Praying at the Bases

I've been slacking on my blogging, so I thought I'd do a bit of catching up. But it's really late right now, so it'll probably be short..

Today we visited Eastleigh and the Made in the Streets Community Center. Eastleigh is always weird for me because it's filled with mixed feelings (sound familiar?)... sadness, darkness and some hopelessness because Eastleigh is among the worst areas.. filled with young people on the streets addicted to getting high off of glue to distract from their hunger. But also, so much hope because Made in the Streets is a ministry doing so much good through their commitment to investing in the Eastleigh community. A light in a dark place, if you will..

I was encouraged to see all of the street kids who came out to worship and play games with us in the morning. They were able to escape the difficulty of life on the streets for a few hours and just be goofy kids, playing Ultimate Ninja with the mzungus. And we were blessed by the time we spent with them.

I also loved getting the chance to hold a couple of the babies who are staying at Made in the Streets with their young mothers, who hold internship-like-positions. The babies names were James and Steven. They were both very sweet and content :)

As encouraging as much of the day was, it was also paired with a harsh reality of just how dark life on the streets can be for these kids. One teenage boy sat on a bench at MITS with an open wound on his knee, clearly high off of glue or drugs. Flies landed on the open gash and a friend of the boy's tried to help him keep it clean, but the boy himself was completely out of it. He just stared off into space and seemed completely unaware of what was going on around him. That was really difficult to see. Larry Conway told us that this boy was almost dead a week ago and that they have reached out to him several times, but he won't live for very much longer. That was pretty tough to accept as true. How could there be no hope left for this boy? The last thing I did before exiting MITS to get back on the bus was to take one last look at him, wondering how much longer he would be alive. This is tough to think about.

A ministry like MITS can do so much good in a community like Eastleigh... but the kids still have to WANT the change for themselves and have enough motivation to do their part. It's devastating to see the results for those who don't choose this type of life change.

It was quite an experience being out at the bases today--which I didn't get to visit last year. I feel like we saw some of the tamer areas, in better conditions than those where people sleep on piles of garbage. But still, it was an uneasy hour or so as we visited two different bases. I just felt a lot more exposed walking down the streets, which are much more open areas than the walkways in the slums. There were no scary incidents, but I felt pretty on-edge, especially as we witnessed people with glue bottles up to their mouths. The people at both bases we visited were friendly and welcoming to us. At the first base (called Jamaica), I made friends with a little toddler-aged girl who held my hand and was ready to leave with us. I would try to wave goodbye and she would wave back but then just grab my hand again, like "alright, let's go now!" I would've liked to take her home with me :) At the second base we visited, I got called out.. ha. We were going to close in prayer and the people living at the base pointed at me. One of our translators told me they wanted me to pray. So... I did. It was a short, un-eloquent, not profound, prayer. But I guess that's okay. I think a few years ago I probably would've refused to pray altogether :P So I suppose that's progress... Ha. But I think part of my difficulty today was... I didn't know WHAT to pray for these people. It seems like such an overwhelming (there's that word again..) situation and they live such a ridiculously difficult lifestyle--how could I possibly relate to them? What could I pray that would help? But, once again, I know that the point isn't for ME to have the answers to their problems. I need to look to God. So I just thanked God for bringing us together today and prayed that he would bless these people. That's all I could really come up with.. and maybe that's okay.

I pray that our ministry today at MITS and out at the bases somehow made a difference to some of the Eastleigh people. I pray that they would turn to God as their hope in what seems to be a pretty despair-filled life.

(i guess this post turned out to be... not very short :P)

thanks for reading; thanks for praying :)

love, bekah

Oh, also. Just wanted to mention that I lost 2000 shillings last night.. it fell out of my pocket. But before I even realized it was gone, this morning one of the staff of our guesthouse announced that a guard had found money on the ground early this morning and had turned it in. She said if it was ours, we could come claim it if we could just tell them how much it was that we had lost. The woman talked about how proud of her staff she was for turning in the money in the first place. And I thought that was pretty remarkable too, considering that the Hyodos had told us at the beginning of our trip to be careful about leaving valuables out in the open in our room... because even though all the staff seemed very nice, some could be in desperate circumstances... and I know that 2000 shillings is a lot of money to pass up, in a situation like that guard was in. So I feel pretty blessed to have gotten this money back. I'm also impressed with the staff here, and feel blessed to be staying here. Anyway, thanks God! :) And Mom and Dad: I'll try to be more careful with your money from here on out ;)