A plea for help in Zimbabwe

One of my longstanding email (and "snail-mail") pen-friends forwards the below.

He pleads:

Dear God, please help these people who are at breaking point, give them the will and strength to lift their heads up and stand tall against this ugly fear that they are facing. There is a saying that goes like this: "Bread thrown over the water returns to you!"

Thank you God for loving us and taking care of us. You are mighty and we believe that you will help these people!!

AMEN.............

The original is:

. . . I am a 16 year old person living in Zimbabwe. I think the time has come for a more direct appeal, and so I am writing to you, the world.

Maybe, just maybe, there might be someone out there who can help us...

It's tough here now. The inflation rate is so high that if you don't change money within 6 hours you could get half the amount of foreign currency that you would have originally
received.

We're starving now; people die around us. In the last year alone at least ten people associated personally with my family have died despite the fact that they were only middle-aged. Other people don't make it to middle age. They don't even make it past childhood.

Our once-proud nation is on it's knees. We flee or die. This beautiful, bountiful once-rich land has become a living hell. We have dealt with it until now; we have made a plan. That was the Zimbabwean motto: "MAKE A PLAN".

But now we can't make a plan. We're too tired, too broken, too bankrupt. We can't afford life, and life does not

cost much, not really. We cannot afford to eat, we cannot afford to drink, and we cannot afford to make mistakes, because if we do we die. We don't have the capital to support ourselves, and those few who do, have to deal with the horror of watching their friends and family fall into absolute poverty as they cannot afford to help them.

We're waiting desperately for a great hand to pick us up out of the dirt because at the moment we are outnumbered by Fate herself, and so we close our eyes and pray. We have fought for too long, and have been brought to breaking point. We simply stand, heads down, and bear it. Our spirit has gone; we are defeated. After a valiant struggle of over fifteen years, we have been broken. There is no will left, no spirit. Like a horse that has been beaten until it cannot fight anymore; we are the same, and, like that horse, we stand dusty, scarred and alone, with dried blood on our sides and lash marks along our flanks. Our ribs too stand out; our hide is also dull. Our eyes are glazed, our throats are parched, and our knees struggle to support us so that we stand with splayed legs to bear the brunt of the next beating, too dejected even to whimper.

This is my plea. The thought of picking ourselves up again is sickening; one can only take so many blows before oblivion is reached, and we are teetering on the rim of the bottomless void. One more push will be the end of us all.

There must be someone out there who can do something. There must be someone out there who cares! We are a destroyed nation. I appeal to you all.

HELP US!

A 16 YEAR OLD ZIMBABWEAN......

ZIMBABWE 24-hour Solidarity Vigil adds -- and pardon the all caps:

DEAR FRIEND,

IN WORLD WAR II , THERE WAS AN ADVISOR TO CHURCHILL WHO ORGANISED A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO DROPPED WHAT THEY WERE DOING EVERY NIGHT AT A PRESCRIBED TIME FOR JUST ONE MINUTE TO COLLECTIVELY PRAY FOR THE SAFETY OF ENGLAND, ITS' PEOPLE AND PEACE.

THINGS DRASTICALLY CHANGED AND WELL, THE REST IS HISTORY

GOD IS THE ANSWER AND PRAYER IS THE ONLY WAY FOR ZIMBABWE!

IN VIEW OF THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IN ZIMBABWE WE ARE ORGANISING A DAILY ONE MINUTE PRAYER TIME AT 8 A.M. OR 1 P.M. OR 8.00 P.M. AT ANY ONE OF THESE TIMES, PLEASE STOP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AND SPEND THAT ONE MINUTE PRAYING FOR GOD TO INTERVENE IN THE AFFAIRS OF OUR COUNTRY.

Let us pray for Zimbabwe, and let us see what we the Christian people of the Caribbean can begin to do to help one of our ancestral motherlands - not just through prayer and charity, but to help turn around the ideologies that lend power to the ill-advised policies and oppressive behaviour that has so materially contributed to this sad deterioration of the condition of the people of Zimbabwe. END