Teen Mom - Swaziland Version

It started out like any other home visit...a long, bumpy drive down a dusty dirt road.  I was going on a Saturday with a ministry partner who lived close by because more people would be home on the weekend.  He had warned me that this would be a tough home visit - the family had written a letter to his family, knowing that he worked with the ministry, and asking for help.  We weren't able to go right away, so his father went to check on the family & returned home in tears, telling a story of how they hadn't had any food & were drinking sugar water for a few days because a neighbor gave them some sugar.
As we pulled into the homestead, a teenage boy and girl were working outside, cooking food & doing laundry.  We sat with them for a while on buckets in the shade as a baby sat by the cooking structure & a young boy walked by.  We threw rocks at the chickens that were trying to steal food out of the cooking pot & we gazed out at the valley & the horizon.
This young woman, at the age of 17, had more responsibility on her shoulders than most adults I know.  As she told us her story, I struggled to comprehend the weight of it all.  She is in school, wanting to be a doctor when she grows up.  She makes grass mats to sell to help her family make money, she sells bags of chips at school to earn money also.  The money she earns goes toward paying transportation to & from school & for uniforms or other needs.  

The view across the valley from the homestead & the loom where the 17 year old
head of household makes grass mats to sell to earn money for her family.

This doesn't sound too out of the ordinary for Swaziland, because many young people are working to help their families survive.  But for this family, these are the only sources of income.  Along with going to school & trying to earn money, this 17 year old girl runs the homestead with her 19 year old brother as they care for 6 other children (two 15 year olds, a 12 year old with disabilities, an 8 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old).  Some of them are her siblings, some of them are her cousins, and a couple of them are her sister's children.  Her parents are both deceased, as well as her aunt & sister, leaving her to care for all of these children.  
As we carried the food that we brought into her house before we left, the only things in the room were a squash & a small bag of mealie meal (corn meal to make pap).  Though struggling to survive day to day, she has shouldered this responsibility with grace & says that the Lord gives her the strength to get through each day.   As we talked with her about her life & needs, we were all finding the Lord remind us that He is a God of hope, whose eyes are on those who seek Him.  I find peace in the fact that she is learning to cast her burdens on the Lord & let Him carry her through each day and I take heart in the fact that He is the Father to the orphan & has adopted each of us through Christ to be His child, co-heirs with Christ.