Lost Sheep

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to the disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Matthew 9:36-37

Shortly after I returned to Uganda, Ruth, one of my dearest widow friends came to me with an urgent request. Her eyes were blazing with concern and fierce determination as she grabbed my hands and sat me down next to her. “I am a mother,” she began, “and when mothers see children suffering they have to act.” I looked intently back at her and asked, “What happened Ruth?” She explained that she had been taking food to Jane some months ago when Jane was terribly sick. One day as she was bringing the food to Jane, a teenage boy followed her. When she left Jane’s place, she noticed the boy following her again. As she reached home, Ruth turned and asked the boy why he was following her. The boy was weak, thin and looked terribly sick. He fell to his knees and told Ruth that he was hungry. She asked him why he hadn’t eaten and where his parents were. He told her that his parents were dead and that he and his 3 other siblings were living alone.

At that point Ruth took him into her home and began cooking for him. She fed him and sent him home with food for his siblings. He thanked her and then slowly made his way back to the room he was living in. The house they were living in had been sold when their father died and then rented out to different men. The current man living there allowed them to stay in one room of the house.

Since that day, Ruth had been feeding these children and checking on them when she could. “We need to help them, Kari. They have no one and they are badly off.” Immediately, the medic and I left to see the children. The medic found the oldest teenage boy, Ben, in bed unable to move. He had diabetes and had been milking the same bottle of insulin for months with the same dull dirty needle. Giving himself the wrong dose of insulin could have killed him, yet he was still breathing. Ben also wondered if he was HIV positive, but had not yet been tested. Brenda, his 16 year old sister, was doing her best to care for him, but with nothing to eat in the house but the handouts they were receiving from Ruth; his diet was impossible to control. She also had to go out and look for food for her two younger brothers, Immanuel, 14, and Godfrey, 12.

The medic gave Ben the correct insulin dosage, a clean syringe and information about the right foods to eat to control his diabetes. I was just overwhelmed. Ben looked like he could die taking his next breath and the other children looked scared and hopeless. I thought of the verse in Matthew where Jesus looks on the crowd and describes them as looking harassed and helpless. These children were lost…completely lost…invisible to everyone but Ruth the widow.

The next day, I brought Annet, the Dorcas Widows Fund Sponsorship Coordinator, with me to talk to them in their own language. I wanted to know how they ended up so alone and so vulnerable. Annet has a kind and gentle spirit and she started talking to them slowly and with great compassion. The children warmed up to her and began to tell her their painful story. Both of their parents had contracted HIV. Their mother died first when Brenda was 5 and Godfrey was an infant. After their mother’s death, their father remarried a younger woman. Things were okay for a while, until their father’s new wife found out that he had given her HIV. Their father was already showing signs of the disease…becoming thin, weak and sickly. The new wife was furious and plotted revenge on her new husband. She decided to infect his oldest son, so she began to repeatedly rape Ben when the father was not around. It was a living nightmare. After a year or so, she also became too sick and left the father.

At 8 years old Brenda nursed her father and did all the cooking, even taking care of her two younger brothers. Their father died a slow painful death. For the next 5 years, he would yo-yo between better and worse until one day he went to sleep and never woke up. Their uncle had been supporting them while their father was alive, but now that he was dead the uncle sold their home to pay himself back for all the money he had spent caring for them. Ben was now the heir to his father’s land in the village, a very fertile land, one coveted by his relatives. The uncles then plotted to get the land, so they threatened to curse them if Ben or any of his siblings ever came back to the village. So, 3 years ago, these 4 children were left homeless, penniless and completely alone.

They began to beg the neighbors for food and that worked for a while, but after several months the neighbors grew tired of helping them. So, with no other option, Brenda began sleeping with men for food or some small money. Now for two years, selling her young body has kept them alive. Brenda stared at her hands looking hopeless and the room suddenly became very quiet. I fought back tears. I was both heart broken and furious that this was their reality. Annet spoke first, very softly. She too was overwhelmed with emotion. We both hugged Brenda and told her that God had heard her cries and had sent us to help them. I looked at all of them and said, “We will love you and take care of you. We see you and hear all you have passed through. This should never have happened to you, but God will redeem even this. Just wait and see.”

First things first, Annet took the children to be tested for HIV. We all feared the worst especially for Ben and Brenda, but much to our delight all the children tested negative. The next day Annet and Ruth took the children to the market and bought enough food for two months including pots, pans, plates, charcoal…everything they needed to be healthy and to cook for themselves. Annet called me later and told me that the children were running around the yard singing, dancing, laughing and jumping. This was the first time in years that someone had given them something more than one meal. They were overjoyed.

I wanted more than that for them. I wanted to give them a hope and a future…isn’t that what Jesus would give them? I was at Cornerstone that day to meet with Dennis and Kristin about the possibility of getting the boys into their homes for street children. After some discussion, I found that there were two openings in the same home for the youngest boys. In this home, they would live with mentors who will love them, guide them and teach them to be men of God. Eventually, they will be able to go back to school. I was also able to get Brenda in their home for former prostitutes. There she will receive the counseling she so desperately needs and a chance to return to school.

The following day, Annet told the Brenda, Immanuel and Godfrey the good news. They fell to the ground and began to cry. They just shook their head in disbelief. Brenda looked at Annet and said, “I never knew God would send me a white mother.” Annet held them and they all began to laugh and shout for joy. Before the boys could go to the home, we needed to purchase a mattress, bedding and a mosquito net for each of them to sleep on. Annet took the boys to the market to pick out their very first bed. Immanuel looked at Annet and said, “I never thought we would be rich. Only rich people sleep in beds.” Annet just laughed and hugged them. Brenda was also overjoyed to be given a new life…one where she doesn’t have to sell herself in order to survive. Because Ben is now 20, he is too old for these programs, but we are trying to help him look at some vocational programs where he could learn a trade and begin to work. In just a couple weeks God had given each of these children a new life…a new beginning…a future.

These children were indeed helpless and harassed with no one to defend them. Until one poor widow saw them and gave of what she had to help them. She fed them until I came back. Ruth knows my heart is close to widows and orphans. Immediately we intervened…we had compassion on them not just in words or prayers, but in action. The workers of Christ’s Kingdom are few…too few for the pain in this world, but the harvest is also more plentiful than we can imagine. I am confident that God will carry those children onto health, hope and great things. Is there anything better than to harvest the souls and potential of people? Jesus is calling all who follow in his ways…all who claim to know him and want to serve him to go out into the fields of harassed and helpless people and do something to help them grow and become; so we can harvest the potential of each of God’s beautiful creations.

Here is the letter I just received from Brenda:

Dear mum Kari,

I kindly greet you in the name of one and only Jesus Christ. And I would like you to know that you are really a gift sent to us from heaven. You really brought back hope and happiness to our family because when we became orphans we thought that everything had come to an end but in you we’ve restored love, joy and happiness and also got someone we can call mama and loves us very much.

We really thank you for the food and things you are sending and buying for us because before you helped us we sometimes used to sleep hungry because we had no money. But you’ve got to know that we love you so much but we can’t express but just to God that he may pay back whatever you are planting in us.

I won’t disappoint you. May the good Lord Bless you!!
From daughter Brenda