Tonight, the question now becomes where to begin...
"Midnight
our sons and daughters
Were cut down and taken from us
Hear their heartbeat...
We hear their heartbeat
In the wind
We hear their laughter
In the rain
We see their tears
Hear their heartbeat...
We hear their heartbeat
Night hangs like a prisoner
Streched over black and blue
Hear their heartbeat...
We hear their heartbeat
In the trees
Our sons stand naked
Through the walls
Our daughters cry
See their tears in the rainfall"
-U2- Mothers of the Disappeared
I really don't know where to begin tonight. I have needed to write about my actual experience with the street kids for some time now, but my callouses, frustrations, and busy days have not allowed me to do so. Tonight I write about injustice. About pain. About eyes. About hopelessness and despair. About suffering. I write about the destruction of sin, but the redemption of Love. About children who have no hope, and who need Love. About love--that undefinable phenomenon that occurs between people and about Love--Jesus Christ. I write about struggle-- a struggle for the kids near River Road and a struggle for us, those who saw into their lives last Friday morning. Tonight I write about a journey that I have undergone in the last week, a journey from the darkness of River Road, which passes through confusion, a calloused heart, frustration, and which ends in Love. Therefore, I write about the redemption of grace. But finally, I write about children who are nameless... children who are described as trash. Children who have but one Hope. And children who have become invisible, lost in a world of back alleyways, trash, and glue. Children lost in my oblivious apathy. Children whose story must be told and children whose faces must be seen.
Tonight, I will write a lot. I will try to paint dark, but accurate pictures... leaving no holds barred and no child invisible. I will try to relate a story in which I experienced more pain than ever before, but in the journey, discovered more of Love and Grace than ever before. My words will not do the invisible justice. But maybe the pictures will bring them into the light. Maybe you will be changed. Maybe pain, apathy, or a schedule will cause you to turn away. But maybe, through the journey, both you and I, the reader and the writer, will find some sort of catharsis in the darkness... as a faint light on the horizon slowly breaks through that darkness until the full blown Son blinds us with love.
"We are traveling together like companions on a quest-and going slow enough to notice our surroundings...Perhaps it is in the journey, not the destination, where we will unearth our vital connection with God and one another. And surely this is a quest we were made to embark on together."
-Soul Graffiti
Friday, October 25th, 2007
Near River Road, Nairobi- 5:30 AM
In my groggy, early-morning stupor, I notice the landscape and attitude of the city begin to change as Sandy's land rover turns onto River Road and heads down into the industrial, poor sector of Nairobi. I have come with my camera, my jacket, and my innocent, naive eyes. We turn onto a dark street with sidewalks on both sides and search for a place to park, along the side of the street. Even in the early morning quiet, I feel a pall of an unexplainable darkness surrounding me as we park the Rover and get out of the car. Jill and Bethany, also groggy-eyed, hop out of the backseat, and we make sure we lock the doors of the car as we cross the street, where a group of children line the walls of buildings, closed shops, and barred windows. I see huddled bodies crouching on the street, sitting on the steps to shops, and sitting on top of canvas bags, bulky with unknown contents. As we draw nearer, silent in expectation and eager, but subdued excitement, I begin to notice the huddled children, who sit listening as a pastor speaks to them in Kiswahili. There are a few people leaning against car doors behind the pastor: a mzungu lady (white lady), a young Kenyan man, and a young Kenyan girl. We walk up and lean against the car and I am able to begin to observe for the first time. I see about twenty young men and about five young girls huddled along the wall as the pastor glances back and forth, passionately speaking in Swahili. The pastor is a Kenyan of diminutive size with a strong voice and a caring face. The young man is named Fred, the young lady Eunice, and the white lady Linda.
As I glance back to the kids, I see one of them dip his head to his shirt sleeve and I see him take a deep breath. The pastor notices as well and points at him and says something. The boy reaches inside his shirt sleeve and pulls out a bottle of glue and holds it next to his stomach. Through the course of my uninterrupted observation as the pastor speaks, I notice multiple heads dipping their noses into shirt sleeves, jackets, and visible glue bottles. Many times, the bottles are not filled with glue, only a small deposit of leftover glue in the bottom of the bottle.
