Before
this month in Bungoma, I had never met boys who sniffed on glue so
they wouldn’t feel hungry. I knew it happened, but I didn’t have
a name or a face to put to the fact that street kids all over the
world did this. As we walked down the streets, they would come up to
us and put their hands out, begging us to give them shillings.
One
day, my teammate Jake was walking down the street by himself and met
a street kid named Kevin. He offered to buy him some corn from the
street vendors that are all over Bungoma. On another day, he walked
into a local small restaurant and bought small triangle shaped fried
bread for Kevin and all of his friends that had followed Jake into
the restaurant. It was a small display of love, a way Jake could
provide what the street kids really needed – something to fill their
stomachs for a few hours.
On
our last Saturday in Bungoma, we decided to use some of our budget
money to feed the street kids lunch. We met all of them on the
streets and followed them to where they normally hang out. There we
shook the boys’ hands multiple times and told them our names as
well as hearing theirs. And then we walked them over to the church,
where we provided them with rolls, crackers and milk.
Along
with the street boys, there were some young children at the church
that we were also going to feed. We separated the two groups and I
was told to watch the young kids. So I gathered them all and sat with
them at the entranceway to the church while they waited to be fed. We
read from a Children’s Bible and so several kids climbed in my lap
while the others crowded around.
As
the children sat on and around me, I found myself watching the other
members of my team interact with the older street boys. And in every
interaction I saw, I watched my team members LOVE on those street
kids. It didn’t matter how rough they were, how they grabbed for
food or tried to con their way into more milk, my team loved those
kids.
And
the best I could do that day was sit, watch, and hold the small kids
that are more than content to just sit on someone’s lap and be
hugged. They are easy for me to love. It’s not hard to love the
kids that grab your hands as you walk down the street.
That
night, I was writing my sermon, preparing to preach on love the very
next day. And I wondered whether or not I had loved. I watched my
teammates love all of those kids over and over and over again. But I
sat for two hours on the steps with small kids. Is that love?
I
found a quote from Mother Teresa that I used to end my sermon, and I
want to use it to end this because she says it way better than I ever
could.
“I
never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the
individual. I can only love one person at a time – just one, one,
one. So you begin. I began – I picked up one person. Maybe if I
didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up
42,000… The same thing goes for you, the same thing in your family,
the same thing in your church, your community. Just begin – one, one,
one.”
