What Do You See?

Faith is being sure of what we hope for. It is being sure of what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

Ken found me rummaging through the cupboards before the sun came up, an empty Easter basket in my hand.  "Sweetheart," he gently asked, "What are you doing?"  Turning to him with tears in my eyes, I whimpered, "I haven't been able to find anything to put in your Easter basket."  With an understanding smile, he pulled me into his arms and whispered, "It's OK, darling."

Standing there together, I thought about the ways in which we would celebrate different holidays before Ken and I entered international service.   A loyal disciple of Martha Stewart, I always made sure our home was decorated.  It didn't matter how important the holiday was for me.  I was determined that it would be special for my family.  So that morning, as I sobbed and apologized, I came to the conclusion that I had not only failed my husband, but I had probably let Martha down as well.

I was still in a bit of a funk as we left the quarters to conduct the Easter meeting.  But as I stepped out the door, I spied a lovely lily in our garden. "Look!" I shouted.  "Have you ever seen an Easter lily around here?"  Ken and our driver just shrugged their shoulders. "It's an Easter miracle just for me!" I yelled.

Believe it or not, it was only a few minutes later that I saw a baby lamb on the side of the road.  No, really.  Then, as we were driving into the compound in which we would worship, I saw not one, but two rabbits.  I could hardly contain myself.  As we got out of our vehicle, I exclaimed to the District Officer,  "There are two bunnies over there!" Oddly, he didn't see my announcement as big news, but I nevertheless turned to our driver, gave him my phone, and said, "Take some pictures of my miracle!"

Sitting in the corps quarters a few minutes later, I found myself listening to a conversation about the Army's primary school in that community.  And for no reason in particular, it suddenly occurred to me that I had never seen a Kenyan child with glasses. I asked about this, and I was told that most families simply can't afford glasses.  Parents rely instead on herbal remedies, and when that doesn't work, the children simply drop out of school.  They can't read a book, they can't see the blackboard, and they can't take the tests.  My heart broke.  The solution was so simple.

A Typical Class in Our Schools

On the way home, the two strands of thought came together. I thought about my Easter miracles and about the children who couldn't see the blackboard.  I remembered something that Thoreau wrote:

"It's not what you look at that matters.  It is what you see."

It's easy to be blinded by the glare of the physical world, and without the spectacles of faith, our vision of what is and what should be can be way off the mark.  The lily, the lamb, and the bunnies of my Easter Sunday could have been overlooked, dismissed as a mere coincidence.  Or maybe, just maybe, they were a gift from a loving God to his homesick child, telling her that no matter where she is, she's home.

So tell me.  What do you see?

Heaven's Gain

For to me, living means opportunities for Christ, and dying—well, that’s better yet!

Philippians 1:21 

The long rains have finally arrived.  Bushes that I thought had died are turning green. The dust that seemed to cover everything has been washed away, and even the dirt itself has come to life with worms and other insects. Farmers are breathing a sigh of relief, and families are celebrating God's provision in newly-filled water tanks, wells, and ponds.  Our THQ family is even celebrating the safe arrival of two perfect little babies.  This Territorial Mama could not be more pleased and more proud.

Madzuu Salvationists Carrying Water

But although we are rejoicing in new life, death is always nearby.  Last week, one of our corps treasurers was murdered.  The young son of an officer couple went to bed and never woke up.  On Sunday, a home league secretary was killed in an accident outside the corps compound after worship.  Five members of one Army family was hospitalized after eating poisoned rice, and while most recovered, one young boy did not.

A Typical Coffin Made in Kenya

I never did like that well-known quote:

Our Loss is Heaven's Gain. 

But for me, that phrase has taken on new meaning.  While we spend a great deal of our time using health charts, teaching disease prevention, and partnering with medical professionals, we are not here to be doctors. We are not here as police or security. We're here for heavenly purposes.

So I suppose it's true.  If we take every opportunity to point others to Christ and to the salvation He offers, our loss will always be Heaven's gain.  And when we all get to Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.

Armed with Weakness

He answered me, “I am all you need. I give you My loving favor.  My power works best in weak people.”  I am happy to be weak and have troubles
so I can have Christ’s power in me.
^{2 Corinthians 12:9b (NLV)} 

Last week I was escorted to Amalemba market to visit a few of the women in our Survivors program. These are women who have made their living as prostitutes, but with the encouragement of the Army, are now running small businesses instead.

