God keeps his promises...

Its been many months since I last wrote a blog… and looking at my last entry of that horrendous day, I wonder if thinking of that each time I thought to write a blog played a part in my absence…

Much has gone on since I wrote that last entry, so very much. For when I wrote it I had 2 wonderful young men in my care, and now I close to 30 little ones who call me Baba, some very little, and some not so little! I have found love in that time too, in the purest of forms I have ever known… in my dear darling Fritzi, who stands by me daily in the struggles of life here, like a little ball of strength, light, love and wonder… always smiling, and always there to offer me the gentlest of touches when times are hard, and the best hugs when times are harder. 

I have come to know god all the more better in this time also, I have come to know my strengths, my weaknesses, and I have come to see my failings as a man, and my victories, both past and ongoing.. all the while my mighty father stands over my shoulder, waiting patiently for me to get it right…

Yes, there is too much to write about in the events of the last 9 months since my last entry, but let me tell you of my life of late, for I seen a lot, learned a lot, hurt a lot, angered a lot and loved a lot with it…

It begins with a conversation outside of supermarket in the local town. Fritzi, Emmanuel and I stand talking at night, before parting company for the end of a long day. “What do we need to do next” said Fritzi…. I glanced at her to see a hopeless looking boy over her shoulder… his clothes were torn, tatty and covered in dirt. “Talk to that boy!” I said with a smile as I took Fritzi by surprise…

We did indeed talk to him, and that night William aged 12 came into our life… we brought him to Uchira, and I thought that was that… another son to add to the collection!  But William was the start of a mighty journey god had in store for me…

Later that week, Rosemary who works with us was out doing her shopping one Sunday… with little reason she passed by an area to buy 5 very small potatoes…  This is something I am familiar with… I too go places in life, and when I get there have no reason to be there… so do something anyways, in this instance Rose bought enough potatoes to feed a mouse and no more… However when she walked back, she met a boy who called out to her… “Sister, please help me, I am so hungry…” is what he said… Rose called me, and sat for 2 hours on the street with a young man we now call Johni… With the arrival of Johni came the beginning of one of the most emotional months of my life…

To sit and hear that children are raped like they are in the local town, turned my heart and stomach in knots… to know this is happening close to where you are, and every single day… is a feeling I could I hardly bare. I wondered why god had never brought me to these boys sooner, why I hadn’t found them before now so I as I could protect them. Or why someone hadn’t gotten them into school, and away form the street before it even began, like the other 500+ we support in the children’s fund… the answer was and is simply that so few people serve god in the days and time we live in, that so few are available to help his children.

This is in part why I write this now, this is why I make my videos… for I know in my heart people are out there who can come and need a little push to do so, it was a youtube video that brought me here after all, and when I look at my children, I praise god with more than all I have for bringing me here as he did… but at the same time the hollow dark feeling of what if, is ever present…. What if I never came, what if no on was there for them… what if no one answered gods call, what if I hadn’t answered his call… right now there are children around me we cant get too, who suffer perhaps as others never heard their call, or answered it….

So if I know god at all, take my words as his call…. You are needed… in prayer if that is what you can offer, but if you can offer more than a prayer more than sharing some resources, which are just as important, for I can not do this at all without them…. But if you are one of the few without children, ill health or responsibilities, if your one of the few who can offer your to life these children, as you have yet to offer it elsewhere, offer it as I did, and in falling in love with me Fritzi has inadvertently done so with me… then you must give serious thought to giving it to them… for children like these need it, they need friends in their corner, they need a family, they need love, hugs and safety… and with millions of children here, its with a heavy heart I admit we will never get to them all…. but with more people on the ground, serving the love of the lord I feel so present in my heart as I write this… then they can be reached, in every country across the planet, they can be reached… but only if we reach out to those children, and believe you can truly help somehow with it…

As time passed, I realized the damage done to the hearts and minds of these boys was so deep, that there was little I could do to heal the wound. All I could do is be with them; and be sure that they know that I will protect them, with the same feeling I now know any parent must have, that they would give their last breath to keep harm from their children. They might be a different colour from I, but I will give all I have to see them healed and safe, and to me they are my boys, my own, and they always will be.

