Fragile

Fragile

True Stories of Ministry and Hope from the Inner City of South Africa

Elise Bosch

Trilogy Christian Publishers

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Copyright © 2023 by Elise Bosch

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 979-8-89041-093-1

ISBN 979-8-89041-094-8 (ebook)

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Plate of Food against Crime, for Jesus

Hillbrow Is Not for the Faint-Hearted

Happiness is Serving Your Neighbor

My Very Different Bible Study Group

When Mom and Dad Are No Safe Haven

Christmas Tale for a Street Child

The Girl with the Snow White Dress

Prayer of a Street Child

The Cricket Hero and His Homeless Mother

Mandela Magic for the Hillbrow Street Children

Thank You, Lord, for My Teenager

God Sends Lunch

Evelyn Receives an Answer

Angels without Drooping Wings

Sticking Up for the Unsung Heroes

A White Woman in a Hopeless Africa

Praise, Power, and Joy in Africa

No Grave for My Flowers

Only God Can Turn Winter into Spring

A Prostitute Who Sings Gospel

Healing for a Hardened Soldier

Bride for an Ancestor

Lukas Sees the Holy Spirit

When a Prostitute Testifies

A New Beginning

Trust in the Lord

A Beautiful Song of Songs Bride with Yellowish Teeth

Amazing Grace

Security Work for the Lord

My Morning in the Bar

Then the Elder’s Angels Arrive

LiG People Who Serve

Christmas in Hillbrow

Where Moths and Rust Don’t Do Damage

Roadsigns

Give Your Heart to Hillbrow Again

The Baby

Pigeons and Loneliness

A Miracle with Wool

Sterretjie

Woman

Bibliography

Introduction

There are many in the world dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love. There’s hunger for love and a hunger for God

(Mother Teresa, 1995).

For many years, many hungry and hopeless people came to me begging at the church hall in Hillbrow, where my husband and I handed out food parcels. Story after story about these daily struggles caused me to leave Hillbrow many times with a sense of desperation. I wrestled with the Lord: Why do You allow so much suffering?

For my own sanity and faith assurance, I started documenting stories from and about the people who crossed my path. I came to the realization that the Lord, after all, cares for these people, but not always in the manner I envisaged. Through the stories of these marginalized people, I realize He brings hope and is with people in their suffering.

My dream is to bring hope to South Africans by documenting these grassroots-level stories we do not often read about in local newspapers. I sometimes sympathize with Antjie Krog, a writer and participant in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After reading the stories by desperate African women, she said, So many stories have scorched my soul. I am changed forever (Krog, 1998).

It is impossible to leave this area where poverty-stricken people have no food, and elderly people and children struggle to keep warm during cold winter nights under cardboard covers without a sense of desperation. I, therefore, believe the heart of being a Christian in Africa lies with service to our neighbors. I struggle to reconcile the contrasting worlds of extreme poverty with the comfortable middle-class suburban life I enjoy daily. I see children rearing their peers on the streets. In the afternoon, I notice how advantaged children are picked up in luxury vehicles, secured a hot plate of food and a warm bed in the wintertime.

I then realized it was only by the grace of God that this advantaged child did not become a street child. So many times, a jobless mother told me she had no food for her children, not to mention her lack of money to buy school uniforms and stationery. Then again, in a Northcliff supermarket, I notice a spoilt brat throwing a tantrum about the lack of chicken pies with only steak and kidney left, which will make him sick, then my mind goes out to the mother who wishes she had any pie to give her hungry child.

Through my experience of these true stories in Hillbrow, I hope to facilitate awareness and understanding for struggling, poverty-stricken people and also testify to the love of Jesus for all of us vulnerable against life’s storms.

A Plate of Food

against Crime, for Jesus

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen….Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

- Isaiah 58:6, 7 -

Visualize entering a hall with close to a hundred poor and homeless people staring at you with hope-filled eyes. This is the reality of outreach in Hillbrow. Sometimes outreach sounds romantic, but when I started telling people about the love of Jesus here, I quickly realized that this is the wrong perception. Yes, sometimes there is joy when a hopeless person finds Jesus, but I also discovered that community outreach is not simply a matter of preaching, praying, and leaving. One has to listen and try not to become too discouraged by the depressing stories about suffering, hunger, and abuse.

Outreach implies a fellow dirty, hungry, and homeless life sojourner under your skin. Their pain has to become yours; often, it is overwhelming. Sometimes one feels guilty about the delicious plate of food you can enjoy while knowing many who go hungry. In wintertime, one often sleeps with discomfort, thinking about those who sleep rough having to fend off the weather.

Why, then, still go to Hillbrow? Because I’m a Christian.

Even reading a local student magazine I bought from a joyful student in the hope of relaxing and giving me a laugh mentions the weak economy and poverty. This publication, meant to stir laughter, also encourages the public to become involved in poverty relief in their area.

If we confess Christianity, to being a Christian, we are obliged to serve the poor in one way or the other. Our involvement in service projects may lead to the credibility of the gospel and the churches.

Dr. Attie van Niekerk of Research into the Alleviation and Prevention of Poverty (RAPP) mentions poverty as the central problem of our time. I believe giving a plate of food to a hungry person on the street helps us to prevent crime, even the so-called petty crimes sometimes done to relieve hunger. Poverty can lead to crime and even bring about a revolution in our country. We can’t just shrug our shoulders like the French aristocrat, Marie Antoinette, and say, Let them eat cake, when they don’t even have bread.

Working in Hillbrow isn’t easy. The poverty problem seems like a bottomless pit. But everywhere, as here in Hillbrow, we can add our modest bit every day to alleviate crime and poverty.

Hillbrow Is Not for

the Faint-Hearted

Most of us leading comfortable lives would probably end up in clinics if we were exposed to the conditions in Hillbrow every day. My involvement with the Hillbrow women convinced me that they could only rise above their situations through faith in Jesus. Only He can assist in keeping one’s wits[together in such a place.

Gerda’s faith and inner strength shine through her large blue eyes. On two hundred and fifty rand per month, she barely keeps herself and her five-year-old son alive. There’s no family to help. There’s also no work.

Nowadays, there’s simply no work for a white woman with only standard eight. That’s why some turn to prostitution. Gerda’s rent amounts to two hundred rand per month. That means only fifty rand is left to cover other expenses. But she has an unshaken belief that the Lord will provide for her and her son’s day.