A New Horizon

For some, life is a journey that is uphill both ways. And sometimes, many times, it has very little to do with their own choices, but rather a matter of dealing with the hand they were dealt.

Now I don’t play poker, but if I did, I do know that I would rather be dealt one card shy of a full house than to have nothing that even resembles a winning hand.

The latter was, and is, the hand that Ann Langat was dealt long ago. 

Ann is 91 years old and lives alone in a slum in Kenya. She has no running water. She has no electricity. She doesn’t even have a toilet of any kind. She does have tuberculosis. She does have a tiny mud and grass shelter more fit for animals than humans. When we first learned of her plight, she had these things and the clothes on her back.

Ann has been a widow for many years. She raised both sons and daughters as a widow; doing the very best she could with the very limited resources she had available. Then, as children tend to do, they all grew up and got married. Then moved away. In a strange irony, Anne became a parent without the care of her children. 

There was no nursing home to go to. No government subsidies to care for her in her elderly years. No work for her broken-down body. Just her little mud hut and the random and meager gifts of food from neighbors in the slum.

Ann did her job as a mother. She raised her children and cared for them the best she could. She worked hard and loved them and watched over them as they slept. She nurtured them into adulthood and watched as one by one, they got married and moved away.

She sees them now and then. Even travels to them in another district because they rarely come to see her. For all practical purposes, Ann is simply alone. Alone with her thoughts. Alone with her memories and very little else. 

There are hundreds like Ann in the area. Alike in the sense that they are widows. But most are widows still trying to care for their children. For the most part they themselves are uneducated. Their children will be uneducated and the sad truth is, most are likely to experience great suffering in their lives. Most will live the same life of poverty if they survive. The boys will become men who fall prey to the norm for men of the cultures of poverty in Kenya. They will likely abandon their wives and young children. They will likely die young from AIDS. Such is the case far too often when they don’t know God and they don’t know Jesus.

For more than 20 years Orphan’s Lifeline has been caring for orphans. We always will for as long as this mission continues to exist. From its inception, this mission has focused on the belief that children are the future. That is pretty much a universal belief. But we also know that God loves everyone and that we are all children in His eyes. We also know that James 1:27 equates helping orphans and widows and keeping one’s self clean from the world as perfect religion. Simply put, both orphans and widows are the lowest of the low. Alone in the world without the means of properly caring for themselves. 

Quite often the word orphan in the Bible is interchangeable with the word fatherless.

Being without a father subjects these children to a life without proper nutrition. A life without proper instruction, education, security. Most often, a life without God. The absence of the father is the absence of the husband as well, and these mothers, whether abandoned or widowed, suffer the same fate as their children. A life without hope.

The COVID 19 Pandemic has had a huge, negative impact on global society as a whole. Millions have perished. Many more millions have lost their livelihoods and those already in poverty have been pushed even further into poverty. Their lives have become more fragile and desperate than ever before. 

Not long ago, I wrote of tragic opportunities discovered during this last year as we worked hard to modify our programs to continue to care for the orphans during the Pandemic. Now, at long last, the vast majority of the orphan children have returned to our children’s homes and it will be back to business as usual. 

But the tragic opportunities that were exposed still remain. And knowing what we know, seeing what we have seen, we can’t just go back to business as usual. There is a new horizon ahead.

We have already begun a pilot program in Kenya. Specifically, in the village where Ann lives. We are working with a young man named Harrison who is a native Church of Christ preacher in the area and who operates a small non-profit called simply, Acts of Charity. 

With Harrison acting as a coordinator, we have identified and approved several orphan and widow families for admission into our new program. The primary principles, philosophy and essential elements of this new program will be the same as our Orphan Sponsorship Program. We will seek to provide the orphans and widows with adequate shelter, proper nutrition and hygiene, education and spiritual education, etc.

Already there are several such families being cared for in this manner and life is changing dramatically for them. You can literally see a new-found hope in their eyes! Just like the orphans we care for in our homes, it will take time for trust to develop. It will take time for them to believe that it will continue before they truly feel secure. It will take time to teach them to read the Bibles we are giving them, but already they are receiving spiritual education.

In India, it won’t be long before the same new program is initiated. Two of our very trusted directors are in the process of figuring out the logistics and laying the groundwork for the new program. Soon widow and orphan families will be identified and sponsorships will begin.

Yes, for some it seems that life is a journey that is uphill both ways. For these families, born in a developing nation by no fault of their own, that has certainly been the case; and it is unfortunately the default life for most who live there.

For us it is yet another tragic opportunity in this mission to do God’s will as we approach this new horizon.