I regularly visit a very poor community where we have a small church plant, just a dozen or so members. We have a weekly Bible study, and Sunday service, and we also help out practically. We’ve arranged a monthly medical clinic, we cook a meal for the kids every two weeks. We’ve set up a clothing exchange. However, one of the most significant ministries to my mind is taking photos of the children for their parents. It started quite by accident. I took my camera one week, took some photo’s, and the next week gave them out at the Sunday service. The effect was electric, a crowd gathered as they were passed from hand to hand. Everyone commenting on how magnificent the children looked. And then it dawned. The people in this village don’t have any photographs of their children. Life is hard, money is scarce even for the essentials – food and clothes, so no-one has a camera. And as a result, no-one has any pictures of their children. As a father of 3 with DVD’s crammed packed with all manner of shots of my kids, that seems almost monstrous, and yet it’s just they way things are. There is one exception though. Death. When a child dies, friends and relatives may (may) collect a donation, and pay someone who does have a camera to come and take the deceased’s picture. And that is how they are remembered, forever. In my little corner of the Philippines, I’m starting a quiet revolution, each week I take a few pictures, each week I hand a few out to parents. No charge no fuss, it costs me nothing except a few sheets of photo paper.
And each week I remind people, their children are a gift from God; made in his image; an image they can have a copy of, for free.
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