One of the boys in our care, the most severely abused told me one morning that he must return to the street… I was dumbfounded by this, I felt I had failed him, but without knowing what he was feeling after all he had faced, I took a chance with him. I told him I would drive him back to town if the streets was the home and life he truly wanted. He said it was… I think the pain of It all was too much to bare without some marijuana or alcohol to soothe the pain.. or mask it. I did as he wanted, and indeed took him town, I left him there with the heaviest heart I recall having in a long time… I returned home filled with anger, anger at god and his angels… “Where are you” I kept repeating in prayer, “Where the fuck are you!?” I sat day, and even my dear Fritzi could not talk to me, for god was churning my insides, unbeknown to I, he was about to start manifesting his glory from the chaos around and in me…

I played a song for god that day “Spanish train…” by Chris De Burgh, my father used to listen to It on a cassette, so I knew it well… A line in their goes “ look out lord, hes going to win” I left it on… and again taunted god with my anger, trying to force a reply from him somehow…

That evening, I reflected on a conversation I had with Johni… I had said to him, “one day I will open a center for boys and girls in town like you, when I do, will you move in..?” “Yes!” he replied…

I felt hopeless when I spoke that with him, for I had no means to do such a grand project, or energy or manpower I felt… but I remembered that evening, I do have god. If he’s not too pissed at me for calling him names all day that was… !

I called out to god, “Okay! I promise I will open a centre for boys like Johni…BUT!!! You have to show me your with me on this, no lazing around, I need a clear sign here” I asked for a donation of £500…. Not enough to open a centre of course! But his is me laying down a fleece as the bible would call it. Where the fleece is dry one morning yet the ground Is wet, and this gives direction and a sign or answer to the question…. £500 Is not a sum I had donated in ever I think… so I went to bed that night, told Fritzi what I had done, and tucked in for a restless nights sleep… The next morning, what is in my email… Donation from Lynne Fisher £500.00 … he answered my prayer and he did so oh so swiftly….

I called a meeting, “We are opening a centre for street children…” my staff just looked at me as if to say here we go again!! “God told me too” I said to them all… and with that, the hunt for a property began… we had no money, but we set away doing it anyways!

That afternoon I sat own and made a video, my heart was truly broken as i sat to record that video, and I think perhaps people saw that in a way, or perhaps just hearing what was going on broke their hearts as it had mine… for the support that came in was in itself a wonder to behold, and shows the quality of love humanity has rooted among its inequalities. In that video i spoke these words

“There’s no need for these children to suffer like this… all they need is a place to go… somewhere safe… There are people on this planet as I say this now who have the ability to fly here today and create such places… they have that ability but it sits dormant in their greed… in their uniformed nature… I wish I was such a person, to have such resources, to be able to do that within a week but I don’t. All I have is a camera and a YouTube channel. And what I do have is first-hand experience to have seen what happens to these boys. And sitting here right now I know that one of them is in that town and I don’t know what’s going on with him or what’s happening to him. But I know we love him dearly and there was nothing we could do to stop him going back to the street.” someone wrote them out on facebook, and I barely remembered they were my words until i read them…

48hours later, £3000 was donated for the center, the rent was covered! Now for staff I prayed…

By the end of the next week, another £4000 was pledged and £1500 donated…. We had enough to open a center with in 2 weeks of me whining at god all day about how rubbish he is!! (Don’t worry, iv apologized, a lot…!) 

… and after many ups and downs, annoying instances! Thefts! We moved our well loved but troubled young men into an old 26 bed hostel… All rooms had bunkbeds, mattresses etc too so that was a real help! Especially considering what happened next…!!

Less than 2 days after opening, I have chance meeting with a former street boy called Modest… Now 22 Modest had lived on the street for over 9 years, so knows every horror it has to offer… thankfully he was healed, and become a caring and light filled young man shall we say… “ I have 12 children I work with who live on the street” was his 5th sentence to me… he had no idea who I was, or what I had just opened I should add…. With in 10 mins of meeting Modest, he was in my car and we were out looking for children he knew…

That night 4 boys moved in, the youngest just 10 years old… he had been homeless for 4 years….

