Poverty isn't just about money

We have also sent all-age teams out each year to help with the work and to build lasting relationships with those who have had the vision for this inspiring project.

Here we take education for granted.  We fight to get our children into our first-choice schools.

Out there the chance to get any education at all is prized.

Two of the most lasting impressions gained by those who have travelled to Zambia have been to see poverty and death.

This summer’s team got to know people whose homes afforded little protection from the rain and the heat.  They met street kids who had no home at all.

And they encountered death: death as a day-to-day experience in a country where many die young and children are orphaned.

So to re-enter UK culture was something of a shock.  We have education for all, even if the GCSE grades don’t seem right.

Almost all of us have secure roofs and walls for what we call home.  Death before time is the exception, not the rule.

Most of us can buy expensive Christmas presents, travel in cars and turn the central heating up as October gets colder.

Yet we are becoming poor: in relationships, in satisfaction, in appreciation of all we possess. 

Followers of Jesus Christ aren’t promised material prosperity, but life in all its fullness.  And we are to be generous and to seek justice in an unfair world.

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