Headed to Zimbabwe - Can It Get Worse?

I'll be in Zimbabwe by nightfall Monday for a very short trip. I'm visiting our Zimbabwean friends who are caring for 64+ orphaned and abandoned children to support them, encourage them, and to bring cash and supplies from the ServLife sponsorship program. (There are still at least 30 children waiting to be sponsored for only $30 a month - you are literally saving lives with this donation.)

Here are the headlines from the past week or so (click the links to read the full articles):

• Growing fears of Zim collapse
• "No water" in cholera-hit Harare
• Eerie silence at Zimbabwe mine  
• Zimbabwe troops on streets as cash limits ease  
• Zim collapses  
• Zim is a "basket case"   
• Zimbabwe "set for cholera jump"  

The buzz is that everything is changing "soon." Of course, that buzz has been heard before, and The Old Man has managed to hang on a bit longer. The cholera epidemic is spreading throughout the country and is spilling over into South Africa and Botswana. Hospitals are out of medicine. Schools are closing down. The daily limit on cash withdrawals has been bumped up from the amount needed to buy 1/4 loaf of bread to enough to get two or three loaves. The army rioted and calmed down again. And there is no political resolution despite elections held in March. 

Can it get worse? Of course it can. But it can also get better. Pray for better. And pray for the poor who are suffering and starving while the fat cats sip their champagne. Pray for the Church and their influence.

Why would anyone voluntarily travel to Zimbabwe at a time like this? There is no limit to the number of Americans who ask this question, but now that it is being asked by South Africans and Zimbabweans alike, I'm starting to wonder. But the answer remains clear when I think clearly - God Himself identifies with the poor and the suffering, and during this season of Advent we remember more vividly that He became poor and suffered Himself. I am going to Zimbabwe to meet God. And I will find Him there in the joy and laughter and perseverance of His Church and I will find Him there in the faces of the children discarded by the world but created in His image. 

God is good. All the time. Even in Zimbabwe.