Jared

This is Jared.

Jared is one of the street boys I met at the football game in Lira.  He and I had one of those moments you see when you’re at a conference sometimes, and the speaker points out someone in the audience and yells at them.

I didn’t do it on purpose.

(And relax.  It didn’t really involve that much yelling.)

We were nearing the end of the conversation I told you about last time.  The boys wanted to know when I was coming back to Lira, and I was trying to figure out the best way to say, “I don’t know,” to a group of kids who don’t have phones, home addresses, or Internet access.

I finally hit on prayer.

It’s a lesson God’s been pounding into me this last year or so, and it seemed like an appropriate answer.  “I don’t know when I’ll be coming back,” I said to the boys.  “Maybe a month from now.  Maybe ten months.  Maybe ten years.”

“Ten years!” they groaned.

And then one of the boys in the back started rattling off something in Luo that I didn’t understand at all.

“What’d he say?” I asked Washington.

“He says ten years is too long.  He says if you wait ten years, they’ll all be dead.”

That’s when I took my cue from the few conference speakers I’ve seen and locked eyes with Jared.  “Ten years is too long?” I challenged.

Well, yeah.

“Okay, then you pray.  You pray every day, and I’ll pray every day, and it won’t be ten years.  Okay?”

And then he nodded, and the moment passed, and we wrapped up the conversation.

I would love to know today if Jared remembers that conversation.  I would love to know what he thinks about Jesus.  I would love to know if he’s praying.

All I know is, I most certainly am.

Starting with Me

These are the street boys of northern Uganda.  Five of them.  Five out of a hundred.  Two hundred.  A thousand.  Ten thousand.

Only God knows.

The boy in the black shirt is called Dogo.  His name is the only name I remember.  God knows the rest.  He knows their ages, their dreams, their favorite food.  He knows where their parents are.  He knows why they’re living on the street.  He knows how many times they’ve cried.

I think of how much God knows and how little I know, and I tell Him that I would like to know more.

I met these five boys and about fifty more at a street boys football (That’s African for soccer.) game in Lira.  It was all very unscheduled.  No one knew I was coming.  Saturday morning, I conquered a mountain, and at noon I was sitting down on a wooden bench to watch a football game between boys I’d never met before.

I talked to the coach for a few minutes.  He’s been coaching the boys for several years, they’re very good, and they’ve nicknamed him after some famous football player whose name I’ve forgotten. (It wasn’t David Beckham.)

Then about three minutes into the conversation, the coach said, “Okay, I’m going to call the boys in now, and you can have a word with them.”

He blew his whistle.

And I’m sitting there thinking, “You mean now?  Hold up a sec.  You just met me.  How do you know I have anything good to say?”

Meanwhile, all the boys were sitting down in a semi-circle in front of me, peering curiously at this strange white woman who showed up by herself and doesn’t know how to keep her Chacos on.  So, I started talking.  “Uh, hi.  My name is Rebecca.”

Miraculously, they listened.  I told them why I was there.  I said I’d lived in Africa with my whole family when I was little.  I said I’d read a lot of stories.  I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, “I can’t believe I’m really sitting here, looking all those stories straight in the eye.”

I’d heard three stories of abandonment, abuse, and neglect from Solomon, Daniel, and Ronald.  And suddenly here I was, staring into the face of fifty more.

I asked if they had questions, and they were a little shy, but then they decided they might have a few.  And then, before I knew quite what had happened, they started telling me all the things they need.

“We need a school we can go to.”

“We need clothes without holes.”

“We need food.”

“We’d really like football uniforms for our team.”

“It would be nice to live in a house.”

On and on.  List after list.  It was all good, not really what you’d call superfluous, and completely overwhelming.  I have a hard enough time taking care of myself, never mind fifty homeless street boys.

I finally raised a hand.  Whoah.  Hold up for a minute.  And then I said . . . Sorry, I can’t help you.  I realize you’ve got a lot of need, but there’s not a thing I can do about it.  No school fees.  No clothes.  No food.  No football uniforms.  I got nothing.  Sorry.

And even if I actually had the resources to help all of you, what about the other kids in Lira?  What about the other kids in northern Uganda?  The kids in Central Africa?  The kids in all the world?  What about them?

And then, “But I’ve got something better,” I said.

