Joyce, a little girl I met last time whose beautiful smile is unforgettable.

Strolling through the gate camera in hand, I was delighted to finally be back at the orphanage I have long hoped to revisit. Pausing for a moment to take a picture in the middle of the courtyard, a little boy suddenly came running with arms outstretched and wrapped himself around my legs. Reaching down I picked him up and took him into my arms. Here a little boy who has no idea who I am yet feels the confidence that if I am there, allowed into his space, I must be safe and welcome. This is what happens when children who have lost everything are welcomed into a community of hope.

El-Shaddai Hope Center for Orphans is all of these things. It is a place of refuge, as indicated by the Hebrew name for God that is used “El Shaddai”. It is a place where hope is built in children who without this home come from hopeless situations. It is a center dedicated to orphans. The place is all about them and Stephen and Beatrice Njau, along with their children and a few staff members, are giving their lives for these children.

One of the little ones leaning against her crib at the El-Shaddai Hope Centre for Orphans.

The home has grown considerably since my last visit. What was once their one facility is now a boys dormitory and they have two others, one for girls and another for infants. The three homes are all within walking distance and the children usually come together in the evenings at the main center that also serves as the girls’ dormitory. Visiting each one of these, I had the opportunity to see 1st graders and the “nursery school” children in class. They sang beautifully, complete with hand motions and even some English songs. Some of the children in the nursery school class requested to touch my hair so I knelt down in the middle of the room and got mobbed by outstretched hands reaching for my soft muzungu hair.

Stopping next at the home for babies, we saw some standing in their cribs and others sitting quietly and staring at their new visitors. One seemed frightened while others were eager to interact. When one of the caretakers lifted little John out of his crib and he began to walk toward me, my heart melted. I wrote more about John and his story in a previous post. He is HIV positive, has lost both his parents. Since coming to the home, his health has stabilized and his tiny body has begun to grow. John is a walking picture of how badly orphaned children need loving care.

The little ones being washed up

When the children had finished school, they gathered at the main home. Some engaged in their evening chores, others sat in line waiting to be washed, and many swarmed around the camera to see their pictures. I enjoyed spotting the familiar faces from my visit several years ago. Gathering the children into a large room, I set up my laptop and showed them a slideshow of pictures that I captured last time I was with them. They shouted with joy at each new picture and called out the names of the familiar faces of their friends.

A moment I will never forget came when I showed them a picture of Stephen, the man who started the orphanage and who the children affectionately know as “Baba”. They screamed with delight, calling out his name, and asking him to come from the trip that he had recently taken and not yet returned. It moved me to see how much he and his wife meant to these children as they saw the pictures and expressed their appreciation with loud cheers. Imagine what it must be like to be loved and relied upon by 160 children! I have so much respect for Stephen and Beatrice for what they do out love for these children.

The children shout for joy as they see pictures of each other but especially when they see "Baba" and "Mama."

As we were walking away I commented about how much the children seemed to enjoy seeing the pictures from my last visit. David, my host, responded that showing them pictures was the best thing I had done because although the children did not know me, once they saw the picures, they realized that I had remembered them and come back. “By doing this you have become an uncle to them,” he explained. What a wonderful thought. An uncle to so many beautiful children. May the Lord give grace to handle this position with care.

John, a little boy who I met at the El-Shaddai Hope Centre for Orphans in Kenya.

Meet little John. He is two years old but when you first look at his tiny little body you would think him younger than a year. Yet when he stands on his own power and wobbles toward you, your heart melts and you realize that he is older than he looks. There is a reason why John is so little. When his parents died of AIDS leaving their HIV positive baby behind, the rest of John’s family rejected him. Not knowing what else to do, his grandfather brought him to El-Shaddai Hope Center for Orphans. Although John’s medical record is quite important, the family has not provided the promised information. Though malnourished and tiny, the orphanage took him in and through loving care has nursed him back to health.

