An Easter Reflection

Death.  Not generally a topic during polite,   dinner-party conversation.  It is, however, a realty for everyone, and it’s brought into stark, unsterilized focus in our rural village.  Last week, a 15-year-old neighbor girl died after giving birth to her first child.  Her 19-year-old “husband”—they were never married but living in a Come We’ll Stay arrangement—didn’t notice the warning signs until it was too late.

Another neighbor lost her third child at just a few weeks old.  We stopped by to offer our condolences.  We didn’t notice the small bundle wrapped in a blanket and lying on the mud floor of the hut until we nearly tripped over it.  Corpse of the babe.  Mother sitting in the same room with it since the moment of death.  The funeral was held in the backyard where the babe’s body was buried.

Why such morbid thoughts at the beginning of spring: symbol of the cycles of life and time of beginnings and new birth?  Because it’s on my mind after losing our young neighbors.  And  because during the Easter season, I recall another death.  Death significant for the masses of humanity.  Gentle God-man wrapped in human flesh and sent to an unbelieving and cruel world to save us from ourselves.  To teach us love as we showed him none. 

As we’re reminded at this time of year, Jesus was not murdered or martyred.  He willingly gave up his life to achieve the salvation of those souls who confess him as the Son of God and believe.  There were three long and terrible days when the world believed Jesus to be dead.  Some mocked and sneered.  Others cried.  Dark, dismal days of distress and  defeat for followers who expected a triumphal victory.  Thank God, the story doesn’t end there.  It never did.

When Romans 8:28 admonishes us that “God works all things    together for good,” the verse really means all things.  Imagine the confusion of the men who followed the Master.  His death was good?  If he hadn't died, we would all be without hope. Imperfect law-breakers.  But the law was never intended for us to keep.  Instead, it reveals our hearts and our need of a Savior.

Savior defied death.  “I have seen the Lord!” Mary proclaimed to men of unbelief.  He conquered death, and through that act offers us eternal life.

Our 15-year-old neighbor’s body is lying in a grave, and the babe, too.  But their souls live.  We are all creatures of eternity.  The question, where will it be spent?

As Jesus stretched his injured hand to Thomas, so he stretches it to each of us.  Do we turn away,       unbelieving, or do we proclaim with Mary, I have seen the Lord!?  Regardless of what we choose to believe, the fact remains.  Jesus Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed.

Too Young to Die?

I don’t think it ever becomes easy to watch a child suffer—God help us if it does.  We’re watching Sharon, our 10-year-old newcomer, die a slow death from the HIV infection that has a stranglehold on her life’s blood.  Isn't 10 too young to die?

We have other children with HIV.  We almost lost a boy in 2010 to the virus.  We stood by helplessly and watched as his body wasted to skeletal proportions.  When he was in the hospital, he couldn’t sit up on his own.  His body was wracked with coughs from TB, a common side-affect of a weakened  immune system.  When I would help him to a sitting position his head, so large for a wasted frame, would loll like the head of a newborn.  Body too weak to support its weight.

That case was different, though.  Sammy was sick because his body had become dangerously weak before doctors allowed him to begin a regimen of ARVs (Anti-Retroviral drugs).  Once the ARVs began to do their work in his body, he grew strong.  Now, you’d never guess he had flirted, for weeks, at death’s door.

Until now, our experience with HIV has been that if the body is given proper drugs, a person can live for years with few to no symptoms.  That was before Sharon came to live with us.  She’s  taking ARVs, but the virus that courses through her veins is killing her anyway.  

One moment, she’s walking home from school, the next she’s passed-out in the dust on the road.  More than once, the children have run home to tell us Sharon is lying on the road.  Young Ones unaware of the seriousness of their friend’s illness. 

We’ve carried her limp from the road-side, from school, from church.  When she regains consciousness, she has labored breathing and fatigue.  Some days, she stays home from school because of headache and fever.  We’re learning to this aggressive virus no one is too young to die.

So we pray.  We wait expectantly for a miracle.  And we trust that, “in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Not  because it’s an appropriate scripture for the situation, but because we have experienced the truth of it.  Even in our darkest moments, when we don’t understand, God is at work.  Working all for good.

Climbing to New Heights

Do you remember the wild freedom of running barefoot and climbing trees during your childhood summers?  If you grew up in the city, you probably missed out on such simple joys.  Activities like basketball or dodgeball probably took the place of climbing trees in naked feet.  There’s something special, though, about hoisting yourself into the embrace of a tree, the rough bark unyielding underfoot.

