Mombasa...

Its still hard to believe I was in Africa, but my journal keeps assuring me that I was. Its hard to believe the poverty I saw, but the photos break my heart anew every time I look at them. My journal entry on Wednesday shakes me back to the reality of what I saw: “How DARE I EVER think I am “poor” or don’t have as much as others? How DARE I think I have a hard life? Last time I checked I have never gone CLOSE to wondering where my next meal would come from or how I would make it that day without eating. I have never had to live, even sleep in the same room as my rabbits and other animals. My house isn’t a mere mud shack with stone floors, no electricity, and no ventilation. I have never had to walk around barefoot on scorching hot sand, simply because I don’t have shoes. Never have all my clothes been covered in stains or been full of holes. Never have I had to fight for a GLASS OF WATER. Never do I wonder where I will lay my head that night. Never do I live in filth and disease, but have no way to clean myself and no health care to get better. Never do I get beaten and burned by the only thing I thought I could put trust in, my family.” The striking reality is that most of these kids don’t even HAVE family to begin to put their trust in.

35 kids. 35 of the cutest kids you will ever see. 30% of them are HIV positive. About a quarter of them are orphans and stay with different people every night. If they are lucky enough to have a family, they never have both parents. None of them can afford to get anything of a normal education. The handful of crackers or little pieces of potatoes they get are school are usually the only food they get in a day. They live in hopelessness, with no purpose, nobody to show them a normal life. A generation of kids growing up without knowing anything other than poverty and despair. Begging on the streets, no education, no way of growing up to live a better life. Not because of anything they’ve done, not because they are not hard-working, but simply because of the place they were born and the circumstances they were placed in.

We only had 5 days. 5 days to tackle a mountain of problems. It felt hopeless. It felt like we would never make a dent. We prayed over and over that God would maximize our time. He answered our prayers. As we prayed for guidance and direction that first day, God simply said, “Go out in love and I will guide you. Live out the two greatest commandments--love God and love others --and I will use you.” So that is what we tried to do. Every morning we poured out whatever love we could on the kids, simply by showing them we cared about them and were there for them. We played with them, held them, hugged them, helped them learn, loved them. We TRIED to repay our hosts through offerings of finances, prayer, and support for the work they were doing with these kids--work in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of a large city, where they have no financial support system, and are barely staying afloat. Christine gave up her career as a school teacher of 35 years, her income, to start this school. She is putting so much into it she can’t even pay the rent on her own house. They have stopped using electricity and use as little water as possible simply to save money. We gave them enough money to pay the rent for the school and for the house, just to keep it open! She doesn’t have the money to make copies, so every page she makes for the kids she has to make 35-40 times. We made 2000 copies of pages for her at a print shop. She has back problems that leave her sleepless MOST nights, but yet everyday she wakes up and bears the pain to bring joy to these kids, to give them a CHANCE. Even the SLIGHTEST chance of living a normal life is maybe the greatest gift they will ever receive. And that is what Christine is giving them. That is what motivates her to keep going even when she doesn’t always feel much progress is there. We prayed for her and for healing.

We loved God. We tried to continually pour prayer into everyday, everything we did. We went on prayer walks around the surrounding area, meeting people, and praying over neighborhoods. We worshipped God and tried to focus on His goodness in the midst of the horrific things we saw. We asked God the hard questions and processed the things we were experiencing.

And God used it! He used it to change OUR lives. These kids with nothing, absolutely nothing showed more joy than WE did most of the time. They showed us the joy in the simple things of life. The joy in bouncy balls, balloons, and simply being with others. They showed us that possessions don’t equal happiness and that complete provision for our needs is not a RIGHT we can expect from God, just because we have a relationship with Him. They showed us that the love of God exceeds our circumstances and our suffering. They knew He was there, no matter what they were going through.
But oddly, my heart was not broken until the last day. That morning a boy came to school complaining of some pain in his legs. When we had him show us where it hurts, we found 6-7 2nd and 3rd degree burns all over his legs. He explained that his mother got angry for a reason we still don’t know, heated a spoon over the fire, and pressed it into his legs over and over, leaving 1-2 inch burns all over his legs. I broke down as we prayed over him. I couldn’t fathom what had happened. A boy with nothing, already no hope, got severely burned by his own mother! Possibly the only person he could have ANY trust in! I sat and cried for 5 minutes, broken by the complete injustice that we were witnessing.

It is hard to go back to Western life, with all the luxuries you can imagine and no concept of need and poverty. However, God showed me something. Instead of letting the things we saw get us down and make us not want to eat, we need to simply be SO MUCH MORE thankful for what we DO have. Instead of being depressed and angry at what is going on in the world, we should be more joyful than ever FOR those that can’t be. We should choose to wake up each day with a smile on our face in honor of those that are suffering and can’t always find joy. And it should only motivate us to spread Jesus more, the hope, the love, the comfort that is in a relationship with God. It might just be the only thing these people will ever be able to say is theirs.