This is Samuel. He's 20 years old. His life has been anything but easy. His parents died when he was young and he went from living with his grandparents for a few years, to living with a few friends, and during all of this he had to be separated from his brothers and sisters. As you have probably figured out already, Samuel is an orphan. Over the last two weeks of our stay in Mpeketoni, I was blessed with the opportunity to become friends with Samuel and learn about his life. He wasn’t in school because he didn’t have enough money to even start high school, his job was selling mangos on the street, and he was having trouble paying his rent. Samuel’s life is difficult, yet through it all he has the biggest and brightest smile you’ll ever see!
A few days before I left, I walked up a dirt road to this one story cement/mud building. There’s trash covering the ground, clothes hanging on lines, pools of dirty water everywhere, and the stench of human waste filled the air. The door opens and in front of me is a small room with one tiny window in the upper corner. The floors are dirty, and the air in the room is musty and hot. There’s a sheet creating two sections in the room-barely doing it’s job because of its rips and tears. A wooden bed frame, two wooden chairs, and a coffee table were the only pieces of furniture in the room. Clothes were hanging from a clothes line on the ceiling, and a few pairs of shoes were lying on the floor….
This tiny room is actually Samuel’s house. It’s not just him that lives in this tiny room either, three other grown men live here too. This house is smaller than most of our bedrooms-probably about half the size of our bedrooms in fact.
When we were in the room with Samuel, I noticed that there was no mattress in the bed frame. So I asked him, “Samuel, where do you sleep?” He replied, “the floor.” I was shocked. I wanted to cry. My heart broke for Samuel. No one should sleep on a cement floor. That’s not ok. Sitting there and doing nothing was NOT an option for me. At this point, God really put a burden on my heart and a few of my teammates hearts to help Samuel. We quickly became close friends with Samuel and really loved him as our brother in Christ.
A lot happened to Samuel in such a short amount of time. God was truly using my team and I to change his life completely. God ordained our friendship with Samuel because He knew Samuel needed to be loved and cared for not only by us, but ultimately by Him. I felt so blessed to be a part of the change in this boys life! He accepted Christ into His heart at one of the crusades my team and I were a part of, and a few days later he was baptized by Bishop in the Indian Ocean. God worked through us to provide Samuel with the necessities to turn his life around-education, a bike for transportation, a new home and yes, a bed. For me, seeing Samuel’s house really broke my heart. That’s the point when God put Samuel on my heart and gave me a strong desire to help him. Now that we’ve left Mpeketoni, Samuel is truly in God’s hands, we can’t fully help him anymore, and we can’t check up on him each day to make sure he’s doing ok. It’s so easy to get worried about Samuel being miles away from him, but that’s where I’ve learned to trust God and really just cast my burdens onto Him. The safest place to be is in God’s hands, so why would I want Samuel to be anywhere else?
