From South Africa, with love:
A vision to end child neglect in San Antonio
BY JENNIE ROSIO
B E A CON E D I TO R
The numbers of neglected children
in San Antonio may live in the shadows
of our society, but they are fully visible
to their Creator in heaven.
If you were to take all of the
neglected children in Bexar County to
the AT&T Center and give them a seat,
they’d fill about a third of it. Anais
Biera Miracle, Chief Public Relations
Officer at The Children’s Shelter, says
that in 2018, Bexar County confirmed
5,865 victims of child abuse and
neglect. Averaged, that equals 16 cases
every day of the year. Currently, about
half of those go to a relative or another
caregiver. But the other half – a little
over 2,500 – are placed in foster care.
“The demand for foster care grows in
Bexar County,” says Anais.
Help may be coming from an
unlikely place: South Africa, where,
according to the UNICEF website, 3.7
million orphans reside. Tich and Joan
Smith are founders of the Lungisisa
Indlela Village (LIV) in Durban, South
Africa. They visited the United States
last spring to share their vision. Their
project is chronicled beautifully on
YouTube’s “LIV Documentary Feb
2016.” It brims with innovation, joy
and life.
The video pans across a sprawling
expanse of land where clusters of red
houses – 96 in all – dot the green grass
in Durban, South Africa. The camera
follows the children alongside their
“uncles and aunties” – and house
mothers. All these specially vetted
people dedicate their lives to raising
former orphans. The camera follows
the children to a room where the
brothers and sisters receive top education
and sports training. We then see
little ones painting and playing together
in another room. In another room
the camera shows the LIV health care
center which provides social services,
health care and therapy. “At the center
of it all,” the young narrator proclaims,
“is the LIV church.” In this multi-purpose
“ Pure and genuine religion in the
sight of God the Father means
caring for orphans and widows in
their distress and refusing to let
the world corrupt you.”
– James 1:12
room, not one face in the church
looks glum; every child and every adult
is dressed in many colors and dancing.
The camera then pans back outside –
over local South Africans working hard
in gardens. Then we pan back inside to
see women sewing with machines,
while the narrator explains how the
center creates jobs for the locals.
Mark and Veronica Lugo, founders
of Mark Lugo Ministries, were
captured immediately by the video.
“It’s the six minutes that changed our
lives forever,” says Veronica.
The South African Center has been
Tich and Joan Smith, LIV Founders; Mark and Veronica Lugo, LIV SA Executive Directors and Athi and
Chester Koyona, Durban LIV Executive Directors, gathered recently together in Africa.
4 www.saBeacon.com March / April 2019
/www.saBeacon.com
