Blog: November 2018
My name is Gilbert Mfitundinda, an UrbanPromise International Fellow from southwestern Uganda. I was born to a family so poor that even the poor people in our community looked down on us. At a young age, I did not think that the future had anything to offer me. As the eighth child in my family, I had seen my siblings drop out of school. I was so hopeless.
My family survived on less than $1 per day. Life was a daily struggle. Our house was a makeshift house made of mud. I slept on a mat on a dirt floor and covered myself with another mat. Mattresses were unheard of and blanket never existed in my family’s dictionary.
At the age of 7, I was invited by my local church and community leaders to participate in a child sponsorship organization called Compassion International—who later changed my life. Compassion have me a mattress to sleep on and a blanket that I could use to cover myself. This was the first mattress that my family ever held.
Can you imagine how might have felt having on mattress in a family of ten? (Eight kids plus mom and dad). The blanket and the mattress became the most treasured items in our house at that time. Since Compassion had technically given the mattress to me, I had a bigger share on it.
However, my parents could not entrust me with the only treasure in our house. I was still young and irresponsible. I did bed wetting almost every night. When my parents justified why I could not use the mattress, I had no objection. My parents decided to keep the mattress until I was old enough to use it. For a period of time, whoever felt sick in my family was the one to use the mattress. It was a shared treasure.
During this season of Thanksgiving, I would urge you to take a moment and ponder your blessings. Can you name them one by one? It is easy to take a small thing like having a mattress for granted, yet it could mean the whole world to a child in Malawi, Uganda or any other developing country. I would also like to request you pray for a child longing for a mattress or blanket sometime in his/her lifetime. Perhaps you could be an answer to the prayers of this child.
Gilbert Mfitundinda, Founder and CEO of Love Restoration—a non-profit organization that he started to help his community. Gilbert holds a degree in information technology from Uganda Christian University. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in organizational leadership at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, USA.
