Heartbreak and Hope (Mathare, continued)

I feel like our days in the slums are roller coaster rides of “up and down” emotions. I can be so devastated at the living conditions and apparent hopelessness of the people in Mathare, but then so quickly be so joyful worshipping with the children there. It’s a confusing experience… :P Today I found it difficult to return to Mathare. We returned to finish our painting project of a few classrooms and to organize the school library (to which Lighthouse donated many books!) I was part of the library team, and we sorted through shelves and shelves of books to separate based on the age groups and subjects. It was kind of cool to be part of that project, because I kind of felt like we'd seen it come full circle (from being involved in the collecting of books at Lighthouse to organizing those same books on Mcedo's shelves) as such a cool example of the partnership between Lighthouse and Kenyan schools like Comido and Mcedo. (I even found a Berenstain Bears book that had belonged to my sister and me :) I am just reminded of how big our God is that he could bring his children on opposite sides of the world together through anything, even childrens books! :)

We never returned to any slum for a second day last year, and there was something about recognizing the same kids from the day before that was difficult for me. I think some part of me was somehow saddened by the thought, “oh, you’re still here.” Like it truly was sinking in that this really was these kids’ lives… they spent the night in this slum while I spent the night at my guesthouse. And they woke up in this slum just like they do every morning… It just seemed more… hopeless, I guess. As soon as we got out of the bus, I saw Michelle and rushed over to her. She smiled as I came up and I hoped that she remembered me. We didn’t have much of a conversation. The only words I ever heard and understood from her were a shy, sweet “I’m fine, thank you” when I would ask “how are you?” But I just felt such a pull towards her… like I wanted to stay there, kneeling next to her, even if we had no words to exchange. She was wearing the same dirty purple jumper-type-outfit as the day before, and the zipper was broken. I watched as she carefully zipped and unzipped the zipper over and over, only for it to split apart as soon as she would try to zip it up. For some reason, this sight just made me so sad, which sounds kind of strange, even to me… I started crying just kneeling there beside her, and she just sort of looked at me curiously, as the tears rolled down my face.. There was just something so heartbreaking about seeing this innocent, little girl with her broken purple jumper standing in such a tragic setting. Sigh. Something that was encouraging to see, though, was how much she opened up to us over the short time we were there. She went from the girl crying on the outskirts to the girl shyly peering into the church during our concert to the girl grinning and sticking out her tongue for my camera :) By the end, her personality was shining through...

Last night during our team debriefing, I sort of had a breakdown about the more heartbreaking aspects of our days in the slums. While everyone was sharing their experiences from the day, I just started getting really… upset and sad and disgusted and discouraged and overwhelmed and angry at …what we had seen. I just sat there crying, even after the meeting was over. The thought that kept running through my head throughout our time in Mathare was “This is not okay. This is not okay. This is not okay.” It’s just… unfathomable that so much of the world lives this way and that so much of the world’s wealth and resources aren’t being used to fix it. I know that that’s a bit of a… huge, sweeping statement… but I guess I just got pretty angry thinking about going back home to a lifestyle that includes thinking nothing of blowing $25 on dinner and a movie that could be feeding 300+ kids their only meal of the day. The injustice of it all is pretty sickening. I know this is not how God intends for the world to be.

It’s easy for me to get overwhelmed by the hugeness of the problem of poverty and to get buried beneath the thought that nothing I could do could ever be “enough.” I think that God wants us to be deeply affected by poverty and injustice… because fighting against these things is on his heart and he calls for them to be on ours as well… However, I don’t think that what God wants is for me to be so discouraged by the expanse of the problems that I fall into helplessness and hopelessness. My hope and strength are in Christ, and He is who I need to be relying and calling upon when I don’t know what to do with what I’m feeling or seeing. I’ve been thinking about the fact that I already saw all of these slums last year and I feel so guilty that my life has not reflected more change in the past year. So I guess the challenge is figuring out HOW God is calling me to respond to the things I’m seeing. I don’t want to contribute to the problems by sitting around in ignorance, laziness, or apathy. I want to be part of the solution. If I stay overwhelmed by the vastness of the problem, I could miss the chance to just spend time with someone like Michelle.. and as small as it may seem, maybe that’s exactly what God was calling me to do today.