Kirsten's testimony

Several people from our youth group went to go see a church with a built-in African "village". All the youth who went in were guided through different children's lives. I was brought into the life of a girl whose name was Methabo. Her father left her family when she was young, leaving her mother to raise a family with Methabo and her older brother. Life was hard; Methabo often had to sell coal on the side of the road to make a living. The coal she sold in one day could only sum up to around fifty cents. After awhile, Methabo found her mother missing and learned that she had left home to go to the south to make a living. She finds herself alone with her older brother who abuses her everyday, and later also leaves her alone. Alone and frightened, Methabo faces difficult and dangerous nights everyday in her insecure house. In the neighborhood she lived in, many young girls get harassed at night. If she was not careful, she could get kidnapped and face a terrible fate. Fortunately, her neighbor, who was in the WorldVision organization that aids poor African children, had compassion on her and took her in. The neighbor brought her to church and gave her an education. Methabo is now a teacher who helps her native land’s helpless and poor children.

Through the 30 hour famine, I felt a fraction of what African children feel like when they starve; and the fact that we know we'll have food after 30 hours comforts us, but not the African kids. There are some who live everyday without knowing when their next meal will be. During the first night when I just started the famine, I was constantly thinking about food and how hungry I was. Every time I saw someone I knew, I complained about being hungry, to the point where I can’t bear it. I still had a long way to go at that time, and I was already complaining so much! I didn’t get much sleep that night because the air condition’s temperature was set low. By the time I finished my community service the next day, I was exhausted and without energy. I couldn’t really help but to think about food. Since I was so concentrated on being hungry and thinking about food, it took me the greatest effort to even speak. Wow, I thought, the African kids must have it really tough…. I can understand now a little about how they feel when they starve for way more than 30 hours. It’s nothing compared to Jesus, of course, who went without food for 40 days, but I’ll try hard to follow after him and be like him. I will go to Taiwan to be like Jesus and be friendly and give the people who haven’t met Jesus a chance to meet him.

Last year I went to Taiwan and saw that the kids in Taiwan don’t really lack anything that is physically essential. They have food and water, they have clothes to wear, they have shoes, they have roads to walk on—not dirt, they have nice shelters, too, but many lack Christ in their hearts. I would be willing to help even a little bit to create sparks of passion for Christ in their hearts, and make them realize that it is Jesus who is the most important need in their lives. I hope that we’ll be patient like Pastor Liu, who kindly hosted us last year at her church, and be merciful and loving, like her and other members of that church, towards the children.