When I walked into the room for babies, several of them were standing up in their shared cribs. One cried with fear, others smiled, but when one of the caretakers took John out of his crib and set him down he grinned shyly at me. Taking him into my arms, I shared a few precious moments with him. John is quite personable and certainly very lovable. As I prayed for this little child and his young life, I couldn’t help but appreciate the dedication that Stephen and Beatrice Njau, along with their family, have to these children. I will be writing more about them soon but for now it only takes reflecting on little John’s story to appreciate just how vital loving orphanages are in Africa.

John is a personable little guy.

A survivor of the Rwandan genocide singing his story of survival and healing.

Can you imagine losing every member of your extended family in a matter of weeks? To be the only survivor among the people you loved the most? This is exactly what the young man in this picture experienced and I sat there listening to him sing about it. Through the help of a translator I learned that the lyrics went something like this;

When I remember my past
My heart is filled with praise
Because God did the impossible for me
I remember the people who died all around me
But after they tried to kill me several times I survived
And that is impossible

This young man was only 4 years old during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The scars remain on his neck and shoulders, reminders of the way that the perpetrators mutilated their victims gradually before killing them. Somehow he survived this brutality and through the comfort that he has found through Solace Ministries in Kigali, Rwanda, he has forgiven his offenders and is finding healing. Can you imagine surviving such tragedy physically, much less mentally and emotionally? How would you go on in the face of such total loss? The people of Rwanda are showing us the way.

The perpetrators of the genocide cut this young lady's arm off but she managed to survive along with her brother who lost his legs.

A widow explained how for many years she felt a “sickness” in her heart that could not be healed. She was losing flexibility in her body and the medication that she had tried was not helping. When she was encouraged to thank God for what he had done she couldn’t think of anything for which to be grateful. During the genocide her neighbor killed her babies and this was the reason for her grief. Yet gradually through the counseling and support of Solace, she has found healing for her heart and body.

One widow, also the lone surviving member of her extended family, explained that when people first come to Solace Ministries it is to cry for their lost families together. Through mourning together, they begin to feel like family because they share the same problem and can pray together and comfort each other. Slowly live moves on and they gain hope from God and start to believe that they have a future. Many of them used to pray that God would kill them but through hearing each others’ stories, they began to build hope again. Their lives are changing and when you meet many of them, you would never know that they are widowed and orphaned, the survivors of such tremendous grief.

People come to Solace Ministries to find family again. After the meeting where I heard these stories, three widows came up to greet me. They shared how grateful they were that I had come because since they do not have family, the visitors that come to see them become like their family. It is hard for me to imagine the pain that they have experienced but even harder to fathom how they found such healing. The work of Solace Ministries is truly extraordinary and deserving of our support. I would encourage everyone to look into what they do and to consider how you might assist their worthy cause. These survivors have life changing stories that we need to hear and needs that we share.

Click here to visit the Solace Ministries website.

The people that came to Solace understandably did so in the midst of great pain. They discovered that gathering together those who were hurting enabled them to share their stories with each other and to find comfort in this new community. As survivors wept with each other they found that they were not alone. This prompted Solace to form local communities across Rwanda to serve as family for those who had lost their loved ones. These communities care for one another, help to raise the orphaned children, and make sure that each member has enough food and means. Led by women widowed during the genocide who have found inner healing, the communities truly become a source of comfort and healing.

My room at the Solace Ministries Guesthouse was quite comfortable and had a wonderful view.

In addition to forming these communities, Solace also provides counseling and trauma healing, helps to educate orphans either through sponsorship or educational programs at their base in Kigali, encourages forgiveness through Jesus Christ, teaches vocational skills to help survivors make progress, and provides anti-retroviral medication and community home-based care for the many women who contracted AIDS while being raped during the genocide. According to information at the Kigali Memorial Center, more than 500,000 women were raped during the genocide or in the refugee camps that followed, and often times it was by men who were known to be HIV positive. Solace is providing a vital service to these women in a part of the world where proper medication and health care has been sparse. One of the ways they fund this project is by running a guesthouse at their center in Kigali. I was grateful for a chance to spend the night there knowing that the money went toward such an important cause.

