Stories

Because of my(our) awesome job/life, I get to see people meet their sponsored kids for the first time or witness them seeing their kids again. I get to interact with people as they fall in love with Missions of Hope and the slums that surround. I get to hear and participate in conversations as they wrestle with tough questions.  Does my being here help?  Does it hurt?  What do I do with this experience when I go back to America?  How can this level of poverty exist?  Does it ever get easier to hear the stories of those living in Mathare Valley?

This week we were asked all these things.  And my answer to the last question was NO.  Although, somehow you get used to it some.  But not much.  Poverty sucks.  It is such a powerful tool of our broken world.  It robs people of hope.  Of their gifts and talents.  Their passions.  But we have come to know the stories that accompany poverty this severe.  We never accept them. They are never okay and we never get used to them.  But we know we are working in a ministry offering hope and  love and Jesus.  

In some ways, the stories are not as shocking as they once were, but they never settle well.  And sometimes, some stories haunt me.

The other day a little one came to meet her sponsor.  Describing her as adorable would be an understatement.  While we waited, she and I took silly faced pictures and laughed.  We counted to 10 in English and Kiswahili.  Then her sponsor came and I left the room.  In the hallway I met her mom briefly.  Then her social worker told me her story.  

My new little friend had been absent from school that day and her mother had to bring her to the center to meet her sponsor.  I asked if she was sick.  No, her mom is a commercial sex worker who didn't get up in time to get her off to school.  This story is not an unfamiliar one.  

I walked back into the room where she was hanging out with her sponsor.  Her smile lighting up her face.  She was delighted in the gifts she was given.  Gifts picked out with her in mind.  Although, the gifts were awesome, I think the smile came from love. Someone came all the way here to be with her.  To hug her.  To love on her.  To remind her that she is special.

Her smile stayed on my mind as we left work.  It lingered as we got home, ate dinner, watched TV.  When I took a shower, she and her mom were heavy on my heart.  I am sure her mom does not want to be a prostitute, but she does to survive.  To provide. I am guessing with every "customer"  she feels the trappings of poverty.  The hope being sucked away.  Her heart being pushed down deeper and deeper into what seems like an inescapable hole.

And her daughter, my friend, our student, does she know what mom does.  Does mom have to leave her at night to go earn money for the day?  Does she work from home?  

As the water rushed over me, tears streamed down my face.  I prayed for them.  I prayed for the others like them.  And then Jesus gently reminded me, like He always does that He is with them.  He see them.  He loves them. He left the perfection and glory of Heaven to travel this broken earth for them.  His death to redeem them.  And others like them. And me.  You too.

He reminds me that she is at Missions of Hope.  In school getting a great education. He reminds me of her social worker who has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know.  He reminds me of a sponsor who loves her. He reminds me that I got to hug her and share some laughs with her.  

The stories never get easier to hear.  I don't want them to.  

In the despair and the ugly, there is Beauty and Hope. Grace and Love.  Smiles and laughter.  And Jesus. Always Jesus.