Many of the children shiver in the coolness of the Nairobi morning and I realize that their tattered jackets, trousers, and shoes do nothing against the chill. Many of the boys are barefoot, and those with shoes might as well be wearing sandals. Many sit next to one another and use an empty canvas bag to cover them. Some have cuts and bruises on their faces and others look extremely malnourished and have that hungry look in their eye. Still others frequently fall into fits of coughing, characteristic of acute Tuberculosis. One girl with a drawn face, and a frail, extremely thin body, has a look of pain and sickness in her eyes (I found out later she has full blown AIDS)... Next to her is a young girl in a red beanie and a tattered jacket. The woman holds a baby against her, in the traditional Kenyan wrap. I cannot help but staring at the eyes of the kids... eyes of resilient determination, eyes wide with the high from the glue, eyes that show more pain, knowledge of the brutality of the streets, and a crippling mix of despair and hopelessness. However, I do not let myself break with the roiling emotions at this point. Instead, I begin to shut down so as not to be overwhelmed, thinking that I will push back the emotions so that I might just observe. Bad idea.
After a few minutes, the pastor finishes speaking and turns to those leaning against the cars, who move forward to places in front of the kids as the kids lean in closer. Bethany, Jill, and I split up and move to different groups as they begin to pray. My group is led by our missionary friend, Sandy, and she begins to pray for the guys in the group, asking God to be with them every day, to provide for them, to give them strength to get off the glue, and to reveal Himself to them. She prays that Christ might touch their hearts and love them today. The guys are respectful, heads bowed and silent. They shiver constantly, and every now and then, one coughs uncontrollably. Some evidently understand more English than others as they whisper translations in the ears of other boys.
After Sandy's prayer, the place becomes more lively as the workers pull out a box of milk, first aid equipment, and some clothes. I run back across the street to grab my camera from the car and look up and down the street as the area begins to awaken and move onto the streets... vendors setting up shop, shopkeepers opening doors and sweeping steps, and the random car driving down the street. As I cross the street once more, I see two boys running toward the group from the Southeast. One of the boys runs ahead to Sandy, his face covered in glue and his eyes wild with concern and an expression I do not understand and frankly do not care to. As I reach the boys once more, I hear him rattle off a string of words to Sandy in Swahili, after which she looks helplessly at Fred, who makes his way to the boy. The boy continues his rapid speaking and Fred whispers something to Sandy and begins walking away at a rapid pace with the boy. Sandy tells me that the boy's brother has been beaten and Fred is going to check on him.
I brush the thought away as the boys begin crowding me, with a small container of milk in one hand. They are eager to talk to me and I make small talk with different ones who speak English. I learn that one of the boys in front of me had no schooling as he has been on the street for the duration of his short life, and has therefore never attended school. Most of the boys are between the ages of 13 and 18, with a few being younger. I begin taking pictures of the different boys and try to decide what to talk about to boys who have never seen a tv, never watched a football match, and have never gone to school. I mostly take pictures, and grasp my camera tightly as they crowd around, clutching at the camera to see the digital image on the LCD screen. The pictures of themselves fascinate them and they ask to see them constantly. Many of them get first aid from Linda and one in particular caught my ear as he told Linda of a pain in his knee. He gets two Tylenol pills. The boys continue asking for more milk as they have immediately hidden the milk they have already received inside their jacket, in hopes that they might claim not to have one and get another.
I then meet this little girl named Sophia. She is seven years old and is adorable. Huge, bright eyes and full of life and energy. However, there is something different about her reactions, her intelligence, and her coherence. I see the glue in the mother's hands and briefly wonder if Sophia is on glue as well. (Later I find out that this is highly likely because the glue stifles the hunger and keeps the appetite down.) Malnutrition and the use of glue stunt the growth and the mental development of kids. I don't understand what it is about her eyes. She latches on to my arm and we play with her as she smiles and warms up to us. Behind the light of the smile in her eyes, is a veil of something darker. I play with Sophia for awhile and enjoy taking pictures of her and her mother. Her mother is probably no older than nineteen but looks like she is in her late thirties. Later, I find out that her mother has full blown AIDS and that her newborn baby is probably HIV positive. Eunice, who is holding Sophia, looks at me and says, "It's not fair that she is here. She will always be here and has no chance of getting out. It's not fair, but that's the way it is. She will live the remainder of her probably short life on these streets." My heart breaks, with a brief thought about how insane all of this is, but I quickly shove down the frog in my throat as we begin to wrap it up with the boys.
