I am blessed with a comfortable life and a long history of church attendance. Early home movies show me as a two-year-old handing out presents from under the Christmas tree to others in the room. Some people seem to be born with the need to help or share. I have quite a few faults, but greed or selfishness are not in my DNA. Sometime people seem to be born with a desire to get it all for themselves. While others are willing to give most of it away. Today I am reflecting on the joys and heartbreaks of helping others.
As a church member, I was invited on a mission trip to South Carolina several decades ago. I think it was South Carolina. Some of the facts have become fuzzy over the decades. There was a bus load of church members headed to a poor city to help at different places. I chose to be a daycare helper. For several days, I wiped down all the tables, chairs, and toys with disinfectant. It was some type of legal requirement which the daycare did not have the money or people for the job. At the end of the day, I would sit on the floor and the kids would use me as a mountain or pillow or whatever else two-year-olds choose to do with a limp adult body. It was an enjoyable week. It gave me the bug to try missions more often.
When hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, I went for several week-long mission trips to southern Mississippi. Around eight church members would sign up, pack our cars, and head south. The first trip was the most difficult. About an hour north of the coast we saw boats in the tops of the trees. We slept in a school yard in army type tents for 20 people with cots for beds and outdoor toilets. There was a community of volunteers, Presbyterians, Southern Baptist, Methodist, and some just men with chainsaws from further north. They just wanted to help.
There was one Mississippian who lost everything in the storm. He lived in a small two-person tent on the school grounds. He showed us the water marks near the top of the basketball goal that indicated how high the water reached. There was a larger building used for local residents without homes. Kids would sit outside in the morning, on bleachers, waiting for the school bus to take them to school for the day. I spent my days using an epoxy gun to fill holes in corrugated metal sheets. The sheets were bent and rusty, but building supplies were still difficult to find. Anything that could be used was being used.
On later trips, buildings with camp style rooms were built and used for the volunteers. There was a church which fed volunteers free lunches. They only asked for donations. On that trip a few of us worked to put a wood floor in a house. Many people were getting ready to move into new houses. Home Depot and Lowes opened stores and supplies were more available. There were still many vacant lots where houses once stood.
At forty-years-old I felt called to take a big leap. I sold or gave away everything I owned and moved to Africa. I spent five years living in one of the poorest places in South Africa, two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and three years as a missionary. Many people thought I was crazy. But I thought this would be the greatest adventure of my life. I was excited, ready and more than willing.
In the Peace Corps as a volunteer, I lived with a local family. They had a three-bedroom, two-bathroom concrete-block house with corrugated tin roof. I stayed in an exterior room usually used for boys who were becoming men. I cooked my own food, watched their TV, all three channels. I rode the local vans used to transport 15 people at a time. It was a safe place for me to stay.
I was assigned to four elementary schools as a teacher’s aide. The local principal had asked for a computer person to manage the computers being donated to his school. The company donating the computers disappeared in the night with the computers. I needed to find something else to do. The HIV/AIDS pandemic was killing many people and there was little understanding of what was causing the deaths. At a principal’s request, I began mentoring older teenagers on HIV/AIDS education. I knew almost nothing on the subject. But over the course of two-years they changed from people writing poems about AIDS being Americas Idea to Destroy Sex to talking about the medical conditions of the disease. They went into schools and gave presentations on the ways of contracting HIV, the progression of the disease, and how to avoid being infected,
I also offered workshops to teachers on using available supplies in their community, such as making puzzles from empty washing detergent boxes. There were workshops on using science equipment in classrooms. I started a small library in a closet by asking friends from America to donate from their bookshelves and include a dollar to cover shipping cost. I learned what it feels like to have all your underwear hanging on the clothesline for the world to see. I shared forks with others at school meals, not everybody got to share the silverware. I attended a funeral service for a child under a tree. Not being able to understand the language, I sat and watched ants crawling up and down the tree.
