Addicted to the devils plans of destroying a heart of hope can exclude a helping hand.
One day Matt Patton and I went shopping and then to the internet cafe. We only had about two hours in town after we had lunch for Dez’s birthday before going home. I was walking and the first time time I really felt the need to stop for a street boy. I don’t know if you can even fathom this but take a homeless person in a America and mulitply it by one thousand times. Then add addictions and and hunger into the devil ploy and you have a homeless person in Africa. I have prayed for some of these kids, some of them came onto the streets when they were 5 years old. As you walk around you even see these little kids holding babies. The day my eyes opened and had a heart for the street boys, I saw myself.
Andrew Babboo was his name, the first street boy I fell in love with, he was about 16. “Give me food” he says.. and me and Matt look at each other and say “OK”. From this day froward I had to feed in some way everyone that said to me “I’m hungry”. Andrew is a great actor, the best there is, but I saw through all of his schemes. I had to do something. We bought him some bread and milk then we prayed for him and he left with a cute little grin . Then we saw two others,
one little boy I will never forget, he was about 5 or 6 years old, the white of his eyes where brown and yellow it scared me. His face looked like he was in hell and he gripped Matt’s hand and said nothing. Not once did I hear his voice. Then we bought him and the others more food
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Let me tell you that these boys are all addicted to glue. They huff it to get a momentary high. Its shoes glue! When they breath it in they insistingly feel like there on top of the world like nothing matters like most drugs. Its about 5 bob (5 Kenya shillings). The conversion rate is 75 Kenya shillings to one American dollar. The first time I saw a little boy younger than my niece huffing glue in a dump, I was wrecked. The first time I saw it was in January, the first time I was in Kenya. It didn’t click in my head I could help, I was looking down into the dump with all these men looking at me. I was so scared I climbed into the car and locked the door.
Then we were about to leave and Katie West, my team leader, said this little boy has been sitting here all day, come over with me and lets pray for him. He was one of the best actors I saw to date. He had a cut on his foot and he was shaking and holding his hand out begging for money at that time, I bought it. I almost took him home, I thought he was dying or something. But we went to work with prayer and we washed his foot and gave him some medications for the infection. Then more and more street kids came to see what we were doing, and when I saw them I had to do something. Matt and I went into the same store about 5 time buying milk and bread for every kid we saw.
The highest one of them all, with puke running down his shirt, I don’t even know on him. He said “I’m hungry”. I was so mad at him, I cant explain it and then it clicked in my head, I said “if you give me your glue bottle I will give you food”. It took about 10 minutes for him to decide, ok I will give you my bottle for food. That was the first of many times I took glue bottles in place of food.
I knew my heart belonged there when the first kid hugged me goodbye. He hugged me so tight and nestled his head in my chest like he has never been hugged before.
God put something in my heart and at all cost I was going to see that I was on those streets doing something to help them.
More to come
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