“As a young boy growing up at Hands during its formative years, there was one thing I saw and knew for certain — that the love for Jesus and the love for the vulnerable are akin. There was no separating the two in my adolescent mind. That was so real to me that I knew where I stood with Christ by my proximity to the poor and vulnerable. I grew up seeing people from all over the world coming to sit with the poor and the dying because they said they knew Jesus.
So, when I had grown up and moved to Pretoria, I plugged into a church that had a service for the poor and marginalised out in the inner city, and that’s where I went on Sunday mornings. It was just a no-brainer for me. It wasn’t long after they had discontinued that service that I slowly realised that there aren’t as many voices out there who speak up for the poor as I had assumed when I was growing up at Hands. I often found myself wrestling and frustrated with how high we build our fences in order to separate ourselves from those less privileged than us.
I always looked forward to going back home for the holidays because I could sit in on Hands meetings and hear people challenge themselves by saying things like, “The buck stops with us” or, “If not us, then who?”. I am so grateful for those reminders because they kept my heart from becoming cold to the sighs of the poor and to be intentional about building relationships with them.
When the pandemic hit, and churches shut their doors, I came home to Hands and found myself going out into communities because Hands had non-negotiables to care for children that Covid-19 couldn’t change. A year later, the Lord opened doors for me to come back and volunteer alongside a community of people that have helped shape my convictions more than I had realised.”