I was down by the garden one lazy Saturday afternoon, when I thrilled to see these boys enjoying themselves in the branches of a perfect climbing tree.  Their lively chatter and laughter confirmed that they were enjoying themselves as much as I did during my long-ago summer climbs.  Noted, too, were their requisite bare-feet dangling high above the earth below.

Some of these boys come from seriously troubled backgrounds.  One of them was the youngest member of a child-headed household for a few years before he came to live with us.  He can recall nights of being fearful for his safety and days of  wondering if he would have food for his next meal.  When he and his brother and sisters arrived at The Hope Center, they were like little adults.  They didn’t understand the concept of play time; with all the responsibility they shouldered, they never had time to play before.  Gradually, they have begun reclaiming their childhoods, and it was a triumphant moment to see the youngest brother up a tree as giddy and carefree as the other boys.

Come Again?

Inheritance, ahh, such an unfamiliar word to western ears.  Almost sweetly foreign—like the Philippine delicacy, balut, which turns out to be a fetal chick nestled in a soft-shell casing.  Yum.  How do we contextualize cultural conundrums for which we have virtually no frame of reference?

I was leafing through one of our girl’s files when I noticed her father’s date of death, which was a healthy two years before her birth.  Hold up.  Either her poor mom has the gestation period of an elephant (God forbid!) or her father  isn't really her father. 

After living in this country for three years, one might suspect that I wouldn't be so green about such things.  But inheritance just didn’t figure anywhere on my radar screen.  Innocently, I asked our social worker to explain how this “orphan” could be an orphan if her father died well over 9-months before she was born.  He was quick to assure me that she was, indeed, an orphan, because her father’s brother who had inherited her mom, although technically the father of the child, really isn't the father of the child.  Come again?

     ?

According to Kenyan custom, once a woman is widowed, she can be inherited by her husband’s male kin, but she is forever considered a widow after the passing of her husband. Any children fathered after her husband’s death are still considered the children of her dead spouse.  

So the man who fathered the child is considered the uncle and not the father, leaving the child an orphan at the death of her mother.  And the mother’s dead husband, who obviously didn’t have anything to do with the conception, is the “father.”

Now, if you’re slightly confused by this whole explanation, you’re not alone.  Westerners, however, might be alone in their consternation at the concept of inheritance, which has been around and active in numerous eastern countries since biblical times.

While it seems to work for the rural villagers here, westerners can breath a collective sigh of relief that inheritance is decidedly uncustomary in our culture.  Much like that coveted Philippine delicacy, balut.

Mail Call

Writing to sponsors is always a big event for our kids.  The kids want their sponsors to know how grateful they are for the opportunity to be at The Hope Center, but many of them lack the language skills to communicate freely and independently in English.

They’re pictured here copying a letter from the whiteboard that they collaboratively  dictated to me.  Concentration and focus are at a premium as they intently copy each word in the best penmanship they can muster.

Many of them draw or color pictures to  include, and several of them send pictures of themselves. Unlike many of us with digital cameras who snap shots without discretion, pictures are a more precious commodity to our children.

For you to understand what a sacrifice it is for them to send pictures, you must realize that they each get about 3-5 pictures of themselves at the beginning of the year when Sherwood and I return from the states.  As much as they’d like to keep their  pictures for themselves, their desire to share them with their sponsors is even stronger. 

                                                    

They have a good grasp on sharing their possessions even though they own so little.  What a poignant reminder of the story of the widow’s offering from Mark 12:41-44:

Jesus. . .watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury.  Many rich people threw in large amounts.  But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.  They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything.”

A Concert in the Dark

Can you remember back to the last time your power went out?  I know it doesn’t happen often in America—after an ice storm, maybe a severe thunderstorm, or a bad accident, but can you remember what you did?  First there was certainly a blind scramble for a flashlight or matches and candles since there’s not a need to leave them in prominent places around the house when power outages are rare.  What did you do after the candles were lit?  Did you take a moment to enjoy the silence and stillness without a TV, computer, radio, video game, or some other device with a plug blaring, or did you anxiously check the battery level of your i-phone, laptop, or Kindle and breathe a sigh of relief when you realized there was surely enough juice to last until the power company restored power?

