Through my work with Sixty Feet, I am given the background information on the children Sixty Feet serves. My role as child sponsorship coordinator is basically to look at that information and organize and track it as a sponsor comes along.
And let me tell you, I hear some stories.
Stories of children kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army as preschoolers. Stories of children abused by people who should be protecting and loving them. Stories too horrible to be made up.
These are the types of stories one hears on the news. They are hard to hear. Sometimes I want to stop reading and pretend this hasn't happened to children. But hearing them and knowing they are the stories of individual children, not statistics, just takes my breath away.
During our trip to adopt Ambrose, I spent a good deal of time at the remand homes, getting to know the kids we work with and listening to these stories. It was so good for me as a sponsorship coordinator to see them face to face and hear their hearts.
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| Debriefing at M2 with Kelsey, one of the Sixty Feet interns. |
I learned Kevin loves to have her picture taken and only wants to be friends with kids who have "good manners and greet others properly."
I listened to the story of Josephine, a young girl who was in her mid-teens and expecting a baby. She spoke very little English and I speak very little Luganda. I prayed with her and hoped that she received some comfort from my words, even those she didn't understand. Young. Pregnant. And imprisoned.
Then one day I didn't hear any stories at all. We were visiting M3 that day. The children at M3 can't tell their own stories. They are either too young or have special needs that leave them incapable of advocating for themselves at all. M3 is a place where absolutely defenseless children are kept.
The day we arrived there, a beautiful young teen with Cerebral Palsy came running toward the car, fell behind it, and had a violent seizure for what seemed like minutes. By the grace of God, the Sixty Feet medical personnel were with us and were able to examine her.
After that commotion, we continued in and were hugged non-stop by special needs children, so excited to have people visiting them. There was an outbreak of pink eye going on and every child that touched me had infected eyes that still somehow sparkled with joy.
The young girl who had the seizure came over and made herself at home on my lap. Which was quite a sight to see because she is my size, but in her mind she is a toddler, so she wanted me to hold and rock her like a baby. She stroked my hair and kissed my hands. She had such a sweet, innocent spirit. And she was so, so vulnerable.
I left that place shaken to the core. I still regard M3 as the most astounding, heart breaking place I have ever been. It was a place where I felt so useless and small and so in need of our very big God to move. Those kids so desperately needed out of there. The difficulty is, these are not children we can have sponsored and place in residential boarding schools. They need real, ongoing care in a place where they are completely protected and nurtured.
When the Sixty Feet board
announced plans to build a home of its' own for the youngest and most vulnerable children - those children from M3 as well as the other homes - I felt peace and hope. There is a solution. We can do something for them, even the children facing the greatest challenges.
God has so richly blessed Sixty Feet with a matching grant through December 31 to begin constructing a home for these children. Every penny - up to $60,000 will be matched. I love knowing that when I give, my dollars are not only providing a safe home for these children, but are being doubled.
I can't wait to be a part of the next chapter of this story. Where hope is renewed and precious heads sleep on beds at night, not concrete floors. Where young souls are awakened to the truth of the Gospel and new stories are written on their hearts.
Please join me in praying and
giving during these vital last days of 2011. Lives will be changed. New stories will be penned. And through it all, God will be glorified.
