I got to spend a lot of the day with people, not just behind a camera. I love the children here. I played for a couple hours with two little street boys here. We took goofy pictures, I showed them how to use the cameras, they showed me how to spear a lion...you know the normal stuff.
Hearing their stories makes passion and love for them grow deeper and deeper. Francis, one of the boys I spent the day with, told us his story. Here is an excerpt of a post from Douglas (my Pastor traveling with me):
Today I sat out on the veranda of Joseph and Molly's home with a 15 year old young man named Francis. His mother died sometime ago and his father remarried a woman with two children. His step-mother despises him and his alcoholic father violently abuses him when he drinks...which is most days. Francis showed me the scars where his father has bitten off his flesh...one wound is still open. He let me see a scar on his left leg where his dad swung a machete at him. He told me how his father recently taped his legs together and hoisted him in the air and before his dad could build a fire under him, neighbors intervened. Many days his family refuses to give him food and many nights they refuse to let him in the house so he huddles down in the bushes or garden to sleep. He told me how his father denies this bright young man the money to attend school. I could go on, but by now you more than get the circumstances of his life.
Francis then went on to tell me how good God is to him. How God spared his life by sending the neighbors to his rescue. How when he has not eaten for a few days God provides by sending Joseph and Molly and they give him food. How God has been so generous to Him by giving him money to pay for school through the Bails. How God even has put such nice clothes on his back, once again through you know who. "God is so good!", Francis kept telling me. "How can people not believe in our good God"..."God saved my life"..."God saved my soul"...Then he sang a song for me, lyrics that said: "My God, my God how good is thy name!" Francis wants to one day be a Pastor so he can tell people how good his God is. I told him that all of heaven is cheering him on and that as a Pastor myself, I can honestly say he would be a credit to my profession.
I fought tears he sat and told his story. And he is just one...just one of the voices drowned out by the roar of the millions of others just like him.
But tonight, as we sat to eat a traditional Kenyan meal around the table. We got to laugh and enjoy the meal with the friends we have made here. I got to hear how God and the church are breaking through thousands of years of tradition. I could never go into the complexity of the struggle here. Thousands of years of deep roots are working against the much needed change to this country, but tonight I got to see the power that God can bring to lives. Power that goes beyond tradition, government, distances, hatred, and hopelessness. I see the change that Molly and Joe and the work so many people are financially supporting - and it's real! Its a few lives at a time, but those few lives are joining in the work and changing their families and slowing beginning to bring change to their tribes & villages.
A hard day, but so good for my spirit. I wish you call could be here to see it.
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