I reached into my backpack, and they all got excited, cause they thought maybe I’d brought candy.

Ouch.

I pulled out my Bible.  They suppressed their groans.  I don’t actually remember what verse I read to them or what exactly I said.  I hardly even remember vaguely what I said.  But I know what I believe.  I believe that Jesus is more important than education.  Jesus is more important than a safe environment.  Jesus is more important than family.  Jesus is more important than medicine.  Jesus is more important than food.  And if I really believe that, then I believe that I can share Jesus with street boys on a football field when the only thing I have in my backpack is a Bible.

I also know that at the end of our conversation, they weren’t asking me for things anymore.  They were sitting up straighter and asking, “How can we know when you come back to Uganda so we can all sit down with you and talk again?”

See, I’d love to be able to give every one of those street boys a home.  I’d love to see them wearing school uniforms and shoes and shirts without holes in them.  I’d love to know they were eating three decent meals every day.  I’d love to get them matching football jerseys.  But the thing I most want is to see them follow Jesus.  And if I want to see it in them, I have to model it first.  So, if I want to see them trust and obey and hope and pray, then . . . I have to start with me.

Stories

I have discovered something about myself.  It should have been pretty obvious.  Most of you will probably say, “Well, duh.”  So, maybe I haven’t really discovered it so much as defined it.

I love stories.

Last night, I sat next to the swimming pool in Holland’s Holiday Inn Express and talked with a man from Kentucky.  Last week I sat at a table with my great aunts and uncles who graduated whole decades before I was born.  Last month I sat in a plastic chair under a tree in Africa with three street boys from Lira.

I didn’t really do much.  I just sat there and listened.  They told me their stories.

And their stories fascinate me.

“My aunt did some research and figured out we’re directly related to Pocahontas.” (That’s from Kentucky.)

“We left the football game and drove to Kentucky to get married, cause in Ohio you had to be 18 to elope.  My mom said later she was wondering why I’d showed up to the game in my suit.” (That’s my grandpa telling about how he and Grandma got married.)

“My step-dad didn’t want me in the house, so I left my mom and went to live with my dad.  But his new wife beat me and yelled at me all the time, so I left again.  I tried to go back to my mom, but it didn’t work.  That’s why I live on the street.”

This is Ronald’s story.

Ronald (left side) is one of the street boys I talked to in Lira.  He and Solomon (black shirt) and Daniel (red shirt) sat with me for more than an hour and told me why they were on the streets.  They were very polite and very patient with all the translating.  None of them would look me in the eye while they told me their stories.

These boys have lived a life that I can only imagine.

They know what it feels like to pull a garbage sack up to your chin as a blanket.  What’s it’s like to get woken up by an angry mob, wielding machetes.  What it’s like to spend a night in jail with no one caring whether or not you come out in the morning.  How much arm space it takes to hold a kilo of plastic. (They collect plastic on the street and take it in to recycle.  They get paid 12 cents per kilo.) The message in the eyes of the adults who pass you every day on the street.  How your heart feels when you see other kids your age in their starched, ironed uniforms, marching off to school.

Listening to their stories, I didn’t laugh as much or smile as much as I do when I’m listening to stories here in the States.  The stories in Africa are often more somber, more complicated.  They don’t have happy endings.  They’re different.

It makes me wonder what it would take to bring the laughter and smiles back into the stories in Africa.  What does that look like?  How does it sound?  What does it do to your heart?  I want to know.  Will Solomon, Daniel, and Ronald look me in the eye when they tell me their stories then?

Meeting History

I am writing from Ohio.  A beautiful brown house outside London (...Ohio) where I’m listening to a lot of conversations that start with, “You remember when...” and, “There was one time we...”

I’m here with my grandpa, and we’re staying with my grandpa’s sister.  Which makes her my great aunt, I think.  I’m hearing all about the truck Grandpa flipped driving across a bridge too fast, the one-room school house that used to be right where that tree is now, the house where my mom learned to ride a bike, the river Bud almost drowned in, and the barn that started on fire from a spark in the hay.

The concrete’s turning back to gravel, the telephone poles are reverting to their original state as trees, the sound of car engines is giving way to the clip-clop of horse hooves, and everyone’s hair is getting curlier as I listen.  There’s more time in this world.  There’s more black and white pictures.  There’s more radios and less televisions.  There’s more ice cream.  McDonald’s hasn’t taken over the world yet.

