Christopher took Stephen and me on a walk around the village of Bwaliro today to meet some of the widows and orphans that Huruma House has been supporting over the past few months. In case you are confused, Christopher Otsieno and Paul Bwire are creating a Kenyan organization called Blessed Family Center. Huruma House is a US public charity that Stephen Greek, Scott Darrow, Gordon Fry, and I created late last year. Huruma House is a US non-profit that raises funds to help widows, orphans, and needy persons in East Africa by supporting existing indigenous efforts to care for them, and the Blessed Family Center happens to be the first such project that Huruma House is supporting. So far, Huruma House has been providing monthly support for 53 orphans and 10 widows through Blessed Family Center, and we had been under the impression that this would be sufficient for the little village of Bwaliro.
This is incorrect. We aren't even close. The need here is so much greater than we had imagined that Stephen and I feel absolutely overwhelmed.
During the course of our walk through the village, we went to visit one little orphan boy we are supporting named Clinton. He lives in a little mud hut with his three siblings (who are also orphans) and his guardian. Or I guess I should say he used to live in a little mud hut. A few weeks ago, the man of the house decided he was tired of living and set fire to the house at night with all the children inside. Then he stood in the doorway so that none of the family could escape. Fortunately, the neighbors showed up in time to rescue the family from the fire, but the house was reduced to a shapeless pile of dirt and ashes. The same man had previously set fire to another mud hut the children had been sleeping in, and only one wall remained of that hut. So, the mother took the iron sheets from the roof of the first collapsed house and built a little lean-to against the side of the last standing wall. She will live here with Clinton and his siblings until another house can be built.
Because Clinton is in the Blessed Family Center program, Chris brings Clinton's guardian a supply of food for him at the beginning of each month. But since the family has nothing, barely even a place to live, Clinton's ration ends up being shared among all five of them. We saw this same story repeated time and time again. Food that was meant to feed one ends up feeding many. It would be nice if Clinton's brothers and sisters could be placed in the program as well, but the funds from Huruma house were limited, so Chris just had to pick one of the children to support.
We asked Chris how many orphan children there were in the area who were still in need of assistance, and he made an estimate of 600 just in the little village of Bwaliro.
Another stop we made on our walk around the neighborhood was a visit to Bwaliro Primary School. Paul had mentioned that we are going to need to do something to improve the children's education, so we thought we would have a look at the local schools and see how we might be able to help.
The first thing we noticed was that very few of the children had shoes. Almost all of them were running around barefoot. This might not be such a big problem if the area wasn't infested with a little bug called a jigger that burrows itself into the children's feet and can very painful. Some of the children we saw at the school were obviously having a hard time learning while they were trying to dig the little parasites out of their feet.
The second thing we noticed was that not all of the children had desks to sit at. Many of the older classes had enough desks to sit three students to a bench, but in the fourth grade classroom and younger there was not a desk to be found. When the children needed to write, they just placed their papers on the crumbling concrete floor.
The third thing we noticed was that when the school dismissed for lunch, many of the children did not go home. The school headmaster told us that there wouldn't be any food for them to eat at home anyway, so many of them didn't bother to make the journey and just stayed on the school grounds during lunchtime and dealt with the hunger.
In addition to visiting the orphans and the schools we also visited some of the widows Huruma House has been supporting. One of the women we visited, Zainabu, welcomed us into her round mud house with a thatch roof, and we got to sit and talk with her a while. Zainabu is a very old woman and has a little bit of land around her house that she farms by herself, and the entirety of her maize harvest for the year was sitting in a little chair by the door. Chris told us that might be enough food to last a month. After that, with no children to help support her, she was just relying on the monthly food distribution from Chris to stay alive.
After we talked with her a bit and prayed with her, Zainabu said she wanted to give us a gift. So she reached into a small metal pot that was hanging from the rafters of her mud hut and pulled out a rather large piece of dried beef. Stephen told her how much we love homemade beef jerky and thanked her profusely for the generous gift. To refuse the gift, in this culture, would have been appallingly rude. We took a picture with Zainabu and promised her we would send her a print of it, and then we continued on our walk. But Stephen and I were both pretty choked up by her amazing act of generosity and hospitality. Everything she owned in the world was visible to us in her small round hut, and it really wasn't much. Yet “out of the most severe trial, her overflowing joy and her extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity”.
As we continued our walk along the narrow paths winding through trees, we came upon a little hut sitting out all by itself. Chris said he knew that a widow lived here, but it wasn't one of the widows we are supporting, and he asked if we wanted to go inside and meet her. We said that we might as well, so we announced ourselves and walked into her house.