I couldn't have been more proud.  One young girl showed me her business license as I stepped into the tiny wooden shack where she sells homemade chips (french fries). "Someday," she said, "I am going to have a dress shop."  Another woman sells fruits and vegetables, and yet another coal.  I was amazed, however, to discover that one has opened a hair salon, complete with electricity.  After she played with my mzungu hair for a few moments, she took us on a tour of the market, proudly announcing that she has been appointed as the manager.

A Truly Perfect Salon

Recently Ken and I visited a corps in the bush that is led by a lovely young couple.  They serve the people of a poor mountain community, which means that their corps hall, quarters, and kitchen are all made of cow dung and mud.  They are also unable to find school fees for their children.  In fact, they struggle to feed them.

Yet when we asked the young officer about his calling, he simply replied, "The Lord called me to sacrifice.  That is why I am here."  I guess it's not surprising that this couple is greatly loved, not only by the corps, but by the entire community.  It's also no surprise that souls are being won for Christ, and that the corps is growing by leaps and bounds. The hall won't be made of mud and dung for long!

The Corps Hall

We conduct an Officers Councils somewhere in the Territory approximately twice a month.  Recently we visited a district where, as usual, everyone came dressed in their best uniform.  But I'll never forget one young officer who sat proudly in the front row.  I couldn't take my eyes off her, and it wasn't because the insignia on her uniform had been stapled on, or that her shoes were so worn I wasn't sure how they stayed on her feet.  It was because she took notes with a fury.  It was as if she was determined not to miss a single element of the messages we shared that day.  I was captivated by her passion for the things of God.

I am reminded every day that I serve alongside some amazing people. Despite a range of difficult circumstances, they continue to live their lives with enthusiasm, passion, joy and commitment. Nothing gets in their way.

I now understand Fredrick Phillips when he said:

It is often hard to distinguish between the hard knocks in life and those of opportunity.
                   

Life is not easy here, and I could give you a long list of the reasons why it's just too hard. Armed with excuses, it would then be easy for me simply to go through the motions of daily life and ministry on autopilot.  But my experiences lately have served as a reminder that God didn't call me to serve in Kenya because of my strengths.  He called me here because of my weaknesses, because it's the weaknesses that amplify the power of Christ. My brokenness is the opening through which He can work.

So bring it on!

Project Beauty

For this reason, I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you.

 2 Timothy 1:6a (NRSV)

The alarm sounded.  I quickly sat up, crawled out from underneath the mosquito net, stretched my arms to the ceiling, and boldly declared, "Today I start Project Beauty!" Ken chuckled as he turned over, but I leapt from my bed and marched out of the room with purpose.

We are in the dry season, which is perhaps the least attractive time of year in Kenya. Everything, and I mean everything, is covered in brown dust.  Plants are either dormant or dying, and every insect known to science has come out of the woodwork (yes, and I mean that literally) to search for moisture.  In fact, during Candidates Council this week, I found it difficult to concentrate on the agenda because of an ugly bug sitting in the middle of our boardroom table.  Incredibly, no one else seemed to notice until it started to move toward me.  At that point, another officer deftly swept the creature to the floor with his own papers.  Great, I thought.  Now it can crawl up my leg.

Home League ladies from Bungoma cleaning up the community market.

You could say that there's been a lot of ugliness in our lives over the past few weeks.  Ken came home and proudly announced he had found a "user friendly" rat trap at the market for our home.  He tried to show me how it worked, but I had absolutely no interest in the thing.

One of our accepted candidates recently failed to report to the Training College, and she's still missing.  Her parents, her fiance, and her corps family have no idea what happened to her. She has simply vanished.

In order to promote road safety, the authorities in Kakamega County have placed a wrecked vehicle on a high platform in the middle of town.  While I understand their good intentions, this has been a problem for me in two ways.  First, that particular car was the one in which one of our corps leaders was riding when it was struck by an out-of-control lorry.  He did not survive.  Second, since the car was placed on its pedestal, people have been stripping it for parts.  That doesn't help the message.

On top of all that, we have to deal with the usual amount of difficult news that reaches our offices every day.

The Lord has reminded me in my prayers this morning of a quote from Elsie de Wolfe, the woman credited with turning interior design into a profession:

I am going to make everything around me beautiful.  That will be my life.  

To that I say, "Amen!"  After all, when the Lord created the world, He started with chaos and had to bring order to it.  He took a shapeless mass and created a beautiful backdrop for our lives.  And then, He performed the same beautiful miracle in our hearts!

