Written by guest writer,
Jon Jouvenaux, Breedlove volunteer

We all live in our own little “bubble”. We float around from day to day taking care of the situations within our world, all the while somewhat assuming that the rest of the universe is going through some similar variation of our pattern for life. We often see those in the world with a better set of circumstances and wonder if we will ever be blessed enough to achieve their level of life style. Rarely, if ever, do we see what is “outside ” our world.

I am part of a Christian music group called Free Indeed, and while on tour this past summer in South Africa, our “bubbles” were turned inside out! This was our 2nd tour in SA, but something very different happened this time around. While traveling between concert locations, our bus driver stopped at a small community center where we were introduced to Dawn and her team of workers. They spend their days teaching those in the community skills for life so they can earn money to support their families. They also feed the community ONE HOT MEAL PER WEEK. This meal is, for most, their only good meal of the week. She said they would do more but one meal was all they had funding for.

Dawn explained that it costs them about $100 to feed the community one meal. My youngest daughter asked if we could buy them another meal and proceeded to gather money from myself and the rest of our traveling crew. Before we left, my daughter handed Dawn a little over $400 that she had collected. WOW! That would feed the community of about 500, 4 extra meals. That’s 2,000 meals. As wonderful as that was, we still went away feeling very sad. Before we left, Dawn showed us the AIDS hospice center filled with those not long for this earth. Next to that was the school and orphanage for those children that had already been orphaned or were soon to be. There were about a hundred kids in the facility.

As we walked through I noticed the kitchen where ladies were getting ready to feed the kids their ONE meal for the day. It consisted of a pot of boiling water with a little touch of cabbage and another pot with some mealy meal which looked like oatmeal. They would mix the 2 pots and serve it to the kids. How big are the pots that hold the food to feed those kids? Did you wonder? The best way to describe their size would be to say their volume would equal that of about 3 crock pots. Needless to say each child would not get very much!

When we got home, we found out about BreedLove and began to understand what could be done to help provide additional help for those we left in SA. The $400 my 13 year old daughter raised to feed 2,000 meals could be turned into 10,000 meals through BreedLove. The people of SA don’t die from AIDS; they die from a cold or some other simple illness that could be avoided if they had nutritional food to keep them strong. As we travel here in the states, we have been sharing our discovery of Breedlove and the meals that can be sent to SA using the few dollars we spend on lunch every day. People are very willing to help when they learn that $2.00 will buy 50 meals. A $5.00 lunch will would feed 125. The $40.00 we spend on Sunday lunch for our family of 4 would feed 1,000 people one meal OR a family of 4 in SA, one good meal a day for 8.3 MONTHS!

The ability to see things from another view is precious. Though you might never see the AIDS orphans in South Africa in person, they do exist and their “bubbles” are very different from ours. The fact that you are reading this letter proves that. The fact that you are “reading” proves that! When you see these kids the way our family does now, you can let it burst your bubble and bring you down, you can just live inside your bubble and let it hold you captive, OR you can use your bubble to raise you up to a place where you can help these little ones.