Fred gets back with the young boy whose face is covered with glue, and seems urgent to get going. He explains to Sandy that the boy is in bad shape and we need to go look at him and see what we can do. The young boy with Fred is the brother of the boy who has been beating. We pack up the supplies and get ready to leave. It's about 6:30AM at this point. We cannot stay long on the street because the kids are not allowed to congregate or they will be arrested for vagrancy. They must continually move in small groups during the day in order to be protected from the police. If arrested, they go immediately to jail. They have no identification (Which means they will never go to school... Most of them have no idea how old they are and some don't know their own name.) and are therefore stuck in jail if arrested. If they are taken to jail, most of them will die in a short time, as Kenyan jails aren't exactly the Hilton. I learn from Sandy that they each have their own territory and must report to the leader of their small gang, probably paying him whatever they can come up with from begging, pickpocketing, and anything else they can do. Many times, the gang leader is Mungiki, which is the crime organization in Nairobi that even the police fear. I am sobered by the roughness in which these kids live.
Every now and then I cast a glance to Jill and Bethany, searching for how they are doing in their facial expressions. Jill looks my way with a dead look in her normally fiery eyes, and I must look away or risk an emotional breakdown on the spot. Bethany is on the other side of a group of boys, and I am unable to see her expression. I go around to the boys and shake hands and give high fives. They recoil from hugs. They have never experienced any affection of any kind unless it has been from a prostitute, which are common. And that doesn't count.
We hop back in the car, and Sandy follows Fred and Linda a couple of streets over. They stop their car and alight at the entrance to an alleyway. Oh boy, recounting this will be tough. Sandy tells us that there is a boy in the alleyway who was beaten yesterday and is in bad shape. She mentions that we might want to stay in the car, but a mixture of curiosity, pride, and the normal teenage boy attitude of invincibility drive me out of the car. The girls follow. Sandy, Linda, and Fred have already turned the corner with the pastor and some of the boys and I immediately get scared because I'm in an alley on the wrong side of the tracks with two North American girls, not sure where the people who have any clue have gone. Thankfully, we see them down another sub-alley and follow immediately. As we get closer, I notice a body huddled up against the wall in a trash heap. The entire alley is carpeted with assorted trash including bottles, bags, destroyed clothes, plastic, and anything else one could imagine.
We walk up to the group and I see Linda and Sandy kneeling around a body that is shaking uncontrollably. He is laying on a canvas bag and is surprisingly small for his apparent age, not that I could tell his age for all the blood. Fred is standing in front of us, blocking our view of his upper body and face. Linda touches his hip and he recoils with pain. Sandy mentions something about bones probably being broken all over and internal injuries being probable. The first thing I see is his hand as it leaves his hip to move toward his face. His hand is caked with dry blood and recently covered with new, wet blood... bright, red, and glistening in the early morning sunlight. Then, the smell of the blood and the alleyway hits me. Sensory overload. My curiosity takes hold and I move around Fred to look at his face. (And this is where I choke up and feel sick even now.) The boy's head is horribly swollen, especially around his left temple. He is on his side and the side of the face facing me is covered in contusions, blood, and cuts. It is harder for me to see the bruises and cuts because he is black and it doesn't show up as well. His eyes are closed and there is blood all around his cheeks and nose. His nose is still bleeding. Fred comments how this happened sometime yesterday and he is still bleeding. My first thought went something like this, "Wow, um, this is not good." I notice his brother and friend pacing nervously around us. More of the boys from the street have arrived and are filling in behind me. The brother smears glue around his mouth and nose and puts the bottle to his nose, sniffing deeply at frequent intervals. The friend is sniffing uncontrollably as well. Sandy sees it and chastises him about it, then mumbles something about it being from stress.
I look back to the boy, and see his eyes flutter open and wildly spin unseeingly around. I realize that he is either approaching a coma or is passing between a state of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. We are way beyond my knowledge of first aid from lifeguarding and scouts. His mouth is oozing blood as well and everything around his cheekbones and eye socket is horrible swollen. I see cuts and open contusions on the top of his head as well. Sandy and Linda decide that he's going to the hospital somehow and Fred and a street guy try to sit him up, at which he gasps and moans... a haunting moan/groan unlike anything I've ever heard. His brother staggers nervously around, pacing as he sniffs more glue. The brother is crying now. I reach down and grasp his wrist, feeling for his pulse, which is faint, fluttering softly under my fingertips. Now closer to his head, I see the swelling is more than I had originally thought. As they lay him back down until they can find some other way of transporting him, Fred mentions something about the cuts and bruises around his torso, indicating broken ribs and internal injuries. His nose is bleeding once more and his eyes are almost swollen completely shut. Concussion is an understatement.