God painting the sky in Kenya

So it's clear to me that our God believes in beauty and in its power.  Beauty draws you in, and says all is well.  It comforts and it inspires.  And as children made in His image, shouldn't we create lovely things too?  We all do it differently, of course, because we have all been given different gifts.  But every single one of us can be a creator of beauty in one way or another.

So as I cleaned my home, gave myself a facial, and painted my nails yesterday as part of Project Beauty, I also took a moment to make a surprise tea for the guards on our compound.  I prepared a gift for a young mother in need, and I wrote a letter of encouragement.

Beautiful.  And powerful.

Praying or Pleading?

For you are great, and do wondrous things; You alone are God.

 Teach me YOUR way, O Lord; I will walk in YOUR truth.  Psalm 86:10-11 (NKJV)

I love watching my African sisters carry everything from fruit and vegetables to firewood on their heads. They do it with such beauty and grace.  Their example reminds me of the burdens I take up every morning when I leave my quarters.  Poverty, death, illiteracy, corruption, starvation, and witchcraft are just a few of the burdens that I must carry here. The load is heavy and uncomfortable, and while I certainly do my best, I'm not sure that I demonstrate half as much dignity and grace in the process.

A few weeks ago, the street boys of Kakamega asked to take the Hodder family on a tour of the town as they know it.  They wanted to show us how and where they live.  As we began our walk, two of the youngest took me by the hand, eager to protect me.  Another boy, who unfortunately is addicted to sniffing glue, kept his eye on the traffic.  Whenever we stopped at a busy intersection, he would grab my arm to make sure that Mama made it safely to the other side.  The boys took us to the trash dump where they scavenge for food, and then to the dilapidated mud huts where some of them sleep.

At one point, an older boy stopped me and bent down to tie my shoe.  As he did so, my heart broke when I noticed that not only was he shoeless himself, but his feet were covered in horrible sores.  Another reached out to steady me as I crossed a rickety wooden plank that had been laid over an open sewer, and then asked if we could go to the hut in which he lives.  We agreed, and once we arrived, Ken was asked to enter and bless the "home" with a prayer.   Dozens of other residents, who had all come out to greet the visitors, asked for a similar blessing.

In another hut, I saw through the darkness that the walls had been decorated with charts of the English alphabet, addition and subtraction, and the spelling of simple words.  That hut was fortunate to have parents in residence, and I was learned through our translator that their eldest boy had recently started attending our makeshift school at Territorial Headquarters.  Although uneducated themselves, the parents stood tall and proudly announced that their son would some day be a teacher.  After praying a blessing on their humble home, I quietly slipped out, hoping they did not see me wipe away a tear.  

The tour lasted for several hours, and I never stopped praying for miracles the entire time. Lord, I prayed, how can this happen?  I felt hopeless, discouraged, and even a bit angry. Why, Lord?  Why did you send me here?  Why have you given me these boys to love?   How can I sleep at night knowing they are hungry? 

Martha's Boys with the Hodders and Major Eleanor Haddick, our Social Services Secretary

Throughout the following week, I found myself begging God for resources to meet the demands of our ministry.  I  found myself pleading for Him to lighten my load.  

It was during one of my quiet times about two weeks later that the Lord finally spoke to me through a quote from Henry Blackaby's book, Experiencing God:

God invites you to become involved with Him in His work.

It occurred to me that, instead of constantly praying for God to do this or that based on my own vision and plans, I should try to put myself in tune with what He is already doing.  I should simply make myself available to do His work, according to His perfect plan.  When I stop to consider how these boys are slowly being transformed,  I can see that God is up to something big.  Really big.  And I want to be part of it.

First Things First

 "Feeling must follow, but faith, apart from all feeling, must be there first."
Martin Luther

I slipped out of the bed slowly, careful to avoid becoming tangled in the mosquito net. I gently wrapped myself in a wool blanket, tiptoed to the sitting room, and plugged in the tea pot.  As the water boiled I peaked out the window, eager to see the monkeys around our cottage.  Finally, with a steaming cup of tea in my hand, I slipped out on to the veranda, quietly pulled up a chair, curled up inside it, and waited patiently for the rest of the family to wake up on Christmas morning.

There is nothing like Christmas in the rain forest.  So as I sat there and listened to the birds sing and watched dew drops fall from the branches, I was overcome with emotion. "Thank you, Lord," I whispered, "for all your blessings on our family in this past year."

