We turned onto Lake View, a long dirt road leading to despair. The sun baring down because it was 
almost noon put a musty glaze over
the distance. As we walked I wished that
I had brought my camera for the day, but I realize now that it was good for me
to be able to see with both eyes; no lens hindering my sight.
The dirt road was littered with trash and small children.
Our contact told us that many of them stood on the ground they slept on the night before. Bare feet and tattered clothing is all they
owned. Most of the children we meet in
the streets have that childlike enthusiasm, that hope that escapes from there
eyes, belief in anything is possible. I
found no such glimmer or belief rather a look of hopelessness and a grasp on
reality.
We turned off the dirt road on to a grassy patch of grass
that contained a pathway. We walked for
about five minutes and ran into a gate. We opened it and walked to the end of a row of mud houses and inside
awaiting us a small class room of children. We sang songs with them and gave some words of encouragement and then we
prayed. We walk in and out of peoples
lives all the time.
We have no way of finding out what has come of them. I
wonder how many of them will get pregnant before eighteen, how many boys
will become drunks, who abuse their wives and father children they don’t want. Will
they ever escape the dirt floors and mud walls? Looking at them I can only hope and pray that God has bigger plans for
their lives. That the emptiness and evil
that hangs on tightly to this place won’t leave the 15 sitting in this
room in bondage.
After about thirty minutes it was time for us to move
on. We left the tiny school room the
same way we had entered and turned left down a dirt road. We came to a alley way, blocked by a fence
made out of different shapes and sizes of plywood. We walked through the gate
separating the road from the two rows of homes that lined this little dirt
path. Each row was made up of five or six mud homes, facing each other. The ground was filled with hot stoves and
hanging clothes.
Me and Rachael pushed our way to the very back where we
found an old women slapping mud on the side of a house. She wore no shoes and
as she smiled no pearly whites greeted us, rather a big gummy smile. She invited us
into her home and we sat. She was a Christian
and you could tell, as she told us of losing her husband a sadness filled her
eyes, but a peace and understanding flowed like a lazy river from her soul
because she knows that God is good and he is still with her. Rachael prayed with her and then we continued
on our way. A house here and there, a
prayer for provision and health, a word of encouragement.
Finally, we had reached our final destination for the day. A
grassy patch of grass lined with mud homes. We walked toward two women; a tall and slender one carrying a child on her
back that was lifeless. We entered their
home and began to talk with them but right in the middle of our conversation a
woman runs in the front door, tears running down her face, she begins to speak
in Swahili to our contacts. Our translator explains to us that the woman was
confessing that she was a prostitute and sold drugs. She was about to poison one of her customers.
She pointed to the brew boiling on the floor. She knelt on her knees still in tears and told us that she knew God had
sent us to intervene. In all honesty I
couldn’t tell if she was drunk or sober but we prayed for her. That God would
use this low point in her life as a turning point. That she would understand
that the God we were telling her about is one of love and no matter if you’re a
drug dealer, alcoholic, prostitute, murderer, or an adulterer; in God’s eyes it is all
sin. The pastor invited her to come to church on Sunday, and she agreed. I pray
that she follows through.
When we have days like this when you see so much sadness,
loss, and pain it always leaves room for that open ended question, “Is God good?”.
But in those moments he always draws me closer and puts his arms around me and
allows me to see the old women still in love with her Savior even though her
earthly love is gone; the woman with three children, alone and struggling, pray
for God to become part of her life and she reminds me that he is using us as
vessels to spread the good news!