I’m learning more of my family history.

It’s an amazing thing.

Today the world seems older than it did yesterday.  Today I laugh at the people building their fancy houses, polishing their shiny cars, mowing their expansive lawns, because fifty years from now, all people will say about them as they drive past is, “Oh, yeah, so-and-so’s used to live here, but then they died.”

I talk with all these white- and gray-haired folks, and I am in awe.  They’ve eaten so many more meals than I have, seen so many more sunrises, drunk so many more cups of water, sneezed so many more sneezes.  I am not very old.

And that reminds me of Africa. (They don’t really have to be related.  Everything reminds me of Africa.) I look out at the cornfields here, I think about the cornfields at home, and I remember the cornfields in Africa.  I think about our farmers and their farmers.  Our great aunts and their great aunts.  Our school houses and their school houses.  Our history and their history.

And I wonder what people will say fifty years from now.

What stories the kids who call me their great aunt will hear.  Which river I will almost drown in.  Which truck I will flip.  Which spot of land they will have to drive past to be able to say, “Oh, yes, Rebecca lived here, but then she died.”

I wonder about my history.

I wonder about us being so small, about us being so many, about our lives being so short - and I wonder how God keeps track all of us.  I wonder how it’s possible that we don’t all look alike to Him, sort of like when I look in the dirt at the ants.  I wonder how He keeps us apart.  How He never confuses me with some curly-haired chick named Rebecca who lived 1,387 years ago.

The more I learn, the more in awe I am.

And then a couple nights ago, Grandpa told me about a video he’d seen of NASA pictures.

The Earth from the top of a mountain.

The Earth from the height you have to reach to be an astronaut.

The Earth from the moon.

The Earth as a dot in the solar system.

The sun as a dot in the galaxy.

The galaxy as a dot in a thousand galaxies.

History.  Ages.  Millennia.

Eternity.

And I am grateful for my family.  My history, my heritage, all the who’s I came from.  However insignificant it might be in the grand scheme of things.  I am blessed, and I am grateful.  I’m even glad it started in is-that-a-part-of-Kansas Nebraska . . . And I’m hoping there’s a lot more red African dirt involved before I die.

A Lesson from the Bar . . . Literally

I haven’t run out of Africa stories yet, but I’d like to take a short break (commercial interruption?) to stop telling you what’s happened in the past and let you know what’s happening right now in the present.

I am a waitress.

It’s the word I write in the blank under “job description” on official forms.  It’s easier than trying to explain anything else.

It’s not the sort of word you hear a lot when you ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

But I’ve been a waitress for the past three years.

It was never really supposed to be this long.  Believe me.  I’ve had all sorts of conversations with God about the subject.  Still, for every time I leave the States, my waitressing job is waiting for me when I come back.  Somewhere in the middle of all those plane rides, I stopped telling God I needed a different job and starting asking Him why He still had me in this one.

Waitressing isn’t exactly a dream come true.

Surprised?

It’s actually quite frustrating.  You may not hear the swear words out in the dining room, but - believe me - we get a whole lot of them back in the kitchen.  It’s high stress.  People treat you like dirt, all for the sake of an over-cooked steak or a salad that’s too small.  And your fellow workers might always smile for the customers, but that doesn’t mean they’re always smiling for you.

Last week, I was reading some verses while driving to work.  I Corinthians 4:8-13 to be exact.  Emphasis on verse 12: “We work hard with our hands.  When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it.”

I thought about the apostles and how many enemies they had to bless and wondered if I had any enemies cursing me that I could bless.  I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head.

Then I got to work.

You know how some people are easy to like, and other people are a lot harder to like?  I have a hard time liking one of the bartenders at work.  I don’t know drinks very well, and he’s a genius at it.  So, I mess up a lot.  I ask stupid questions.  And every time I make a mistake, this particular bartender is sure to let me know about it.

“Why didn’t you ask what kind of gin they wanted?"  "Your drinks have been here for ten minutes.  Why'd it take you so long?"  "Don’t you know how to open a bottle of wine without breaking the cork?”

It’s hard to bless someone when he’s talking to you like this.  Especially when, meanwhile, two tables are waiting for you to take their order, the cooks are yelling at you to pick up your food for the third table, and a fourth table is wanting to pay their bill right now.