I could go on and on about all the Solace Ministries does, but like John told me, the real story is what is happening in peoples’ lives. I will focus on several of the stories that I encountered in my next post. It is inspiring to see how this organization has provided solace for so many hurting survivors. Click here to read more about Solace Ministries.

Denise manages the Solace Ministries Guesthouse, raising funds for this vital organization.

My primary role throughout the conference was to help lead “breakout” sessions. Several of my professors led the main sessions on topics like leadership, interpreting the Bible, and teaching and then I led a group of twenty-seven people in hour-long sessions to clarify and practice what they had learned. The people we worked with welcomed us warmly and received the training with much appreciation. Many commented on their conference surveys that the breakout sessions were one of the most helpful parts of the conference for them. Some of the feedback I received included “…we will never be the same” and “…thank you for sharing this training with us, it will bear fruit many times over.” I trust that this will be true and look forward to our next conference that is set to begin here in Kampala tomorrow morning. It is wonderful to be here living out a dream, nearly a decade later!

The trip seemed to be designed for me because it combines so many of the things that I most highly value. I went to seminary in the first place, largely because I wanted to be prepared to help train Christian leaders. I have long been interested in helping Africa but many Africans have told me that what they need most is training for their Christian leaders. The church in Uganda and most of Sub-Saharan Africa is growing quite rapidly but the the support and training needed to equip pastors to lead churches is often lacking or unavailable.

The great need of our missions in our time is to empower nationals to do the work that they are already doing in their own country. This is a cause that has inspired me for eight years now and one to which I hope to devote my life. Bethel’s choice to go not only for a one time trip but to establish an ongoing relationship with those who are training pastors in Uganda, presents an opportunity to envision strategic cooperation towards this common cause.

To Revisit Organizations Dedicated to Preserving Life
Another reason why this trip was so perfect for me is because I love East Africa. I spent five weeks in East Africa in the Spring of 2007 and felt very much at home there. I was working with Mission Focus at the time, a non-profit that utilizes multimedia, and filmmaking in particular to tell the stories of causes around the world. We entitled our East Africa project, Yadumu, which is the Swahili word for long life. We set out to find the people and oranizations in East Africa who creatively worked to address the AIDS crisis in their region.

This project involved meeting many people and encountering various causes and approaches in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Tanzania. Every place that I went I felt most welcomed. I will never forget the needs that I saw there. Ever since leaving East Africa I have wondered how to even begin to help the causes that I encountered in East Africa. This trip is affording me the opportunity to return and visit several of these causes after the pastor’s conferences over. My goal is to meet with some of the same organizations that I worked with before and to discover ways to move forward with projects that might bring assistance to their vital causes. These are to the two reasons that I am going back to East Africa.

“For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.” (Romans 15:26)

The regions of Macedonia and Achaia, or modern-day Greece, were some of the most wealthy areas of the New Testament world. It is likely that many of the Gentile converts in these regions, as well as the Jews living there, were quite successful in the world of trade and business. The Christians in Israel, however, suffered under intense persecution. They lived in a society where leaving strict Judaism to convert to Christianity meant giving up your place as a citizen of society in good standing. The Christians in Jerusalem, in particular, suffered greatly at this time.

Learning of their Jewish brother’s sufferings, the believers in Greece decided to make a generous contribution to the church at Jerusalem. When the apostles and other traveling ministers brought news to them of Christians’ needs abroad, they opened their hearts and gave.

We have a similar situation today for in America we have more wealth than anywhere else in the world. Our Christian brothers and sisters abroad, however, suffer lack in many parts of the world. Somebody needs to travel like Paul did, seeing each situation first-hand and carrying word of the needs to the rest of the Church. Somebody also needs to be willing to give to the needs of those who are part of our own body, shared with Christ as the Head. Just like we would not ignore the needs of our own family, we must not turn away from the needs of our family in the Lord. At Mission Focus our desire is to bring not only the testimonies of the Church abroad, back to the West, but also the needs. We pray that God will open our own hearts and many others, to provide for His people.