On the floor of the mud hut sat a very old woman. She was wearing no shirt, and her belly was distended. As she spoke in the Luhya language, Chris and Paul took turns translating for us. The woman was unable to walk, and just as her belly was swollen her eyes were swollen, too. So, it was difficult for her to see us. She was eating as we spoke to her. Apparently there is a kind woman down the path who brings food to her occasionally, however since she doesn't have any teeth she can only eat soft foods. She had some jugs of water sitting on the opposite side of the hut, and she told us that when the schoolchildren pass by her hut on the way to school, she cries out to them asks them to draw some water for her. Because it is so difficult for her to get around, she waits until she finishes eating and then crawls across the floor to get a drink of water. Of course, it is impossible for her to get to any choo, so when she needs to go to the bathroom, she crawls outside of her hut and digs a little hole in the ground. She hasn't been able to see a doctor in decades, she has no living children, and all of her grandchildren are living far away with their father's family, so she has no family to visit her or care for her. The last years of her life will just be spent sitting alone on the floor of a mud hut hoping that some kind neighbor will bring her a bit of food and some water.
It was Stephen's turn to pray at this house, and for that I was grateful, because I honestly don't know what I would have said. I wasn't really able to process any of this, and I think “Spirit of God, intercede!” may have been the only prayer I would have been able to get out.
And yet, I don't even know that I could have prayed that simple prayer in faith. How can a person pray when God seems so absent? Tell me. Where is God in this mud hut where this woman sits imprisoned, deprived of all hope and dignity? Where is God when people are naked and hurting and starving and forgotten by the world? Where is God in this dark place, and when we cry out for intercession why doesn't He hear us? Does He not hear the voices of the widows and orphans of this tiny village in Kenya? Surely they must cry out to Him. Why is He silent?
I scream my questions to God with implied accusations of injustice, and then I wait, like Habakkuk, for an answer that I know will not come. "I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint."
But an answer does come. Not in the darkness of that mud hut, but several days later, after the questions and the accusations have had a chance to ferment inside of me. And the answer doesn't come as an incoherent whisper with the vague semblance of some hidden truth. The answer from God comes clearly and unmistakably:
Why do you think you crossed thousands of miles of land and sea to enter this mud hut, Jeff? Did you hear this woman's cry from the comfort of your home in Abilene, Texas and rush to her aid to rescue her from the hand of a heartless and unjust God? How long, exactly, have you been loving and caring for the children and widows of Bwaliro, Kenya? Do you know all their names and all of their stories? Do you know the last time they have eaten, and have you counted the jiggers in their feet?
When you pray for Me to intercede, what it is exactly that you are expecting Me to do? Are you wanting me to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, to heal the sick and show compassion to the forgotten? Are you asking Me to become personally involved in the lives of these children of Mine? When I walked the earth two thousand years ago, I did all of these things with my own hands, and now My Body, the Body of Christ, the Church, continues My divine ministry of love and compassion and healing.
Was it for personal gain that Christopher and Paul left their homes in the city to tirelessly serve the widows and orphans of Bwaliro, or was it because they listened to My voice and faithfully answered my call. And those hungry schoolchildren who go out of their way on their long walk to school to fetch water for this lonely widow woman, do they do this for their own benefit or is it My voice they hear prompting them to acts of compassion? And what about Huruma House? Did it spring from the pride of your heart, or did you really mean for it to be a tool in My hand to help work My will in this community and in East Africa?
When you pray for divine intercession, Jeff, sometimes I get the feeling that you think you are the one calling the shots, that your prayers are somehow meant to convince me to get my act together and do what you think I need to do. So, I just want to remind you that it really works the other way around. I love these children and these widows infinitely more than you do. You are here in Bwaliro for the same reason Chris and Paul are here, only because I have called you to come and minister to the bodies and souls of my children. So, please stop begging me to "intercede" as if I am sitting idly by and letting the devil take the world. I am continually interceding in this broken world by working powerfully through my faithful children who are obedient to the sound of My voice.
And after this, I hear a further response to my accusations, but I'm pretty sure this second response comes from my own heart and not from His. Maybe this second response represents what I might say to myself if I were in God's shoes and not nearly as gracious as He is:
But since we are asking each other questions, Jeff, I want to take this opportunity to ask *you* why this particular widow woman sits imprisoned in her home, "deprived of all hope and dignity." It looks like Christopher would be more than willing to minister to her if only he had the funds. So, why is it that Huruma House is only funding the support of ten widows right now? I'm just kind of curious about why you chose to stop at ten. Did Huruma House just not have enough in donations to cover this woman? Why was that? All it would have taken is another $25 dollars given to Huruma House last month. Chris would have been very happy to use the extra money to provide food and clothing and medical care for this desperate widow woman. So what happened, Jeff? Was there something else you needed to buy with that money? I'm sure you must have spent it on something very important; I'm just asking.
O God, I am unworthy – how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer – twice, but I will say no more. Amen.
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