Riches

(So I'm home. I've actually been home for over a day now, but jet lag and concentration don't exactly get along, and I just haven't been able to submit a new post. You may have figured out that my posts have all been a few days late. This is due to the infrequency and difficulty of internet access in Africa. My method has been to write ahead of time, and then post two or three entries at a time whenever there was opportunity. Hence, I have written a handful of entries from my last several days in Africa, and until now, haven't been able to post them. I'll spread them out over a couple of days so I'm not flooding the blog with a book's worth of posts all at once.)

Today, we visited Stephen and Rosemary Mbogo. They came to pick us up from our hotel early in the morning to drive us around to their various ministries. They are both Kenyan, and well educated in the US. Rosemary is currently working on her PhD (at Biola, I believe), and Stephen also has an advanced degree. They met very serendipitously. Over the course of about 2 months, they were both asked to speak at three separate conferences, independent of each other. After they kept running into each other, each seeing how the other had a great love for Christ, Stephen decided to pop the question. In Kenyan culture, dating is essentially courtship, and a man does not ask a woman to date unless he intends to marry her. They entered into an engagement, and the rest is history.

Our first stop was their foster home, Bygrace Academy. Several years ago, they entered into agreement with some other investors to buy up some property in Ngong, a wealthy suburb of Nairobi. For various reasons, the other parties were forced to back out, leaving Stephen and Rosemary with the property. They felt that having such a nice property all to themselves would be poor stewardship, so they began to take in orphaned children. Now they have 13 kids who refer to Stephen fondly as "Dad" and to Rosemary with exuberance as "Mum". They are all orphaned for AIDS-related reasons, and four of them have AIDS themselves. Recently, they had a brother who died of AIDS. On their mantle, there is a picture of Henry, lovingly decorated by his brothers and sisters. Henry was the youngest. He was only 7. Stephen said that it was very hard on the other kids. They all went around and introduced themselves to Ed and I, and then sang a few songs for us. While we visited, it was truly a privilege to be a part of a tandem birthday celebration. Peter was turning 15, and Doreen was turning 13. They had cake. Though wealthy among them, I felt very much like a pauper who has been invited to dine in the royal court. They are rich with love for Jesus. Stephen gave us a tour of the property. They are building a schoolhouse for the kids, and there is significant construction on the upper level while several of the downstairs rooms are already in use. Two workers toiled upstairs as we walked around the facility. Here, we also met Gad and his young son. Gad oversees the property and helps to take care of the kids when Stephen and Rosemary are in the US, although the children are on their own a lot when their Dad and Mum are gone, and several of them have to walk quite a ways to catch a bus to the hospital to pick up AIDS medication on a weekly basis. Their bedrooms are crowded, but nicely maintained, and their living room is comfortable. They have an outdoor cooking area where most of the food is cooked, and then brought into the kitchen for final preparations. Two women were preparing food. For water, they have to walk out to a large tank by the side of the road where people line up with 5 gallon jugs to purchase water. It's painstaking and expensive. Stephen and Rosemary have plans to have their own well made, from which they could draw water for themselves and for sale, helping to support the kids and maintain the property. This would be a very expensive proposition, but it would be a blessing that no expenses could account for. To visit these kids is to be overwhelmed with compassion. I wanted to help, but though I am rich by their standards, I am not. I think they are wealthier than I. Rarely have I had such a visceral understanding of the difference between riches earthly and heavenly.

After we had visited the kids, Stephen and Rosemary took us to see their home church. The Living Word Church is in the slums of Nairobi, from where most of the foster children have been rescued. The church is a tin box with a dirt floor. They have school during the weekdays and church on Sunday. A couple of women run a small business selling hand-made necklaces, earrings, and assorted accessories. There we met pastors Oliver, Richard and Shem. After visiting for a while, and greeting some of the children, Richard and Oliver got in the van with us and we continued on to see more of the area. Stephen and Rosemary direct another school of 140 kids, about a mile from the church. They also support a small tailoring shop in the slum, run by a few women making various garments to support themselves and the church. Even traveling between locations in a van, I was overwhelmed by the despondency. The utter destitution. If you haven't left the continent, you haven't seen a ghetto like this. At least 600,000 people - and possibly as many as 800,000 - pack themselves in like sardines near the filthy Nairobi river. They live in piles of trash and bathe in sewage-water. And they have AIDS. Of course not all of them are infected, but there are so many people, that to even know the exact population is impossible, so to discern what percentage has AIDS is just out of the question. But the percentage is not the point. The point is, that in the slums of Nairobi, whether you are infected or not, you have AIDS. Though not all are infected, all are affected. Stephen and Rosemary are affected. Richard and Oliver are affected. I am now affected. Sixty percent of hospital cases in and around the slums are AIDS related. I was there for only a few hours, and I simply cannot imagine what it means to be there for one's entire life. Yet, as it was in the foster home, there is a richness buried under all of the filth. Those kids have true exuberance. The smiles I saw on the faces of those we met were genuine smiles. I can see the blessedness of a life that has nothing but Jesus. Of course they are on fire for him. They have nothing else. And we sit at our computers sipping our cafe lattes worried about how we'll be able to afford to upgrade our iPhones not realizing that there are real millionaires on the other side of the world who think that fun means rolling a metal hoop by pushing it with a stick. We are the rich young ruler.