Street Kid Ministry, Day 1
The half-full mutatu pulls
up to the side of the road where Lauren, Matt and I are waiting to go
downtown. I’m nervous. I’m leaving the peace of my books and the
comfort of the Patrick’s compound to go under the hot sun and into
crowded streets of Eldoret. The unknown of it all scares me.
Steven Pressfield,
one of my favorite writers, says the thing you fear doing the most is
the thing that is most important to you and to your growth.
I say this because
I don’t want you to think Lauren, Matt or I are some kind of heroes,
super-Christians who preach hour long sermons in between saving
orphans. This is hard stuff. It’s even harder starting something
all on your own. There is self-doubt, fear of failure, fear of the
unknown all at your back trying to drag you down.
But
it’s worth it. Doing good
is hard, but it’s worth it. It’s important to your soul.
That’s why Jesus keeps telling his disciples, the Pharisees,
everyone, how important it is to help people.
We get
off the mutatu and
start walking toward downtown. Earlier, we decided not to bring any
food today so that we can focus on starting a relationship with the
Street Kids based on friendship and not dependance. We even drop off
a backpack with all our stuff in it at an internet cafe so that we
won’t have any money on us.
I see one kid,
thirteen or fourteen years old, with a yellow stained glue bottle to
his mouth in the middle of one of the busiest streets of Eldoret.
“Look
at that,” I say to Lauren, nodding at the boy. “How can these
people watch a kid do that to himself and do nothing?” The boy is
getting high right out in the middle of town, destroying his mind in
the process. “Do people just not care?”
“That’s
nothing,” she said. “In Detroit, I’ve seen people shoot up right
on the street.”
Would
I do anything if some stranger was shooting up on the streets in my
hometown? Would I care about him enough to stop him? Maybe we just
don’t care enough, all of us, me included. Maybe
like me earlier, caring costs too much, costs the descent into fear.
But Jesus would have confronted this
boy, with his glue bottle held to his desperate lips, wouldn’t he?
