The rest of the conference went really well and we left there with many smiles on our faces the pastors kept asking again and again if we were coming back. We traveled back to Pastor Macho’s house for the last few days of our stay in Uganda.
Truly it is Africans who will change Africa.We finished our time in Uganda more determined to stand with all of the friends we had made and struggle with them in all that they were facing. The drive back to Kitale was uneventful but it felt odd in a way because we were a few men down as we had parted with Josh, Andy and Josh Langlois who were traveling on to the DRC.Kitale is a beautiful place and the whole team was really happy to be back at our base. We were coming to the end of our time in Kitale but we had one final place where we wanted to take ground for the Kingdom.
Kepsongui slum. We spent an evening in prayer seeking the Lord in what he wanted to do. It seemed very overwhelming but we felt we really needed to go. As far as we knew there was very few people doing anything about the situation in the slum. It was a place that was being avoided; even by the Christians. In prayer I got the i felt the Holy Spirit tell me to look at Nehemiah 2. The bit of scripture that he pointed out to me was the portion that talks about Nehemiah going out and inspecting the walls. So what I felt the Lord was saying through this was that the first step was to go and inspect slum. So we did. We had no idea what the Lord has in-store for us the next day.The next day we arrived at the slum after and hr walk. The slum is located on the old dump of Kitale. Typical of a lot of slums it was built on garbage with garbage. As we approached the slum we saw a group of kids playing in a field they all started shouting at us in unison “how are you! how are you! how are you!” That is how they always greeted us. Because we didn’t have any other plan we went down onto the field to play football with the kids. We had brought some small footballs with us so we brought them out and started to play with the kids. They couldn’t get enough of us and wanted to hold a hand on anything that we were waring. As we were there a man came out and started to talk with Adam. Adam called me over to talk to him. I had no idea how big the implications of what would take place over the next few hrs would be for me and for others.Sam was a teacher who had been a street boy who was found by Jesus. After Jesus found him, his life was turned upside down and he was able to go to school and finish form 4. He then started to volunteer as a teacher at the school where we found him. I sat down with him and Pastor Jon and we started to hear about what they were doing in the slum. The 150 kids that we had started to play with were on brake from school. They were kids that were getting looked after by Pastor Jon, Sam, Sarah and many other amazing volunteers. All of these guys simple had a burden for the kids and started to reach out to them. The literally feed these kids on prayer. None of them had anything but a burden to care for them. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing and what we were seeing. They couldn’t believe that we had come on our own with out an African. They told us how they had just been praying that God would send them friends, I think they were more shocked then we were how quickly God had answered their prayers. We all recognized that the Holy Spirit had directed it all. After that day we went back to work with Sam and the team as often as we could. We found ourselves falling in love with these kids most of them orphans. In that time I found I had such a deep love for Sam and Pastor Jon I have only meet a few guys in Africa like them.
Throughout the last two week in Africa we found ourselves down in the slum many more times holding the beautiful but very dirty hands of amazing kids in Kepsongui. We call the part of the slum that we work in Little Lodwar because most of the people there are from Turkana. When we discovered this we were floored even further because we know we have been called to the people of Turkana. We held the kids, treated cuts and infections and then prayed for the kids who were sick. On final visit to the slum there were a number of kids that had fevers so we held them close and prayed for them and rebuked the fevers. Almost instantly the fevers left them. This happened to all three of the kids we prayed for. I won’t easily forget that day. God love was so evident in that place as we held kids in our arms and loved them. I spent about an hour holding a little girl who was around 3 but was about the size of a 1 and a half year old. It seems to me that God pours out his love in the most broken places. As I sat there holding this little girl on a field covered in human waste I knew that Gods Kingdom was coming in this place. His love is stronger then all of the brokenness in the world. In the most lost, in the most broken, in the darkest, in the loneliest, in the places that feel like hell that is where the church shines brightest and know one can ignore it.So we left that place with the faces of those kids forever printed on our heart and yet we know they are not alone. For even in that place our brother and sister’s our pouring out their lives as living sacrifices and satan and all of his demons can’t stand against the power of that. As we walked away from the slum there was no way to shake it, we went there to touch them but there hands reached out and touched us. We have been changed. How could we not be changed. The broken and the poor had touched our hands how could we forget them. Forever ruined. Perhaps we need more people to be ruined.
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