1/5/12
It was really hard to leave our ministry location on Wednesday.
Throughout the month I really opened myself up to love the boys that lived at Kedesh. They were such gentlemen and had so much fun and joy in their life but when I would think about their past and what they had been through my heart was broken for them. The boys are all orphans. They had experienced serious hurt or rejection in their lives. It broke my heart to think about what those boys had been through in their lives, the same boys that we laughed with and played with all month. I found myself getting angry because their parents had neglected them… or that they somehow ended up on the streets because their parents died and they had nowhere else to go.
How could their lives be discounted by society just because they were orphans?
Where would they have ended up if they didn't go to Kedesh?
Each one of those boys is full of potential! They are incredibly good at sports. At 10 years old, the boys know how to build chairs with power tools! The older boys know how to weld pipes, build buildings, dig wells, and have flourishing gardens! Lets face it, they have a lot more potential than I did when I was 18.
That brings me to another thing that broke my heart at Kedesh… opportunity.
Maybe this heartbreak isn't just for the boys at Kedesh, but more for all of Mozambique… there isn't a lot of opportunity. One can argue what opportunity is, but to me, it is the option and the accessibility of making something big out of your life. I had the opportunity to go to college after high school. I had the opportunity to get a job after college. I had the opportunity to come a missions trip around the world for 11 months. The people of Mozambique don't have those opportunities on their doorstep the way that I did. They can accomplish all of these things, but it is drastically harder! It requires a lot more work to go to college because it is expensive and they don't have money saved up from allowances and christmas gifts. Good jobs are hard to come by because there isn't a whole lot of thriving industry in the country.
I was heartbroken thinking about how hard the boys at Kedesh will have to work to get through college and to find a good job for the rest of their lives… especially when I feel like opportunities were thrown in my direction.
Why is there such a big difference in the opportunities I had and the opportunities they have?
Needless to say, I had a life-changing month at Kedesh. I will continue to think about it and ponder what made it such an amazing place. Maybe someday we can be influential in a ministry that I believe in the way that I believed in Kedesh.
