We are living and working inside El Shaddai Children’s Home in a city called Mbabane on the north of Swaziland.
I have always wanted to live on a mountain. And that’s exactly what God has given us this month! El Shaddai is on top of a huge mountain, surrounded by many other mountains and hills. I look out our kitchen window and all I see is miles and miles of green pastures, a river down a valley, and His goodness every-freaking-where.
However, it is mind boggling how a place that just screams of God’s existence and beauty, is simultaneously screaming for help.
There’s a darkness weighing heavy on this mountain. The presence of the enemy is palpable. And because of it, we have been battling spiritual warfare more than ever before.
The kids have heart wrenching stories.
They come from a background of physical and mental abuse. And most, including the toddlers, have been sexually abused by a family member.
A girl told me she was born inside a jail, and her mother was in jail because she had tried to murder the girl’s older brother. The brother also lives in the home and has a scar around his neck from the time his mother attempted to decapitate him.
Another girl, whose mom died from AIDS, celebrated with friends when her HIV test that had come back negative.
There are two brothers, 5 and 7 years old, who were found hanging from a tree. They had been placed there by their father who sexually abused them. Their little sister is now living in the home too, she is two years old and HIV positive. She’s also an alcoholic since her mother used to feed her booze to make her fall asleep.
And there’s Coco, a 10 year old girl. Her mother died when she was a very young. Her father abandoned her. She was left alone with her little brother who was just a baby at the time. She fed him dog poop to keep him alive. Now they both live at El Shaddai. She has given the word SURVIVOR a whole new meaning.
It seriously takes every once of energy to fight against asking the one thing you want to ask when listening to these things: “Where is God?”
But then you look in the eyes of the girl telling the story. Or you listen to the laugh coming for the mouth of the boy with the scar around his neck. There’s no denying it: God is here.
You listen to their praise. You watch the way they worship. And it is clear they know their God.
If they didn’t provide you with their past you wouldn’t know it because these girls have been completely restored and made new. Their stories, and what was done to them, does not in any way define them.
And all doubt that could possibly exist in your human mind goes out the window when you hear them sing:
“There are no strangers,
There are no outcasts,
There are no orphans of God”
Only a God as big as mine is capable of transforming the heart of a child who has been through the above and more, in order for them to sing lyrics as such and actually believe it.
