Kisumu and the Breaking…

We have been in Africa for about 1 month now and things are mzuri sana (very good)! We have had our bumps and bruises and rough days, but God has been faithful, the people are beautiful, and we have been learning together everyday.

We love Kisumu and the Ringroad Orphans Day School. They have been so hospitable and so much fun! This past week was so awesome and the most exhausting yet! We had VBS during the week followed by a day of teaching some church leaders from the area on Saturday. Lots of teaching, singing, playing, and laughing! Its a bummer because we have just started to really get down the kids names and feel close to them, and now we’re leaving! But we believe God will use our trip, the way it has been arranged, to teach us the things he wants. As much as we love Ringroad, there are so many other things we want to see and learn about Africa. Like in Nairobi, where we go next, when we will learn about ministry to street children and how the ministry deals with the difficulties of that work and what God has taught them about that area of need in E. Africa (www.made-in-the-streets.org).

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So I want to share some things God has been teaching us and some ways he has been breaking us:

The story starts just yesterday. I was feeling sick and decided to walk to the store to try and find some medicine for my stomach. On the way I was stopped by four young boys (8-11 yrs old) who asked me if I would buy them something to eat. If you’ve never been to a third world country before you might be surprised that I was reluctant to buy them food at first. For several reasons, one because kids and adults alike ask us for food, etc. everywhere we go because of our skin color and we simply cannot buy food for them all, and also because I hesitate to encourage a system in which the Mzungu (white person) is nothing but a source of money, food, etc. So I asked them about themselves and they told me they were orphans, homeless, and didn’t sniff glue. They seemed honest and sincere so I decided to feed them and brought them along to the store I was heading to. I asked them if they went to school and they said, “No.” They said they wanted to, but, like so many, they didn’t have the money to go.

One of the boys had gimpy legs; he could walk but with a harsh limp. While we were walking he grabbed my hand and held it. At first, and this is embarrassing to say, but I had the urge to let go; I didn’t want to hold his hand. I was thinking, “This boy is dirty and sticky… why is he holding my hand?… you just don’t grab strangers hands!” But then I remembered what I had just read in ‘Dissident Discipleship’ about imitating Jesus and how I felt a strong desire to – love as he loved, have compassion as he had compassion, touch as he touched – so I held his hand confidently for the rest of our time. I decided to get over myself and simply love this kid – to hold his hand like my own son.

It was a breakthrough moment, where the Holy Spirit took control and allowed Jesus to live now! I had a choice to hold on to my sanitation, my cultural norms, or allow Jesus to touch this child. And it was so refreshing to choose his way.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this lately – how we are being pushed so much; much like Jesus was. Everywhere we go people are asking us for help, people are touching us, people are needing from us, people are invading our space, and challenging our comfort zones and selfishness. We’ve been able to understand, in a small way, what Jesus went through; why he told people not to tell anyone he healed them, etc. – because he knew people from everywhere would come to him expecting something always. He would hardly be able to have conversations with people without them asking something of him, he wouldn’t be able to just have normal relationships, because there would always be this question, “are they coming with an agenda?” We understand because our skin color automatically makes people think we can fix their problems or give them something. That’s why we can’t go anywhere without having little kids come to us and say, “buy me a biscuit” or having church leaders ask us to sponsor them. It’s hard! And we understand why Jesus went away to the lonely places to pray so much – because it was so exhausting to maintain compassion and patience, and continue giving and giving and giving even so much that it eventually cost him his life!

In America we have so many boundaries that keep these “problems” at a safe distance. It is not socially acceptable to touch complete strangers or ask them for food; hosts don’t ask their guests for something as soon as they walk in; personal space codes are strictly respected; and you generally don’t bother complete strangers. With the exception of homeless people (but even the homeless in the US don’t come close to breaking these codes the way Africans do) who most of us successfully avoid or only rarely have to deal with. But here we are challenged daily with the choice to keep these boundaries and become offended or irritated or to imitate the way of Jesus who looked on the people and had compassion. He said they looked like sheep without a shepherd. And even though those same people broke personal space codes and followed him and his disciples out to a desert place when they were trying to get away by themselves, and even though they wanted nothing but food, Jesus still took what others doubted would be enough, and gave to them all (See the story in Mk 6:30-44, 53-56; Jn 6:1-15, 22-40). Afterward he retreated to the mountain to pray; probably because it was so taxing to be around such needy people; a people who wanted to take more than their share and make Jesus king by force. And even when they came to him the next day on the other side of the sea looking for more bread he continued to give to them – this time offering the greatest bread ever tasted – himself.

So many times we are tempted to be impatient with people. Everywhere we go people chant, “Mzungu, Mzungu, Mzungu” and I’ve started telling people, “Mimi si mzungu” (“I’m not a white person!”). I find myself wishing I wasn’t white, or at least that people didn’t look at me and see an ATM or a foodbank. But God is breaking us and teaching us to have compassion even with the most demanding people.

It is just hard to find a balance between compassionate giving and compassionate withholding. We could give more, but it seems that we will not have enough. And it seems if we gave to everyone as they had need we’d be broke in a day! But are we like the doubting disciples who see only five loaves and two fish? But the problems we face seem so much harder to handle than feeding people. And like Jesus even said, this bread will leave you hungry tomorrow! Even if we had all the money in the world it wouldn’t provide fathers and mothers for the uncountable number of orphans left alone on the streets! How can Jesus multiply what little we have and what little we are?

I don’t have the answers. But we are on the journey. And we rest in our belief that these are the questions Jesus wants us to ask, and perhaps this is the journey of the disciple – to struggle with the way things appear to be, the way things can be, and the way we can position ourselves to live and to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus gives so much, he bears with people like no one I’ve ever seen! He touches even the most dirty and most undeserving people! Somehow I think we have a flannel-graph idea of leprosy or the massive crowds that came to him! Are you kidding me? Following Jesus, imitating Jesus, living “just as” Jesus lived is so hard! Only by the power and guidance of his Spirit will we be able to do anything!

Pray for us, as we also pray for you.