This here is sweet Phiwa (pee-wah).
Phiwa is hands-down the hardest working 11-year-old kid I’ve ever met. He put us all to shame during the time that we leveled a field to prepare for the construction of a barn, working relentlessly and gently encouraging his brothers to do the same. He also has a wicked sense of rhythm and would make a rad drummer. Composed of 40% sass 60% sweetiepie he was a true blessing as a buddy. Phiwa is going into grade 4 at El Shaddai primary and has been living at El Shaddai since 2009.
His life before El Shaddai was – to be frank – quite horrible and filled with pain. He was originally adopted (sold, rather) into slavery as a herder boy. At age 4 or 5 as a cow herder, Phiwa was sodomized repeatedly by other local herder boys. Once Social Welfare found out about this he was brought to El Shaddai. From that past, Phiwa can be extremely violent to his brothers at El Shaddai and to the leaders and people running the home and when he gets worked up he becomes a force that is very difficult to control. The few times I saw glimpses of this internal anger I just wanted to hold him to my chest and hug him until he didn’t know pain and all he knew was how much he was loved. It broke my heart to think that such a sweet little boy with big beautiful almond eyes could come from such a heart-wrenching past. I grew quite fond of Phiwa very quickly and I really wanted to show him happiness and love and everything good.
Toward the end of the month at El Shaddai we had squad-worship in the chapel and decided to invite the highschool-aged kids to worship with us. A few songs into worship I noticed Phiwa sitting on a bench at the back of the room. Since he’s still very young I didn’t expect to see him there so I was pleasantly surprised. I went to him and invited him to sit with me on the floor.
Cross-legged we sat facing eachother close-eyed and holding hands, letting the music fill us up. I felt the Lord telling me to pray for him but I was too nervous and so I kept putting it off. Because apparently I needed a more concrete reason to pray for him Morgan told the squad to take this opportunity to really speak life into whoever we felt called to. And so, reluctantly, I asked Phiwa if I could pray over him. He quietly said “yes” and I began asking God for blessing upon blessing over Phiwa in his life and that Phiwa would be a light to his brothers and sisters and that the Lord would really move through Phiwa’s life, growing him into a great man of God. I prayed that Phiwa would understand that he’s been set free by the grace and love of God and that though he’s been bound in As soon as I said “in Jesus’ name, Amen” Phiwa let his whole body go, curling his 11-year-old body into my lap and began crying. I rubbed his back and his touched his face and stroked his nose like my Mom used to do when I was a baby and prayed silently for the Lord to take away all of Phiwa’s pain and praising God for the beautiful boy that he put in my life.
Looking up I saw Kristen with her arm around one of the other younger boys who was sitting with him head in his hands. As I watched them I watched the boy raise his hands toward the sky and I got goosebumps and felt overwhelmed with love for the way that God works in even the youngest of His children.
Eventually my legs fell so asleep that I wondered if they would ever wake up and I just kept thinking “suffering for Jesus Marita, you’re suffering for Jesus, deal with it”. At that time I was wearing my blanket around my neck as a cape and Phiwa was shaking a little bit so I wrapped him up like a little piggy in a blanket and watched him as he sang beautifully and horribly off-tune to our worship songs.
The entire night was filled with big brown eyes, God and crazy love.
