In our shanty town mission health clinic, whose objectives are disease prevention and education, we have a children's program. The objectives of this program are to keep children whose parents are absent from the home, off the streets, away from drugs, prostitution and bad company since they are in school only half of the day

A few years ago, Paulinho, one of the boys in the group, shy and quiet, was found crying. When the leader asked why, he said that his mother was in the hospital, very sick and needed an operation but before this could happen, there was a special medicine she had to take which the hospital did not have, a very expensive medicine. Without this surgery his mother's life was in jeopardy.

And thus began a campaign by the other children. One of the leaders who knew how to make chocolate suggested that they make chocolate Easter bunnies to sell. And this they did! For 40 days they made them and on Easter presented the money to Paulinho's family to buy the medication needed. In a sense, the gesture of all of these children was surely a movement towards wholeness in an unjust world.

God of health and wholeness, teach us simple gests of solidarity during this Lenten season so that we might see healing this Easter. Amen  

Barbara DeSouza, a member of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, River Falls, Wisconsin, serves the Community Health Education Project of the Instituto de Estudos da Religiao (ISER) in Rio de Janeiro. She works as a health consultant.