It is month 7 of the race, almost month 8 and our first month of three here in Ethiopia. This month my team and I are working with Testimony Feeding Center. We have a great ministry host Gadisa. This month we have been working at a refugee camp. These people have come from the Samalian boarder and now are living here in Addis Ababa. We are the first people to get to work with them since they just arrive about 2 weeks ago. We have an amazing opportunity to share the Lord’s love with these families.
Let me get back to explaining the title of this blog. Day two at the refugee camp there was this tiny boy who can’t be much more then two years old. He was all smiles and all giggles. I saw him with no parent around only his big sister who also is young. She is probably four at most. I was automatically drawn towards him. I go over to him and pick him up. At that moment my heart was so overjoyed and yet broken all in the same moment. Here in Ethiopia not every baby has a mom or dad who keeps watch over them. Children of all ages will wonder on their own or with an older sibling (who usually will only be a year or two older). This little boy had on a strip shirt, pants and green rain boots. When I picked him up he clung to me. If at any moment I went to put him down he wouldn’t let me or he would get very sad if I did. As I am holding him I feel his huge belly. When children are malnourished their tummies puff out and become very big and hard. Well that is exactly how his was. I was heartbroken. I couldn’t fathom it but it is real. It is so real how many children here are malnourished. I had him in my arms for 3 hours straight until we had to leave ministry to head back. About an hour in I was sitting on the ground with him in my arms. People were coming up to me telling me to put him down because he was dirty and someone like me shouldn’t acknowledge someone like him. My heart shattered. Here in this camp there is a system of some type. It isn’t a good one though. People with more money treat the poor very very badly. This little boy and his sister are very poor and they’re treated horribly. People were telling me to throwing him on the ground and trying to take him out of my arms because I shouldn’t touch him. I wouldn’t let them take him of course. I held him very close. While I was sitting with him his little green rain boot slipped off his foot and that is when I was on the verge of tears. Inside his little boot was a tiny foot covered up to his ankle in mud. His shoes were filled with so much mud. I could not wrap my head around this. I can’t imagine who long they had been this way either. My first thought is clean his feet and clean out his shoes. So after I looked for some water and found some I was able to sit and wash off the mud. While I am doing this I got a crowd. There was about 50 plus people standing around me watching me wash his feet and shoes. People were telling me not to clean them off because I would get dirty. That was the silliest excuse for not cleaning this little boys feet. After cleaning all the mud off there were some very bad sores on his feet probably due to sitting in mud. What happened next was amazing. This little boy with his feet all clean started to go crazy. He was overjoyed. He was grabbing his feet and slapping them together and had the biggest smile on his face. I then took a head band and used it to clean the mud out of his shoes. At this point I had an even larger crowd. I let his feet and shoes air out for a little while and then put the shoes back on him. He was the most excited I have ever seen anyone in my entire life. As him and I stood up to walk back to the other field I got so many looks of confusion. My hand covered in mud and my other hand occupied by his. Many were confused why I was helping this little baby have clean feet. For me it is my natural thought to help those who need it. I could not imagine knowing his feet were that way and then just leaving them. That is outrageous to me.
You know? At first I was so mad. I was mad that people were so mean to him and so mad that these people wouldn’t help him. Yet then the Lord revealed to me how He sees them and my heart got sad. I become so sad for these people who are so lost. People who don’t realize how capable they are of loving each other justly. They don’t realize that they need to work together. It broke my heart. As I was sitting there with a crowd very large the Lord spoke so sweet and so softly to me. He shared how much he loved these people and this little boy despite everything. In that moment I was so blessed. I was so encouraged that I was able to be the Lord’s hands and feet literally in these moments. I imagine back when Jesus was around He was always found with those who are very low and people higher than those people don’t understand why He is with them but He is anyway. In that moment everyone was telling me not to touch this boy or to clean his feet off because he is dirty and then didn’t understand when I cleaned his feet. Yet I am blessed to have been able to show the Lord’s love through all of that. I was able to show them that it doesn’t matter how poor they are, he is still a little baby and he deserves to be treated like one and loved. And so that’s what I did. I loved as Jesus does and I was able to do that in front of many who told me not to.
Little Green Rain boots. That was truly the most moving day for me here on the race so far. It was such a sweet and tender yet heartbreaking day. Jesus please provide justice for those who are poorer in this refugee camp and continue to use us to love deeply as you do.
