I have started up small devotion sessions and bible study classes with a few of our groups. This includes our young men's group, the youth from the village of hope, and all our tailoring girls.
This is hopefully a way to disciple these young people, as we saw a need (especially among the tailoring girls) to teach and minister to them.
Farouk has also been reaching out to a group of older boys who love to play soccer. We purchased a soccer ball for this group, which they all appreciated very much. Farouk has been using this opportunity to speak into the lives of these young men.
We have also invited these same young men to an 'open evening' at our house. This basically means they can come and relax, play card games and darts, as we develop relationships with these guys.
We have also opened up our house to different information sessions every second Wednesday evening. These sessions will include information on drugs and alcohol, gender equality issues and even some simple business classes.
We hope we can use this as a platform to speak into these young peoples lives, to raise opportunities to help them in their financial needs, but also their spiritual needs.
It can still be hard here, as you are constantly surrounded by need, and it is hard to choose which people to help. We are sponsoring one of the tailoring girls (who lives with us) little boy. Of course this means that many of the tailoring girls have found out, and they ask us to also sponsor their children. We can't help all of them, but we do try and find creative ways for them to get a bit of assistance, whether that be organizing paid work for them to do around the compound, or to try and provide them with some small business.
Our tailoring girls are still making African styled shoulder bags as well, and a new lot will be coming to Australia in a few weeks time. If you are interested in purchasing one for $20, feel free to email me on ooeeluke@hotmail.com, and I can link you up.
We have also been blessed to have our good friend from the UK, Rachel, come along and volunteer at YSU with her two friends Sarah and Will.
The Brits (as I like to call them) have been running an extra Wednesday class with our tailoring girls. The last class they ran was to help encourage the girls to see themselves as having purpose in this world. Many of the girls have always been beaten down and made to feel like they are worthless (one of the young girls in our class has told us how her sisters family, who she lives with, often spits on her and tells her that she is useless) So it has been great to encourage them and let these girls know that they have purpose and that they are valued and loved by us, but more importantly by God.
They also had fun making bracelets so that they could always look at these and remember what they have learnt.
Farouk and I have also been having a few fishing adventures here and there. We managed to catch a big African lungfish/mudfish in the swamp the other day. This fed a lot of us, and the meat we got off the fish was great to eat, with lots of flesh and barely any bones (the mudfish is more like a big eel)
If you would like to watch my little tutorial on how to catch one, just click below. I've still got some Aussie bushman spirit in me yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i8agSpz_jI&feature=youtu.be
The walls to the YSU property are also almost built. The HopeBuilders workers have been laboring away in the hot sun over the last few weeks, so that they can complete our wall. This looks great, and it starts to make the vision of the youth center come to life! The gate was added just yesterday. Next step will be to start building the foundations, once the plans are approved.
This boy has had a very hard life growing up, after his father married a second women, who hated his mother (the first wife) and convinced the father to chase them away. After a while the boys mother then remarried, but the stepfather didn't want the boy around and chased him away as well. Both the father and stepfather were very abusive from what we have been told.
On top of that, the boy has had to survive by getting paid measly amounts of money to do horrible work, including having to crawl done pit latrines and empty them out with nothing but his hands and a bucket.
While only young (about 14) Farouk set the boy up in the small house which is on the YSU block of land, and the boy was able to stay there and live, while getting some work looking after the property and helping labor for the builders.
Everyone took a liking to him, since he is good kid. Last week he asked if I could take him to the hospital, as he has had a chest problem for a long time now, and when I felt his chest you could feel continual muscle spasms going on.
Farouk and I had plans to take him to the hospital and look into perhaps getting him back to school to finish his primary education. But a few days ago we got a call from him saying that the local catholic hospital (which he had just visited due to knowing some people there) was sending him back to his father, and they were even paying the transport for him to go.
Farouk was a bit confused that he would up and leave like that, but the full story came out later that day. One of the nurses came and visited us and told us that the boy was well known to the hospital, and that he has a serious heart condition. The nurse was explaining that the boy does not have much longer to live without an operation, and even then it would be risky. From what we have gathered, it seems that the hospital is willing to take him on as a special case and try the operation. But they wanted him to get permission from his father first, and that is why they sent him back. The nurse (who was a family friend) suggested that years of abuse from the father has perhaps contributed to the boys condition.
After speaking with him today, Farouk has told me that the boy went to his father, but as soon as he reached his fathers house, he was chased away again. He stayed at his mothers for a little bit, but his stepfather also chased him away.
When it rains it can really seem to pour.
So the boy is now on his way back to wairaka, with no family to take him in.
Farouk is going to meet up with him today, and we will still allow him to stay in the small house on our property. In the next few days Farouk will try and get more information and escort this young boy to the hospital to vouch for him.
We are not quite sure what the outcome of all of this will be, but it seems that God has placed this young boy, oppressed, afflicted an mistreated, with no family that will claim him or support him, while having a serious life threatening condition, into our company right now,
Please pray for us as we try and help deal wisely with this situation. It certainly strikes you and is a fresh reminder of the suffering that people are facing here.
We are called to be hope and light in this world, and so pray for us as we try to help in what ways we can, by whatever means.
Please also pray for the boy ... I am not sure right now if it has to be a prayer for a miracle, but in the following days I am sure we will find out from the doctors what the condition may be.
Pray that God may keep the boy safe, and that we can be His hands and feet where we are able to be.
A prayer from the Psalms.
"Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
You, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness
that would not be found out.
The Lord is King for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,"
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