So it's been 2 years since my last journey to Kenya completely changed my life and my heart. If I said I didn't have any expectations at all coming here this time, I would've been lying. I had prepared myself for the fact that this time would be different though, a different place, a much longer time, and a community. But I still expected to be at a specific school and church, and to mainly be doing ministry there, and while that has been some of what we've been doing, we have also been working with the street kids ministry here in Busia as well.
When you read street kids your first thought is probably a homeless person in America, but that just isn't accurate at all. Most of these boys have very little food (if any), they are usually high off glue because its all they can afford and it provides an extremely short term release from reality, they only have one outfit that they wear all the time, and they constantly face danger from each other or other people living on the street. You can't really put into to words the struggle these boys face. Most of them refuse to go home because they are either too afraid to go back or don't have a home to go back to. Having said that there is a street kids ministry here attempting to get these boys off the streets and back home or to a safe home and then back in school. They are able to feed the kids twice a week on Wednesday (when the kids are able to bathe also) and on Saturday when we play soccer with them. Both days the kids are given a meal and are told about Jesus, and given a temporary break from reality. Basically the mission is to just love these kids, because more than anything else that's what they need the most right now is just to be loved on.
This past Wednesday when the kids slowly started rolling into the doors of the church, they began running around and rolling on the floor of the church, laughing and really just acting like kids. And I was sitting there just watching them, and I was just thinking about honestly how childish some of them were acting but in that moment I slowly began to realize that's what they are, are children. They are just kids that have been completely robbed of any sort of childhood and have been through more than any of us ever have or ever will by age 10.
These kids need to be and feel loved. They need people to believe in them no matter how many times they mess up. The story of the prodigal son is probably the best way to describe their circumstance, they need to know that they aren't "too broken" to have Jesus in their lives. In the past year 14 kids have come off the street and are now in some kind of stable home and in school. There is still obviously a lot more to go but just this past week 2 more boys said they wanted to go home and get off the street, it's truly an incredible thing to witness and be apart of.