   

2014 has been a year of extreme highs and lows.  Our Territory has celebrated the opening of 45 new corps and several new districts and divisions.  We have seen thousands find Christ.  But we have also mourned the unnecessary loss of officers and soldiers to preventable diseases.  Family illnesses back home have caused us great concern, and corruption and terrorism have threatened to destroy peace in Kenya.  

There have also been some moments that I'll never forget.  I cringed when I recalled the day I discovered a slaughtered cow in an officer's bedroom.  She had wanted to surprise us with a special feast, and while I don't recall the meal, I certainly remember the surprise!  Then my heart began to melt with the memory of the day that the street boys of Kakamega, who literally have nothing to celebrate in life, defeated our Territorial Headquarters team in football and then ran around the pitch in triumph, holding aloft the simply trophy they had won.  It was memories like these that signaled the start of a great Christmas Day.

When it was all over and we started to pack away our little tree, I looked one more time at every ornament, each of which elicited an emotional reaction, some of them pleasant, and others more difficult.  As I sealed the box, I concluded that emotions are a precious gift from God, for without them our lives would be dull, empty and joyless.   But I was also reminded of the truth found in Proverbs 3:4-5: 

       Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Emotions, I thought, really can't be trusted, because they are based solely upon my perception and my understanding.  God is a lot bigger than that.  I then realized that it's the tree that matters.  Put a sparkling ornament on a dead, lifeless tree and it will lose its sparkle.  But place a less than attractive ornament on a beautiful tree, and it will take on new life and brilliance.  In the same way, I decided, it's my faith in God's promises that makes my life beautiful, rich, and satisfying.  Emotions are just the ornaments.

As I praise the Lord for all the lessons and blessings showered on me in 2014, I commit once again to place my faith in Him.  I will dance with joy when I feel like it, of course, and I will cry when circumstances dictate.  But even when I'm crying, I'll know that there are other dancing days yet to come.

May the Lord bless you and yours in 2015.

Deep Feelings

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it.

  I want to have lived the width of it as well.  ~ Diane Ackerman

What an emotional week!  It started with news that a friend of mine was called home to Heaven.  You would think that I could get used to all of the funerals here, but with every passing comes deep sadness, even though we also rejoice at Heaven's gain.  I'll miss my friend very much.

The Army meets the community at the home of the bereaved for the burial service.

A few days later, we opened a school for "Martha's Boys" (which is our name for the boys from the streets of Kakamega) on our headquarters compound.  Some of the boys are runaways, but my heart really goes out to the orphans whose extended families will sometimes simply bring them to Kakamega and then abandon them.  We have made a hall available to the new school, of course, but the boys seem to prefer taking their classes under the big tree that is sandwiched between our garbage dump and the pit latrines.   I couldn't be more proud of these young men.

Distributing school supplies to Martha's Boys

On Friday, we held a press conference with the Governor of Kakamega County.  After Ken and I gave a short report on Martha's Boys and our work with a group of local prostitutes that we're calling the "Survivors," the Governor graciously pledged his support.  Taking him at his word, I brought two of the ladies into the room.  They spoke with him in Swahili for a few nervous minutes, and only later was I told that it was culturally unknown for a prostitute to converse with such a powerful man.  Still, it seemed to work, as the ladies then told me that they had something to tell the community.  I took them across the room to one of the cameramen, and they spoke excitedly for ten minutes about all the love and support they had found at The Salvation Army.  It was quite a moment.

After the conference, the Governor asked Ken to pray this Monday at the dedication of the new market in Kakamega, which is quite an honor.  Ken said yes, of course, but he was then told that he'd be praying at the opening of both the market and the new slaughterhouse.  Now that's one situation that we never covered in Training School!

By now, you'll have guessed that my emotions have run the gamut this week.  But in my devotions yesterday, I was reminded of the fact that I am not alone in this.  Various passages in the New Testament demonstrate that Jesus had the same experience.  He also felt affection, anguish, anger, compassion, distress, grief, gladness, indignation, joy, love, peace, and sadness.  In a way, that helps me to understand what He meant in John 10:10:

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Jesus didn't mean by this that we would only experience love, joy and peace.  He knew that that our feelings would range far beyond that.  What He meant, I think, was that we would live in every sense of the word - that we would truly feel all the emotions that life has to offer.  He was saying that when we know God loves us and we then encounter the ups and downs of life, we don't just experience them, but we learn from them.  We grow spiritually.  We live the "abundant lives" that He promised.

So, yes, I am a bit emotional at times.  But praise the Lord for it!