Picture yourself as an average Congolese national waking up at our mission station of Nkara to Christmas morning. this is what you would look around to:
Your bedroom consists of one small wooden bed frame covered with a grass-filled "mattress" gathered by you on a dry, sunny day. No dresser or chest of drawers enhances your bedroom, just a small trunk with yours and your siblings' clothes locked inside; no comforters or soft sheets to cover up with, just maybe clothes or old rags. If you have visited the little mission boutique lately, you may have been able to purchase a small lacy curtain to cover your screen-torn window.
The living room consists of a couple of unupholstered wooden chairs surrounding a small coffee table, and off to the side of the room is a somewhat larger table and 2 more chairs used for guests who drop by to visit and chat. The The coffee table may boast a doily crocheted by the woman of the house after attending the Women's Literacy School where she has learned to sew, write her name, and read the Bible for the very first time. Some of the walls may be lined with Penney's catalogue pages with which children have been rewarded for memorizing Scripture in Sunday School. No Christmas tree will light up the room, and no decorations will give a festive mood.
There is no inside plumbing, no closets, no picture windows. The home will either be made of cement block, approximately 600 square feet with a tin roof, or it will be a mud/stick dwelling with a thatched grass roof, about 400 square feet. As many as 4 children will sleep in one bed. The average-sized family has 8 to 10 children because so many die in childbirth or from malaria, typhoid, measles, pneumonia, or who knows what. So your home may have 3 bedrooms with 4 or 5 kids in two of the bedrooms and a third "master bedroom" for the parents.
Your feet will not feel the comfort of rugs. There will be no pretty dishes, no wallpaper, no paint on the walls, few towels, no TV, and no kitchen cupboards. An outside kitchen, which is really more like a smokehouse, sits close by. That way, if the kitchen catches on fire, at least the whole house doesn't burn down. Meals are cooked over an open fire, no ovens unless you have had one made out of mud brick. In either case, the aroma of Christmas cookies will not entice your senses.
Stark is the atmosphere, drab the surroundings, but you can make a big difference in the lives of these hard-working men and women of Laban and their precious families. Each year, we offer the gift of a Dream Package, which includes a new piece of cloth for the mother, a new pair of shoes for the father, a dress or shirt and pants for each girl or boy, cokes for the family, and a feast consisting of dried fish, fresh beef, bread, rice, beans, saka saka (or close to our spinach) and a toy for the children. Congolese parents are just like us. They want to offer their children the benefits of a special day like Christmas, which include presents. Your kindness will brighten up the dullness and flood their lives with holiday cheer and the love of Christ.
Proverbs 19:17 says that whoever gives to the poor actually lends to the Lord, and the Lord will repay that person. After all, the Lord is no man's debtor. Just earmark your check "Dream Package", and send it to P O Box 251, Taylor MI 48180.
Blessings and gratitude from us and from the staff of Laban Ministries International in Congo, Africa!
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1 comment:
Good morning how are you?
My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Congo? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Congo in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez
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