Wednesday, June 25, 2008

I've never before seen skin rotting but I've never been in Africa either.

Daniel sat in the corner somewhat lonely which was interesting because he was surrounded by his team who was listening to him. He was speaking about the burning passion God had laid on his life to help the homeless in Swazi. With tears running down his face and a spirit to love he told us about his vision; a vision to help the homeless people on the streets of Manzini. I’m not going to tell you any more about the vision because it’s not my story to tell but rather I’m going to tell you what it’s like to be in my shoes for a month.

The problem is with listening to God, for me, is it’s very hard to know whether it’s God talking, the enemy (Satan) talking, or just the thoughts and dreams in my head talking which sometimes I think outnumber the grains of sand on the Earth, sorry Abraham.

Step back for a second and think in your head the last time you think that God spoke to you. If you don’t believe in God don’t assume that the answer is never. Like a still small voice in the back on your head saying. “Hey, I love you.” If you do believe in God and he hasn’t spoke to you in a while why do you think that is?

Life in this country is different from what you think, save the cows walking in the middle of the road, (the government has tried to put up fence but people just steal it and use it at their individual homesteads) and the kids having only rice and beans to eat. Africa as you think it is: wars, chaos, turmoil, strife, exists here but not to the extent which you think.

I’m struggling to find out what God has with my future and when I think about my future I think about you. I think about all the people on this Earth that are going through the things they are going through and I get sad. So much hurt and loneliness, so much lack of love that it hurts my heart. There have been some sad things that have come to pass since I last talked to you; when I visited the government “hospital” (I use this term hospital loosely) I met this kid named Micosi, pronounced with a click in the beginning of his name, his legs were shattered by a car that hit him. His friend laid next to him in the bed with a broken leg and the device used to heal his leg was primitive. Wood taped to it with a weight at the end of the bed hanging down pulling his toes to keep his foot stretched out while he waited for it to heal. Some of the kids spend 2 months in the hospital and sometimes die because they don’t have a simple medicine/antibiotic to heal their infections or their bronchitis, pneumonia, cold or flu. A another child whose penis was rotting away because no one was changing his diaper but rather letting his sit in his own filth. A team member took the child, changed the child, held the child, prayed over the child, loved the child, and now, to be quit frank, the child is dead. I don’t know what the child was suffering from or even the child’s name but things like this are so hard to understand and bear.

It brings great joy to my heart to see my team and the way they love. To see my team picking up kids at the care points that are orphans and sometimes wearing no pants and getting peed on and the team mates loving them just the same; seven children hanging on Ryan as he plays the flying game, others playing countless hours of soccer with some of the youths. This is what life is here for us in Swaziland. It’s a life sold out for Jesus Christ because at the end of the day you are either serving yourself or serving Jesus and the difference between the both are life, life to the fullest or death.

The only other thing I have to say is this:

If you continue running from what God wants in your life you’ll end up and old, poor, sick individual. To live without Christ isn’t life at all. Jesus said “I have come to bring you life, life to the fullest” and with that life comes hardship, growth, maturity, and a unquenchable thirst in your spirit that desires to see God and the way he works and acts. If God made the world and all the things in it and then made us and then sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for us, just so we can be in unity with God, then you know that you’re not worthless. If you’re worth dying for then you’re precious; precious enough to be called a child of God.

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