Day 1.
It broke me.
150 of the most beautiful kids.
Kids with one parent, kids with no parents.
Kids with no parents and SIX siblings.
150 kids, and only 4 are sponsored.
Inside those gates was joy and singing and dancing and HOPE.
Outside those gates, driving away, all I felt was overwhelming despair.
I wasn’t thinking about Shanto or Dale, where 300 kids are sponsored and thriving.
I was only thinking about the immense need all around me, and feeling completely defeated, deflated, and inadequate. How could I presume to come here and help? I couldn’t do ANYthing. My ‘help’ was a tiny drop of water in a vast sea of need.
I was a poser. I couldn’t make a difference. I was nothing.
Yeah, Satan, he knows how to get to me. This was a spiritual attack of epic proportions. I had just flown halfway around the world to get smacked in the face with the knowledge that I was completely insignificant.
But then, this:
My brilliant friend Joanina, who grew up in rural Kenya and is now working at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, sent me the most encouraging message that same night. I am pretty sure she will never understand how very much I needed that message at that particular time, but GOD knew. It was Galatians 6:9, the New International Joanina Version, and it was like an ice cold Ethiopian Coke (with real sugar!) to my dry, thirsty soul. Joanina’s simple message revived my spirit.
Over and over again, God has shown me that He’s got this.
So I’ll work on being patient and waiting on him, trusting and resting in the knowledge that the kids in Boricha are HIS kids. He wants what’s best for them even more than I do.
Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”