The boys get a discarded canvas bag from the trash around him and lay the bag next to him. Fred and the pastor roll him onto the bag, at which he again moans softly. I cannot help but thinking that moving him in this way will exacerbate his injuries and if he has any spinal injuries, we have just made them worse. However, what choice do we have? He must get to a hospital and an ambulance would laugh at coming to River Road to pick up a street boy. It's not like Kenya has an ambulance service anyway. They roll him onto the bag and his eyes snap open as he moans before going unconscious once more as he faints from what I assume to be pain. Fred and a bigger boy grab the ends and begin to half-drag half-carry him out of the alleyway. The brother follows, sobbing as he completely covers his face in glue, and staggers down the alleyway. The brother cannot be more than 11 or 12. My little brother Sam is 13. Oh, it makes me nauseous to imagine. I walk mechanically after the group and snap a quick look at the girls. Their faces are drawn and I know that I cannot make eye contact or I will lose it completely. That won't help anyone. As we follow the bag, I see one of his battered, bare feet slip out and bounce along the ground. Linda opens the back of her Rover-type Nissan and they slide him into the back, laying him diagonally. Fred positions him and I look inside to see him bleeding once more. Two of the bigger street boys jump in the back with him. Fred raises his voice as one of the other boys steps on his midsection to get to the seat. I hear a groan come from the floor as the other boy steps over him and sits down. The brother softly wails as he will not be able to go. I later found out that Nairobi Kenyatta National Hospital is required to provide care (whenever they are able get to them, which could be days) and it is supposed to be free. However, the two street boys must go in with him because if they so much as see a white person, the price skyrockets.
As Linda gets ready to shut the door, I get one last glance and notice a huge, single tear fall from his right eye before the door slams. That is the last I saw of him. The small crowd disperses and I turn and stagger numbly back to our car. We get in and Sandy begins telling us what happened. Apparently, there was a large crowd yesterday around a street vendor and someone stole something from him. The crowd thought this boy did it and the mob immediately knocked him to the ground and began beating him. As he fell to the ground, the kicking began. They continued kicking him all over his body as he lay defenseless in the midst of the mob. I have no idea why they stopped or why he was even close to alive. His face will never look the same. Sandy tells us that the mobs around Nairobi will either kick or stone a person to death in a situation such as this one. The car is quiet and though I find myself wondering how the girls are doing, I cannot bring myself to look at them. And this is where I shut down.
Ok, out of journal mode. As we drove away, I realized I will never see that boy again. I know they walked into the hospital with him, but I will never know if he made it or what will become of him. Because they are street boys, there is the possibility of them being arrested at the hospital. If he was arrested and taken to jail there is no way he is still alive. As I watched them drive away, I realized that I was utterly powerless to do anything for him. I won't ever know if he made it or how his brother is coping with the tragedy. Such is life on the streets. I have no picture of him, because I felt it irreverent to take pictures of him. I now wish I had. I DO NOT EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He will forever remain in my memory as the invisible boy, whose name I don't know, and whose face I have tried to push away. I feel as if for a moment, when our lives intertwined, I was able to see him, but the world has stripped his face away, sending him back to invisibility and oblivion in relation to my world. Their are invisible children everywhere.
At that point, I continued pushing my emotions down and away, refusing to think about what I had seen and denying the past two hours. We reached the Wilson's house and the girls lay down and fell asleep. I tried to sleep but wasn't able to. I plugged my camera into my computer and began furiously editing the pictures I had taken so as to stay busy. I definitely didn't feel like reading or praying at that point. I eventually fell asleep and when I awoke, it honestly felt like it was a different day. We didn't talk about it all day and that night we talked about something completely different after I asked if we should talk about the boy, to which the answer was a unanimous no. Not that I really wanted to talk about it.
Now to the journey... (At this point, I thought about stopping and doing another blog about the journey back to some semblance of healing, because this is long, but I'm just going to keep it all together here.)
