This blog is a little late –I blame a broken computer, continent shift, and poor time management. I am in Thailand now, and things are so much different here. But there is still one more story from Africa that I feel like I need to write about.
After receiving the news that we had to leave Uganda and go back to Kenya for month 8 a lot of us were pretty bummed. I hadn't had the best Kenya 1 experience, neither had a lot of people on my squad, so sticking it out for another month wasn't exactly getting any hoots and hollers from the majority of us. However, now seeing what God had in store for us in that month, i'm 100% confident that he knows what he's doing –always.
It wasn't even my idea, nor was I even apart of the "founding" of it, but God had broken a few girls on my team's hearts for the street kids that roamed the busy streets of Nakuru sniffing toxic glue and begging for food or money. These kids are between the ages of 8 and 20 and many of them are orphans, some are runaways -due to an unhealthy living situations or just rebellion. My teammates asked our ministry contacts that since we were two teams if one team could continue on in regular scheduled ministry and the other could pioneer a ministry working with the street kids. They had told our ministry contacts how they had been buying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and handing them out to the kids on the street. Our contacts were very supportive and said that we had the freedome to do whatever and that they would even try to get some of the members of the church to help out.
It was at this point that I joined with their vision and decided that I too wanted to do something for these kids. So the next day we organized a woman who sold Ugee (porridge) to meet us in the park and paid her about 20 cents per cup of porridge that we gave away. After a few minutes the park was flooded with the homeless kids, teenagers, and men of Nakuru. We collected their glue and in return we gave them a cup of porridge. Within an hour we had fed 70 people.
The next day members from the church came out to help serve the porridge but when we got to the park there were hardly any street kids around. One of the kids informed us that most of the kids were scared to come near the park area becase the police had come the day before and beat them and rounded up about 50 of the teenagers and men and thrown them in the city jail just a block away from here. We fed the the 15 street kids that showed up and played them some music with the guitar. Rose and I then shared with them about the love of Jesus and why he had sent us here to help them. Then we picked up the remaining gallon of ugee and headed down to the city jail to feed the rest.
It was God's favor that the guards allowed us and some older street boys who were helping carry the gallon of poridge to even get into the jail. As we walked down the steps into the basement where the cells were, I wasn't prepared for the site I was about to see. There were 6 cells in a dingy damp basement that were 6 feet by 6 feet and in 2 of them they had stuffed 50-60 street boys. Because the day we went there happened to be a holiday they hadn't fed any of the boys. So imagine their surprise when we show up with porridge to feed them all!
They majority of them were in jail for over 3 days so each day we fed the boys in the park and then headed to the jail to feed them.
The 15 or 20 street boys that hadn't been taken to jail continued to show up in the park and every day we fed them, talked to them about their stories, and I and one of my teammates would share with them something from the bible. One particular day I hadn't planned on sharing anything and we were hoping to leave a little early to go to the jail, when one of the older street boys who was helping us called me over to the crowd of boys sitting together eating the porridge and he said, "They want you to share the word of God with them again." "Ok," I said. I reached into my purse and pulled out my bible and prayed that God would give me a word to share with them. I flipped through the Gospels before I stopped on Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son. I asked them if any of them had heard this story –a few of them had. I told them I was going to read them this parable but I was going to focus on the father in the story. I shared with them the father's heart. How the father in the story represented God and that God doesn't care what you've done or where you've been, He just wants his sons to come home -to come back into relationship with Him.
It was our last day of ministry in Nakuru before we left for Thailand. We had met in the park like usual and the usual 15-20 streets boys were there. We had fed them beans and corn this day and watched as their faces lit up with the excitement of a real meal. As we were saying our goodbyes one of the street boys who had been there everyday, his name is Stephen, came up to me and started talking about the story of the prodigal son that I had shared with them the day before. He said that he had thought a lot about what I had said and that he was going to go back home to his mom, and that he was going to go back to school. I was filled with joy at the news and told him that God had a future and a hope for him and that all he needs to do is follow Him and he will direct his path. While I was rejoicing with Stephen about his decesion to return home I asked his friend Francis who was standing beside him if he had a home to go to and he said no…both his parents were dead.
It's estimated that there are over 1,000 street boys living on the streets of Nakuru. 1 of them left the streets that day, but unlike Stephen, the majority have no place to go. For that week God gave us the priviledge of serving the boys and showing them the love of Christ. It was one of the most emotionally and physically draining weeks, but it was also one of the best weeks of my life.
Stephen in the red jacket, and Francis to my right.
Collecting the glue from the boys. I gave them one stern look and held out my hand and they forked it right over.
The boys waiting for their new shoes that we were purchasing for them.
Missy bought Paul a whole new outfit because his clothes were in such tatters.