One week later, another 4 boys moved in, and half a week after that… I am writing this…. And there are more children on the horizon shall we say…

Now these boys didn’t just need safety, food, protection and love… they needed medical care, as all to often street children pass away to become an insignificant statistic or nameless coffin. One of our youngest boys is so close to death, I am still in shock as to how he has made it this far… for all my shouting at the angels, iv no doubt they were with this young man in abundance these last years… I forget how busy those angels must be, for we live on a planet where so many chase fame, and wealth and power… that they forget to see such children, or their duty as human beings to care for them, so I can only presume the lords workers do that job for us for now… This young man has HIV… now in HIV your CD4 measures the strength of your immunity, 1500 is a normal human level, below 200 is critical AIDS, his was just 17… he was to all intents and purposes in a failed body… Covered from head to toe in fungal infections, scabies and pneumonia to go with it… how his tiny frame carried these burdens without any immune system at all… is a miracle. I mean that, it is a miracle that he is alive, and a miracle we found him what might well of been just in time…

You see miracles happen all over the world daily, you just need eyes to see them is all… for those who don’t believe in magic, never find it… as mr Dahl once wrote…

So what about me, and how this is for me… being a father to boys who are so scarred, broken and abused that they would test the patience of the Buddha?  Well…. Its hard. Some days Fritzi and I leave as we get annoyed at them, and we realize when we do we are too tired to deal with them! Other days I see why we are there, why are doing what we do…

One such day, one boy who I will call Honest (but its not his real name), began to act out… this boy had been raped daily for a very long time. He had also been taught how to do that to others with it… but behind his 14 year old body, lay the broken eyes of a young child… and I saw those eyes over all else that day. He decided he wanted to beat people that day, he started several fights, tried to attack a boy with a garden rake and pushed another…. All the while I watched his eyes, they never once looked truly angry, they just looked to be in a great deal more pain than my body has ever known I suspect… Eventually he came out with a lump of wood the builders were using… I walked straight over to him, grabbed the wood and threw it to the floor… “Enough!” I shouted…. And took him to his room….

With in seconds this angry young man turned into the broken child whose eyes I had been watching all morning. He buried his head in my chest and wept like a small baby for some time… I held him until he calmed down, it felt like forever we sat there… It was his first real hug I suspect. “ I will always protect you Honest, from now on, I will always be here for you… Do you understand?” “Yes” he said…. I fought back my own tears as he wept some more… I could feel his torment, his pain… in my mind I uttered the words, “God be with us, please stand by us…”

“I love you” he said… in very broken English… He had seen Dominic, Akilli and Faraji say they love me when I hugged them, and I think he had learned it from there…. “and I love you too” I replied… “and I always will, until I am a Babu! Grandfather…” he smiled at that… and said “You Baba for me” Baba is father in Swahili… “If you want me to be” I said…. Again he held me tight with his head in my chest as if to say yes….

As I sat in the room, with the most troubled child I had come across weeping in my chest… I turned my thoughts to god, and all I could repeat like some sort of silent Mantra was “thank you god, thank you…”

Iv said this before, but I know I will be here forever now, I will never leave these children, and I will use all I have to keep them safe and loved and out of harms reach… and I can do that, as I know god will use all he has to do the same for me whilst I do, as he does for all who serve him…

So lay down a fleece, and find out where he needs you, be it at home, in prayer, caring for your children and teaching them well about service to others, or fund raising or talking to the lonely old man up the road…. What ever he needs of you, ask, let him show you, and be ready to serve…. You might find the more you serve others, the bigger the blessings he bestows upon you with it, for it is so in my life…

…this time last year, I had many struggles internally to deal with… I wanted to quit, walk away…. And I told god “I can’t do this alone, please…” he told me he would fix that… And so in time, he brought me my Fritzi…. and those struggles ended forever I suspect… God keeps his promises you see….if you keep yours, or at least try your best to do so…

…and if your filled with doubts, of I don’t know how to do this, where to start, or feel its to big a task and you’ve not the skills or education to do something… then your just like I was when I got up and decided to try and help, I had no idea how to do these things, I had no experience or no inclination to learn about it even… But that actually helps in the end… If you can go forward as a blank canvas for god to do his will with; your actually already half way there…

To steal the words from a towel I own, sent to me by knitting group in Glasgow “Some of the greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible” after all….

Love, light and gratitude from Feathers Tale everyone x