Alighting in Githange, we grabbed a soda and then set off in the direction that the locals pointed us. Children’s clothing lined the fences and the sound of children playing gave the spot away. We were immediately surrounded by curious and excited little ones, all eager to get close and shake our hands. I was immediately struck by the beauty and joy of these wonderful little children. Stephen welcomed us warmly, leading us into a small room that served as a reception area. Over a cup of tea, he described to us how El Shaddai got started.

Back in 1998, Stephen and his wife, Beatrice, sensed a call from God to start a home for orphaned children. Being committed Christians, they both left their jobs and launched into full time ministry. Stephen served as a pastor for several years but the call to care for orphans remained on their hearts. In 2002, they finally left pastoral work and brought the first eleven children into their home in order to care for them. They have since moved into a larger facility that they rent to accommodate the 70 children under their care. With many more children in need of help, they hope to acquire land and build their own place to respond to the need.

As we talked, the three youngest children were brought in to see us. Mercy and Milcah were two adorable one year-old girls. Their little boy, Gibson, was only 11 months old and the youngest child at El Shaddai. The three of them adored Stephen and his wife, laughing at their games and soaking in the attention when they could sit on their laps.

Mercy’s father died of AIDS and while her mother was dying, she managed to arrange for her to go the Children’s Home. She died one month later, leaving precious little Mercy an orphan. Milcah was abandoned as a newborn and left outside overnight. She was nearly dead when she was discovered the following morning and taken to El Shaddai. Gibson’s parents have also died. All three of these precious children are infected with HIV and without the loving care that they receive from Stephen and Beatrice, they would likely be dead.

It was beautiful to see how this couple treated these three little ones like their own children. Stephen showed me how they fit each of the three babies into their bed with them so that they don’t wake the orphanage’s workers in the night. Their love for these children is apparent.

As I stepped outside with the camera, a crowd of children gathered around and began to sing songs for me. Beautiful songs of worship poured from their little hearts to the Lord. Others laughed and played with Ben by the playground. Older ones held the babies, caring for them like younger siblings. Others helped the workers to prepare food in the kitchen, stoking the wood fire under the stove. Grabbing their drums, several boys played for us while others giggled and danced for the cameras. Looking back over my shoulder, I spotted Stephen standing in a doorway, holding baby Gibson in his arms. He tickled him, playing baby games with little “Gibo” as they laughed together.

Leading me around their compound, Stephen showed me the kitchen, the well and the cow that had been donated to provide milk for the children. We could barely walk into he and his wife’s small bedroom because it was lined with children’s clothing that they had nowhere else to store. All of the seventy children stayed in a combined total of about five rooms. Although it is cramped, they do their best with the space that they have.

While many of the children lost their parents as a result of AIDS and suffer from the virus themselves, there was one whose story was particularly compelling. Faith is an adorable 5 year-old girl with a beautiful smile. As you take a closer look you begin to see unmistakable signs of physical abuse. Two of her front teeth have been ripped out, a small part of her ear is lopped off, and there are scars on her forehead and cheeks. Stephen told me that after her parents died, Faith’s relatives did not want to care for her. They wanted her to die as well so they abused and injured this precious little girl.

Faith came to El-Shaddai in desperate condition. She was not only HIV positive but also very sickly. With loving care and personal attention, her health began to improve. A year later, she was tested again for HIV and found negative. Now at age 5 she has again tested negative. There is no medical explanation for this change. God is doing more than one miracle in this little girl’s life.

As I took pictures of Faith and then held her in my arms for a few moments, I realized that Stephen and Beatrice have figured out what life is all about. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a little child. He enjoined us to bring children unto Him and declares a special reward for those who would do so little as to provide a drink of water for a child. Caring for orphans, He declares to be at the core of true religion. May we as a Church take special care not only to help children in need but also to assist those who are engaged in this vital work all around the world.