Ask the Lord to Help you Understand how to Raise Your Children
Thank you for reading this post from our Newsletter at Bitney Adventures!
With the Lord’s Holy Angels, We Remain Humbly Yours,
Isabella Jeso, Mother; Chikomborero Jeso, Son; at Our Online Christian Store,
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FROM: Bitney, The Master’s Warhorse
TO: Friends of Bitney in the Service of the Lord Our God, in alphabetical order: in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.
This post is for all friends of Bitney, but has a special focus on African social practices.
This month’s newsletter pauses my communication to the children across all continents, encouraging them with some ways to work through issues they may be facing in life at any given time, sharing with them insights about building a personal relationship with God, from within their loving families.
Instead, this month I have some questions for the parents, grandparents of the children and the other adults in the children’s lives in traditional families across the African continent. Therefore, my dear, dear Child-Friends-of-Bitney, ask the adults in your families for permission to read this month’s newsletter to them. My letter to the adults in your families begins here:
Thank you, respected parents, grandparents, and other adults of the children, for granting them permission to read my letter to you, and for giving them shelter and food, things they are not able to provide for themselves, being that they are so young. I start with some thoughts that I have had for some time, relating to you as servants of the Lord, who are raising the children that He granted you to have as you desired.
As adults, we want to pass positive values to the next generation. I want to focus on how we teach the children in our families to be responsible people.
For many of us, this teaching is experiential. That is, we want the children to learn by doing. Therefore, I ask specifically about this practice in your family life. What are the children in your family expected to do, to be considered responsible?
- Household servants: cooking, cleaning, firewood-gathering; water-fetching,
doing laundry? - Childcare-givers for siblings?
- Obediently being sold into “marriage” in childhood?
- Animal husbandry?
- Farm work?
- Inadequate clothing while adults spend money on their own pleasures?
- Education 20 kilometers of daily walking during the week, with adults not
petitioning for a village school nearby? - Giving forced respect to some adults who, when drunk, beat the children’s
mothers as these young ones watch, terrified, horrified by life gone so wrong for that moment; and no one ever talks about it afterwards?
If these or similar situations are characteristics of your family life, my fellow-servants in the Lord, what will your answer be at that final hour, when God asks you to account for the methods that you used, to teach responsibility to the children under your family’s care and protection?
Did you distribute your family work responsibilities, considering the mental / psychological, spiritual, and physical vulnerabilities of the children? Or are you thanking yourself for having had them; for, now, you are free to play; while they do most of the hard work for the family’s upkeep? Does your way of teaching responsibility to the children in your family align with what the Lord would support?
Who Will Bring Them Good Health and Joy?
“Will You Carry Their Burdens for Me?”
The Children’s Family or Community Burdens?
Ferrying the Family’s Water Supply in This Heat by Ourselves, at the Ages of Five and Six
Will My Father Kill My Mother? Why Is He Beating Her?
It Is Very Nice to Be in School; But We Have 10 Kilometers to Walk Home
Dear parents, grandparents, and other adults of the children, have you asked the Lord to help you understand how the children of this generation must be raised, and supported, to compete successfully, to compete without getting killed, on the global arena; where their peers from other cultural contexts, are also being prepared by their families to safely be successful; while maintaining their heritage, for the sake of those who will come after them, in accordance with the desires of the ancestors as God decreed to them?
I Need to Take a Nap; It Is Not Very Comfortable to Sleep Here.
I Have No Shoes This Winter: Father Paid the Bride Price for His New Wife
Respected parents, grandparents, and other adults of the children; my fellow-servants in the Lord, pray then, to God, for some answers to these many questions; and others like them that you can think of my friends, the adults of the children.
Pray too, for wisdom about how you train your children to be tomorrow’s parents and adults, for the continuance of your beloved families, and for you to train them, without making them suffer such heavy burdens as we have seen to be possible in the examples that I have shared with you.
Let the Children Also Be Happy!
It might also be helpful for you to gather with other parents, grandparents, and other adults of the children; and hold conversations relating to these matters in your village communities, in your neighborhood communities.
The examples representing the children’s perception of how adults view and treat them that I have shared with you were collected over many years, during my many discussions with the children.
Our Adults Never Want to Listen to What We Have to Say
The children’s main recurring point of sadness in my conversations with them was that adults never ask them to share how they are experiencing family life. They also said that adults do not listen to the children’s input on how family life might be improved.
Dear deeply respected parents, grandparents, and other adults of the children, please know that the children suffer in their silence, almost always; almost always, almost always….
I share these thoughts with you, these questions, with great love for you, and with sincere appreciation of how difficult it is to raise a human being from infancy to young adulthood. God appreciates all your efforts in nurturing the children, sometimes under crushing circumstances that can also defeat the adult in you.
Continue to strive in this effort. The work of parenting is indispensable to God’s design of the Earth’s life systems. God appreciates your sincere and generous support for your family youths. He would be very happy to see you implement improvements in this effort where needed.
So Happy Raising Our Child Together!
Dear fellow-servants of our Lord, please continue, with courage, this work of raising families for our God, encouraging each other from time to time about this sacred work for the Lord.
Given that music inspired by the Lord Holy Spirit, refreshes the mind, giving it a chance to heal from the onslaught of stresses that we face each day, as I conclude my message to you, I want to share with you my choice of music for this second issue of the month’s newsletters, a song by my favorite musician, Holy Spirit Music. The song is titled, “Fractured End Times.” You can listen to it here; or by clicking on this link: Holy Spirit Music – Fractured End Times
Until next month, that is all for the Children’s Newsletter by Bitney. Say Hello to God, next time you talk with Him in your prayers, not talking at Him in prayer.
As always, my friends, goodbye in many languages – in Swahili, Kwa heri; in Xhosa, Salani kakuhle; in Oromo, Nagaatti Nagaan Jedhi; in Wolof, Mangi dem; in Bemba, Shalapo.
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References
Each month’s newsletter will sign off, using a different language, as searched and found in the Google Translate App.
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The Children’s Newsletter by Bitney