Hearts full of Hope

The last few days our team has found alot of opportunities to get involved in the community here. We have been taken in by Maadi Community Church and they have plugged us in. We've been getting involved with working with kids. The last to days we helped out with evaluating kids in there eduaction at two Sudanese Refugee Schools. It was an eye opening experience. The first school had kids from the age of about 4 to 12, and the second school had kids from the age of 10 to 18. In the evaluation we ask them to do a bit of reading from an elementary level reader, some simple math equations, and ask them a few questions about their home situation. Most of the children can hardly read, some can do some math equations but usually just make a bunch of ticks on the paper and count them. A majority of the children only have one parent if any at all aswell. One girl I evaluated today really broke my heart. Her english was worse than most of the children, she seemed very sad with eyes that were empty. She had 7 siblings and didn't have a father. The family also didn't have a TV. It may seem weird that I mention this, but even the really poor families have TV's in this country. A TV is a necessity here, everyone has one, so when you come across someone who doesn't have one, you know they are probably really really poor. Anyway this little girl seemed ashamed she couldn't answer alot of my questions and would try so hard but still get the wrong answer. In these schools the education is very poor, and even though the children are very teachable, they don't have the teachers to give them the kind of education that could help improve there lives. Most of the time the teachers aren't in the class room either, this is why the church is doing evaluations to see how they can come up with a better system to educate these children. Anyway this experience just opened my eyes to how much need there is in soo many places in Africa. There is so much hopelessness here, sometimes I think it's because of the "religious culture" that makes people so hopeless and brings on alot of laziness, and taking advantage of because they have nothing to live for or really care about. And yet God is working here, and hope is slowly spilling out into this land, slowly reaching the hearts of people. So I guess the biggest prayer request I have is to pray for this country. To pray for the oppressive, hopeless bondage to be broken and for the hearts of people to be changed. For God's "workers" as they spread life giving words and love in this country. And for the heart's of people here to be changed so they may have hope.