spread peace. I encourage you to look for other ways you can be involved and help. Our brothers and sisters are counting on us….