When life’s like that, it’s hard to hear criticism from the bartender.

When life’s like that, it’s even harder to bless the bartender who’s criticizing you.

And yet Paul clearly says in I Corinthians, “When we are cursed, we bless.”

This is one of the lessons God’s teaching me these days.  A lesson He figures gets hashed out pretty well in the waitressing world. (I’m inclined to agree with Him.) It doesn’t mean He’s ignoring me or forgotten about me or stuck me on a top shelf because He got tired of looking at me.  It means He is my teacher whether I’m a missionary or a waitress.  It means He wants me to obey whether we’re talking about a plane ticket or a strawberry daiquiri.  It means the God who was good when I was singing for kids in a brick church in Africa is still good while I’m rushing drinks to an impatient table in Nebraska.

"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

Uncle Fred: Saving Grace

This is Uncle Fred.  He’s the man in the white shirt standing in the doorway of what will soon be a house for street boys. (Sorry I didn't get a closer shot!) I don’t call him Uncle Fred, but that’s what the kids on the street call him.

Uncle Fred heads an organization called Saving Grace.  It’s another one of the missions in Lira that’s working to bring children out of the hopelessness of the streets and into a brighter future.  Education.  Discipleship.  Family.

We sat in Fred’s office and talked for more than an hour about what it’s like working with kids who don’t have any authority figure in their lives.  Fred told me how he got started.  He didn’t build anything to begin with.  He didn’t start an organization.  He simply went out into the streets and started making friends.  “When they were sick, I took them to the hospital.  When they couldn’t eat, I brought them food.  When it was a holiday, I gave them sodas.”

For nine months, every day that’s all Fred did.

I think there’s a reason why the kids call him “Uncle.”

Then he started inviting kids into his house.  To get them off the streets.  To model a family setting for them.  To put them under authority.  Psychologists would call this “rehabilitation.”  After a couple months there, the kids go to the center outside of Lira.  Here they get to attend school.  They learn how to take care of themselves, how to take care of a house.  They remain with Fred and Saving Grace until they are able to support themselves.

About a year ago, Fred was driving his motorcycle through downtown Lira when he came across a girl lying on the side of the streets.  She was five years old.  She was nearly dead.  Fred picked her up and rushed her to the hospital where doctors diagnosed her with AIDS.  They said there was no hope.  She was too far gone.  But Fred didn't give up.  Today that little girl is enrolled in school and healthy.  Her parents are both dead from AIDS, but this girl has a hope.  She has a future.  This is what Fred does.  This is how he lives.

But the most important thing, Fred says?  “Pray.  Step up your prayer life.  If now you are praying once a day, start praying five times a day.”  He repeated this a couple different times.  He couldn’t stress it enough.  “Out of everything, never forget to pray.”

Fred has good cause to remind me to pray.  When he was 14 years old, he started praying for street children.  He said he would help that group later in life.  I look at him today, and I see that God answers prayer.

Not only does Fred pray.  He is also a visionary.  After our office talk, we walked outside to tour the grounds.  These particular grounds happen to be about five acres of land that right now have an office building, a house, a little shack for a kitchen, and two gardens.  But Fred showed me much more than that.  “This here will be the school, and over there we will build a real kitchen.  There will be three more houses for the kids.  We will put the visitor parking lot right here, and the staff will park over there.”

The five mostly empty acres came to life as he talked.

And somewhere in the middle of our discussion, Fred told me the most surprising thing of all.  Remember Christopher from the last post?  That’s Fred’s brother.

Fred is the younger brother who moved to Lira with Christopher and spent the next six months living on the street.  God has taken two abandoned fatherless street boys, and He has made a good thing.  A very good thing indeed.

Christopher: The Passion I Have for Christ

Meet Christopher Odongo (on the left).

I met Christopher in a square, tall-ceilinged office at the Children of the Nations compound in Lira.  Children of the Nations (COTN) is an international organization that works to bring hope to orphans and abandoned children through education.  When I talked to Christopher, COTN had 61 orphans in Lira that they were taking care of.

Christopher was getting ready for the arrival of a western team that was coming in the next day, and he joked with us that he needed to print his own business cards.

But life for him didn’t always look so promising.