The next morning the stress of Jill being sick, things going on at home back in Texas, and just the entire week hit me and I had to get away. I went for a walk and began to pray for specific issues with Jill and Bethany and found myself realizing that I could not pray whatsoever. Jill had been very sick the for two days before and that brought on a lot of stress for the three of us. I think our confidence was shaken as we realized the brutal (but also beautiful) reality of being in Africa. I was utterly powerless to protect her or help relieve her of pain. That extremely bothered me. Having known Bethany and Jill for only a month, I didn't understand her or know her well enough to know what she needed or wanted as she was sick. That brought on a bunch of stress for me and I can only imagine what she was feeling, realizing she was sick in Africa, away from the comfort and safety of home and friends. That morning, everything kind of got jumbled inside of me and I had to get away. I went for a walk began praying for all of us, but realized that it felt like there was huge chasm between me and God. Jill and I talked about it later, but it feels like the moment I shut myself down to feeling anything and ignoring what had happened, a huge chasm was created between me and God. I found my thoughts drifting back to the boy for the first time since I had watched them drive away.
The thing that bothered me the most was that there is no hope for these street children. They are stuck in an endless cycle of AIDS, prostitution, addiction, and hunger. They have been cast out on the streets because their parents died of AIDS and they either have no family or their family cannot care for them. They cannot go to school because they have no identification, do not know their age, and have no way of getting any. Because of prostitution, many of them will contract AIDS before they reach twenty, and for the girls, their babies will then contract HIV and will become just another number in the hundreds of thousands of AIDS orphans in Kenya. The cycle continues, untouched by the government because these kids are not worth it. They are trash and if one dies today, well, good riddance. Therefore, I am utterly powerless to help. Nothing anyone does today, tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future will bring hope for them. They will live out the remainder of their lives on the streets. The unchangeable reality breaks my heart and hurts my head.
In my already emotional, stressed state I fell apart as my mind drifted to his facial expressions as he lay there against the wall in the trash of a back alleyway in Nairobi, completely invisible to the rest of the world. How many other boys have died like that, in a back alleyway, unknown and unloved in this world. Completely invisible. I wondered what his thoughts were as he lay broken, bruised, bleeding, and battered in the trash. And then I broke, sobbing uncontrollably as I wondered how he was ever supposed to believe in a God who claims to be a God of love. I became angry and bitter, crying angry tears as I started asking the hard questions. I remember thinking, "How could you sit by and watch as his life is destroyed? Where were you when they knocked him to the ground and kicked his frail body again and again until he held onto life by a single thread? How is he ever supposed to believe in a God of love if you let this happen? Were you there beside him? Dammit God, why did you allow that to happen... where were you when they beat him within an inch of his life?" I remember thinking that it was not fair that there was not a supernatural switch somewhere that I could flip in order to switch places with the boy because I wanted so badly to take his place in that alleyway. No, not for noble reasons, but I selfishly wanted to be that boy in the street, eyes swollen shut with pain, battered and bleeding on the ground. I wanted to switch places because then I'd be the one on the ground and would not have to gaze upon that pain and agony, as it was my own. I mentally yelled at God, "Is this all some cosmic game of chess where you move pieces around, knocking pieces over when they are no longer necessary. So, for minutes I ranted and raved about injustice, the darkness, and the frustration that I had with God. I knew He was not the one to blame, but I wanted to blame Him for everything, dumping the responsibility completely in His lap. Isn't that characteristic of me, blame the Creator of the universe for something that my own race has done?
As I sat, screaming at God in my mind, basically cussing God out, I think He just listened and when I had nothing left but sobs of frustration and pain, I feel like He asked me, "Ok Will, you done yet?" I did not resolve anything that morning, but had to head back as we needed to leave for the market. However, looking back on it, I feel like God valued the honesty. It's not like He has to have my approval or anything. Yesterday, Jill read me a verse about the rich young ruler in Mark, where it says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." I think that Saturday morning God just listened to me and loved me. I resolved nothing and the frustration was still there, but I had put everything into the open and had admitted that I was mad at God.