The people were poorer than poor. The roads were dirt. Crime was rampant. People were constantly dying from AIDS. Where I lived the eldest son was shot and killed. I sat with the mother until her family arrived. I saw high-school girls openly having affairs with married teachers. I watched a woman get off a fifteen-passenger van and carry a TV on her hear as she walked home. Many of the people were kind and gracious. They danced, they laughed, they loved each other. They wanted better lives but there was not much opportunity for most of them. Although a few new mines opened, bring jobs, new business, and new houses.
When my time in the Peace Corps ended, I decided to stay as a missionary. I was attending an English-speaking Methodist church. We had a travelling preacher and fifteen members. They sponsored my visa as a missionary. I moved into a two-bedroom apartment, bought a pickup truck, fridge and washer, and still hung my underwear outside. I was able to travel more. There were many trips to Kruger Park, camping in the park, and riding the trucks during the days looking for the big five – rhino, lions, leopard, elephant, and buffalo.
I started offering Christian classes on future opportunities to teenagers, hoping to spark something that would improve their lives. A local Africana church asked me to prepare and teach workshops on orphans. A subject which I saw but did not know how to help. I traveled to many towns and cities to look through their libraries. After a few months I had a two-week workshop on orphans and vulnerable children. The church invited 30 people from the surrounding churches. We talked about communication skills, how to talk about difficult subjects, how two people can see the same thing and call it different things. We talked about what is a vulnerable child and what government resources were available to orphans. I brought in my TV one afternoon to show clips from South Africa’s favorite show, Days of Our Life. An American soap opera which everyone watched and talked about. We discussed good and bad communications skills on the show. Talked about how bad communication skills can create so many problems in a person’s life.
I knew a family of five orphans. Their mother died and the teenage daughter took care of her siblings. The children had different fathers. The daughter knew who the fathers were and frequently went to them to ask for money or food. I carried them food after my trips to the grocery store. It was never enough. I walked into their corrugated metal home, saw the dirt floor swept clean, and a framed picture of the risen Lord hanging on a wall. It broke my heart.
There are so many stories, so many eye-opening moments. Africa stole my heart. I would have stayed forever to help those people. I still tear up when I think about those years. But God brought me home to my old life, and old job. I arrived home with $2000 to my name. It took several years to reestablish my American lifestyle. But God has been good to me. I have been on many mission trips since returning.
I built a computer center in the back of a Catholic church in Jamaca. We brought the computers from America in our suitcases. In a Haiti orphanage, I helped build wooden benches, taught English classes, and watched children laugh at blindfolded teachers trying to hit the pinata we brought. I spent a week in a Kenyan children’s orphanage. A Kenyan woman, an accountant, decided she could not enjoy her life seeing so many orphans on the street. She bought land and began building a home for a few children. Now she has over 300 children, elementary and secondary schools, gardens, water pump well, and health care for the children. The workers cook porridge in pots the size of tubs. I helped serve the porridge for the evening meal to hundreds of happy orphans who sing about Jesus. It was a moment I will never forget. That Kenyan woman gave up everything and God blessed her beyond imagination.
I am one of those people. My heart breaks, and tears fill my eyes when I remember all the experiences God has brought into my life. I am greatly blessed. My gratitude towards God and the many things he does cannot be measured, What I know without any doubt is that those memories and experience can be yours also. There is no limit to what God can do or where he can lead you.
So, where do you want to go? With God it is all about walking one day at a time. From the daily bread provided to Israel in the desert to the daily bread in the Lord’s prayer. All you need to do is walk for today. He is gentle and patient. Take your time because he is not in a hurry. He knows when you are ready and what you are able to do.
It can start as simply as giving blood to the Red Cross. Cleaning out your closet and donating to the Goodwill. Dropping money in the Salvation Army Christmas bucket. You don’t have to jump in the deep end. You can wade in slowly. He will hold your hand. You may find yourself working at a soup kitchen or mentoring as an after-school tutor. Maybe your church needs more teachers for the children’s programs. Hospitals have programs for people to hold babies who need extra attention. Pray and ask Jesus for guidance.
One day you may find yourself dying and going to heaven with a grateful heart and a desire to stay on earth a little longer because you are not quite finished yet.