When he was 8 years old, Christopher lived in Gulu with his mom and dad and little brothers.  But that was before the LRA attacked.  The day the rebel army came, they caught Christopher’s father and chopped him into pieces with a panga.  Do you remember what a panga is?

Just like that, Christopher was fatherless.

His mother immediately moved the family out of Gulu, walking, trying to find a different place to live.  A place where they would be safe.  They walked 60 miles to an IDP camp.  But the LRA attacked again.  So the family moved again.  Only to be attacked again.

After the third attack, Christopher decided he might be safer in a town instead of in an IDP camp.  So he and his younger brother moved to Lira.  Where they spent the next six months living on the streets.

A pastor heard about the boys and began sponsoring them so they could go to school.  While he was studying at the age of 16, Christopher had a vision.  A vision of himself surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of street kids.  Abandoned.  Neglected.  Orphans like himself.  And in the vision, Christopher was taking care of them all.

Christopher’s friends began to tell him that through his time on the streets, God had prepared him to help children who are where he once was.  Christopher himself said this: “Why did I stay on the street?  I think it was a training ground.”

A bad circumstance.  A trial.  An ugly part of his life . . . that God made good.

Today Christopher and his wife Joy (he calls her meta charis because it means “with joy” in Greek, and she brings him joy, and he likes studying Greek) have twins, a boy and a girl, who are a few months old.  Joy heard on the news one night about a baby who had been found in the trash on the side of the road, abandoned.  The infant was dead.  The news made Joy cry.  After having children of her own, she couldn’t understand how someone could just leave a baby to die like that.  About his own life, Christopher says this: “If there is any passion I have for Christ, it is to see the faithfulness of Christ as I obey Him.  God told us to take care of the orphans and widows, and this is what I want to do.”

(If this page starts singing to you, don't freak out!  I told it to do that.  It's playing from the white box - I think they call it a widget - on the left-hand side of the screen.  I wanted to share with you the songs I got to record about a year ago now, and I finally figured out how to do it!)

Faces of the Orphans

I met five other children at the house where I met Sarah.

They were all staying with Sarah at Rebecca’s (a police woman in Lira) house.  The police had gotten calls concerning these children and had the option to:
a) Put the children in jail (for lack of a better facility).
b) Take the children into their own homes.
c) Ignore them.

Rebecca as a single African woman who makes under 80US$/month has chosen option b.

When I met these children, they were all hanging around the house, sitting on the front porch, cleaning inside, waiting for something to happen.  Rebecca is gone at work all day, so these children must learn to take care of themselves.  They cannot go to school because Rebecca can’t afford to send them.

We sat on the front porch of Rebecca’s house, and these children told me their stories.  I would like you to hear them.

(Beginning at the top left and moving clockwise) First is Innocent.  Innocent is five years old.  When he was a baby, he was abandoned by his parents.  I don’t think he actually knows who his mother and father are.

Next is Gloria.  Her parents were killed by the LRA.  She couldn’t tell me one sentence about her mom and dad without big tears rolling down her cheeks.

On the top right is Dennis.  He is around the age of ten, and his father is in prison for killing his brother.  His mother is dead.  Dennis has an amazing smile.

On the bottom left is Moren.  Moren is four years old.  She was found abandoned on the streets when she was only a few months old.  She doesn’t know who her parents are.

Last is Irene.  Irene is 12 years old.  A mob killed her father for stealing.  Her mother couldn’t handle it and simply abandoned her kids.  Irene is the oldest of the six children, so I imagine she is more or less in charge of the others while Rebecca is gone.  Would you leave your 12-year old in charge of five other children all day while you went to work?

When we prayed together at the end of our visit, Irene prayed, and this is what she said.  “I thank You for keeping us alive not because we are good but because You are righteous.”  This is very close to a prayer Daniel prayed in Daniel 9.  Irene may be an orphan.  She may not be able to go to school.  She may be in charge of five other children, remembering all the while that her mother who ought to be there was in too much pain to care for her own children.  But Irene is thankful to God for His goodness.

Do you see the goodness of God in the faces of these children?

There ought to have been two more boys at this house when I came.  Moses and Bennett used to live at Rebecca’s house too, but they decided life was too difficult here and went back to living on the streets.

Both boys are six years old.