This past weekend was a truly great weekend. My team and the team in Kenya had the opportunity to go to Jinja, Uganda for mid-debrief where we talked with some AIM staff about what God has done through us thus far on the trip, where we went rafting down part of the Nile River, and where we got rest from the busy life of a missionary. It was truly amazing. But even more amazing than super fun rafting or the exquisite ice cream and the unbelievably needed rest was the day after returning from Jinja.
Yesterday we had an unexpected ministry opportunity pop-up. One of the friends we have made here had to travel into town, so the four men on our team went to town with her while the four women on our team stayed back to watch her four sons. During our time playing with the boys, I realized how it is the children here that make Lira feel like home to me.
The four most charming boys I know have made me feel the most welcomed, and even though I don’t know them all too well, I still love them. Isaac, Emmanuel, Emmanuel, and Elvis, ages 13, 11, 9, and 4, have not only stolen my camera (which they actually gave back; I had lost temporary possession of is as the boys chose to “play” with it) have also stolen my heart (which I do not expect to be getting back). As I realized how much I love these four innocent boys, I began to wonder how much my heart would break if their childhood was ever stolen from them, if they couldn’t go to school and play with their brothers and eat oranges at leisure.
And then a startling realization came hurtling at me and hit me in the stomach, making me feel sick. “These boys are the lucky ones.”
I remembered a sermon I had listened to a few weeks ago. The sermon is by a woman named Jennifer Toledo, and it is called The Weeping Room. In the sermon Jennifer Toledo talks about what it means to be a child in today’s world. Now, her statistics are a little old, around 2002, maybe, but it gives you an idea of today’s world, nonetheless.
Over half the earth’s population is under the age of fifteen. Two thirds of these 3 billion children live in dire poverty, less then $2.00 a day. There was an estimated 100 million children (which Ms. Toledo said was a conservative figure, she had heard many higher figures) living on the streets in the world’s urban centers. Street kids who get abused in so many different ways, ways in which I couldn’t imagine. It is not uncommon for a child living on the street to be lit on fire because they are “unclean.”
I no longer had to wonder how much my heart would break, because right then my heart split into twenty thousand pieces.
