Children

Last Sunday, Tim and I went to a church on the edge of Mwanza; Nyakato Assembly of God. The pastor and his wife are friends of ours and the church runs about 100-125 adults.
They have a Saturday Children's program that is amazing considering the size of the church; every Saturday they have about 300 children from the community crowd onto their property for a full day of activity.
The children are read to from the Bible, they are taught stories and have specialized activities geared to their individual ages and each one of them are fed lunch. All of these children's are either orphans or are living in poverty; the meal they receive will probably be the only one they get that day.
They have teachers who sit with those who need to learn to read and write or who are struggling in school and need some individual tutoring. They sometimes have nurses or medical personnel who are able to give minor medical assistance or treatment.
They are a small church doing something to alleviate the suffering of the needy children in their community; they receive some assistance with food costs but contribute heavily to the program themselves. When they started the program they had about 50 children coming but they continue to grow year after year.
On Sunday I looked around at the children seated in the church and could tell that they were welcome there. It doesn't seem to matter to this church that these little ones cannot contribute to the financial stability of the church or make any great contributions to the church.
They love them and welcome them because Jesus loved them and welcomed them.