The next morning, after brushing off a homeless girl with a baby who begged for money (see Bethany's blog), we got on a matatu to make the hour journey out to the orphanage where we were going to church. On the bus, I turned to the window and put my head in my hands thinking about that beggar and about how I had completely failed miserably at being like Christ. She was even asking for food and not really money. The baby was tied to her back. Even if He had nothing to give, He would have stopped and loved her, spending time with her. At that point, I thought about His love and began to pray once more, asking God the why questions once more, this time not in frustration but in a genuine "I want to know" attitude. As I sat in that crammed bus, Job 38-42 came to mind. "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? vs. 4 Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place? vs. 12 What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? ... Surely you know, for you were already born, you have lived soooo many years. vs. 19-21 Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? vs. 31 Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? vs. 8"
Wow, who am I sometimes seems inadequate in its simplicity. Job followed by a mixture of the message of love in the gospels and verses about following Christ brought peace and comfort.
This is normally the part where a conclusion occurs. I have no conclusion. There is no way to explain away what I have seen. Sometimes, trusting God's sovereignty seems like a cop out. My heart still hurts and I do not understand why there is injustice in the world. I will never understand why God does not reach in and save kids like the nameless boy. I will never understand why he has to be beaten for me to be slapped out of my apathy. I will never understand why the Church back home will continue to build buildings, pay pastors, and sponsor huge stadium rallies that end up asking for more money. I will never understand why the church which is to be the bride of Christ has become a prostitute, selling herself out of greed, materialism, and selfish pride. I will never understand why that church as a whole has forgotten to be the hands and feet of Christ. I will never
understand why a perfect God allows such imperfection in the world, such pain, such suffering, and such brutality to occur. I will never understand why I have become calloused, apathetic, and complacent about invisible faces... pushing them away for my own comfort and security. God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. Jill has to remind me of that all the time. I will never understand why we have let these things happen, and not just allowed them, but caused them in many cases. I will never understand.But maybe I don't have to.
How big is God? Where is my faith? Am I willing to give up myself to have faith that God is in control? Am I willing to completely depend on a God whom I must believe is in control and is a God of love? Am I willing to have faith? Am I willing to submit? Am I willing to finally follow?
These things are not God's fault. He is perfect, loving, and completely sovereign. These things are caused by the fallen world, fallen because of sin. My sin. So in reality, it is not God's fault, but mine. Not directly maybe, but I am a sinner completely in need of a savior. Though I have no answers, I think I am beginning to have a peace that I don't have to have the answers. But if I have faith in that fact, that faith must be expressed through love. That faith must be proven through deeds as James says. I am seeing a gospel of action, of love, and of passion. Reading the gospels again, I am fascinated by Jesus. So completely unique, engaging, confident, calm, and divine. The epitome of love. The conclusion of the ultimate love story. The most beautiful story ever told. I have decided that I want to follow that. I keep wondering why the disciples got up and immediately left their nets to follow Him. I think it was His eyes. In his eyes, I think they could see the complete collision of divinity and humanity... of love and wisdom, of understanding and justice, of healing and hope... And they followed. I have to follow.
Ok, I'm beginning to ramble. I write too much. I will leave you with no answers, only a couple of thoughts. Jill and Bethany remind me all the time, "Following Jesus is simple, but never easy." (Shane Claiborne) "Do little things with great love." (Mother Theresa)
I cannot change what I see, but I have to be the hands and feet of Christ. Maybe if we would give up enough of ourselves to do his work, the church might truly be the hope of the world. So here I am in Africa, completely broken, wanting to understand what it means to BE the CHURCH... to understand what love is... to understand how love someone by looking at them. Maybe we can change the world one smile, one hug, one person at a time. Loving that which is placed in front of us, trusting in something greater than ourselves as we seek to BE the CHURCH... Be that organic bride that should exemplify love. Maybe by doing so, I might understand how to open myself to let Christ's love pour through me, but in order for that to happen, the "me" has to disappear. Maybe I can then learn how to write about these kids, to take pictures of them, that their story might be told and their faces become visible.
For you who has made it this far, my prayer is that you will not turn away from what you have seen and read. That you will never forget this story. Some of you will have no idea how to cope, some will turn away because of apathy, busy schedules, or complacency. But maybe... just maybe... something in this story has changed something inside of you. May we BE the hands and feet of Christ. "May we find the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death." (Shane Claiborne) And through that, maybe the world will be changed as we embrace the light of the sunrise, that Son that peeks over the horizon, chasing away the darkness on those streets, illuminating faces so that they will no longer be invisible.
"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."
-Galatians 5:6
Love wins,
Will
