2 Fatherless Boys Play Basketball, I’m 1 of Them!

I walked outside at 9:30am from the dining hall of the orphanage (New Faith Family Children’s Home, a ministry of Kids International Ministries) I’m working at this month here in the Philippines to see which kids had come home from school.  Sitting in a chair next to Mama Marilyn, Joel was somber and not talking, not smiling. It was like he was just there.  Mama Mary explained that Joel was ‘very very sad’ because he was not allowed to stay at school with all the other children, but had to come home early.  Joel wanted to stay and play basketball with all the other boys.  You see, he has a slight mental handicap.  The school specialist can devote only 2 hours a day to Joel and the other two handicapped children in the school.  Today, Joel was hoping to stay after his morning session to play basketball with the older kids, but he wasn’t allowed.

We played for a really long time.  The immense heat could not stop the determination and desire of Joel to have fun playing basketball.  I was so happy that Joel overcame his sadness and embraced joy, that he embraced a different opportunity than his first expectation, that he embraced the moment.

 

“Yes, I’m Joel’s father figure.  God please don’t abandon Joel, bring him Fathers like you’re allowing me to be right now.”

I know just a little of Joel’s pain, because I am fatherless as well. My father died years ago.  Joel has no mother, no father.  He was abandoned as a child.  And this school day that he came home,’ there was no father waiting here to pick up the pieces of a shattered son’s heart.  There was no father to speak encouragement and life into Joel.  My heart broke, and I’m sure God’s heart broke a million times more.  This was a perfect father moment.  It should have been, but it couldn’t be.  Joel is living with 30 other abandoned children and half a dozen Christian women of God who are mothers to him.   He is not living with his earthly father.