The dorms were out of kerosene for the hurricane lamps during a recent power outage casting the compound into utter darkness after the sun set behind the foothills to our west.  It was a Saturday night, and our normal schedule would have included packing 30-something dusty children into our living room for a much-anticipated movie night.

As Sherwood and I sat wondering when the power would come back so we could use our electronic devices, we heard a choir of girls’ voices drifting through the darkness and our open windows.  The sound of their no-frills singing was beautiful in its simplicity, and it brought to mind precious memories of old friends gathered at my childhood home on Christmases past for caroling.  As the girls’ singing continued, Sherwood and I ventured into the darkness to get a closer perspective.  The girls were gathered on the lawn in front of their dorm in a semi-circle that moved to the rhythm of their singing.  Their untrained voices harmonized in a folksy melody that was beautiful in a different way from highly polished choirs with traditional training.  I can’t explain the sound of their voices or the experience of watching their bare feet strike the dusty lawn in the darkness illuminated only by the starry hosts of the southern hemisphere, except to say that it felt pure and in rhythm with the earth, somehow in harmony with the natural world.   

There are moments when the realization that I’m living in Africa washes over me.  These are times that have a heightened sense of the mysterious and romanticized power and force of the land that is Africa.  This was one of those moments.  

Highlights from 2012

Our three fish ponds became the local hotspot when we announced to our neighbors that we’d be selling fish.  The community came out in droves with buckets, baskets, and cooking pots eager to purchase their evening meal.  All told, it was ordered chaos as the locals bargained for better prices and some even requested that they be given fish for free.  While no one got free fish, everyone went home happy—except, of course, the fish.  

We hosted our first annual Jungle Jog 5K. Children from Kenya Relief Orphanage joined in the fun with juice, cookies, and awards following the race.  The day wound up with a soccer game and lunch of rice and beans to feed over 100.

In the spring, we held our annual Staff Appreciation Dinner.  This was a fancy event with a big dinner of fish, chips, chicken, tomato salad, chapatti (fried flat bread), rice, and sodas.  We had a raffle and door prizes in the dining hall, which was decked out in Island decorations and boasted tropical music.  Our island-themed party was thanks to Life Way’s donation of leftover Aloha VBS materials, complete with a 6-foot blowup pineapple.  The oversized pineapple was a crowd favorite and much-envied door prize.

Temple of Christ, Opasi built a widow’s home out of mud and corrugated tin.  Sherwood helped with the construction and I visited with some of the local teenagers.  Everybody had a job, from the men who built the frame and put on the roof; to the grandmothers who cooked lunch and dinner; to the women who mixed manure, dirt, and water to make mud for the walls; to the teenage girls who fetched water for cooking and to make the mud. 

We think it’s important to teach young people the value of serving others.  As a starting place, we enlisted several 8^th graders to lead the children’s Sunday school class.  It’s been rewarding to watch these kids, some of whom are generally quite shy, blossom into capable leaders and examples to the younger children. 

International Sports Fellowship sent a team to us for two weeks this summer.  They did sports evangelism in the local schools, encouraged teachers, passed out Bibles and prayed with people at the hospital, shared with the women’s Bible study group, Ran a VBS for kids in the village, and spent lots of time pouring into the lives of our children.  This outstanding group of young people had more energy and passion than is typical, and we were all grateful for, and encouraged by, their visit.

After receiving a sizeable donation of clothing from a Kenyan family of six sisters, our children who received clothes experienced the joy of giving when they went through their old clothes and selected items to donate to the children at Bright Future Children’s Home, a needier Kenyan-supported orphanage with no western support. (No pic)

Our friends, Reverends Sonji and Sonia, conducted an HIV/AIDS and abstinence interactive workshop with our kids in the fall.  I’ve never seen so many creative and engaging activities that afford the opportunity for hands-on learning in such a condensed period of time, but our friends kept the kids active and engaged for hours at a time.  Later in the weekend when the reverends shared with the youth Sunday school class at church, over a dozen youth prayed to accept Christ.

We sponsored our 3rd annual Flip-Flop 5K in Migori with Carol’s House and Bright Future Children’s Homes joining us for the race, soccer game, and lunch.

A medical team through Vision of Hope came to our village and stayed at The Hope Center while they treated many individuals in our community.  This team also loved interacting with our kids and spent invaluable time investing in them.

Sherwood’s family came for their second visit.  While they were with us, among other activities, they helped construct a church building on land they purchased so they won’t have to keep renting space for Temple of Christ, Opasi.  They also built a widow’s home.