Precious Legacies- “Taking Flight
They come from two different parts of the world. But they are the same in many ways.
Musa, a five-year-old boy from Uganda, has an infectious smile that belies the tragedy of his early years. His father worked in the swamps cultivating rice. One day while working, he was attacked by a huge snake and despite the best efforts of a local clinic, he did not survive. Musa’s mother panicked. She dumped her two children with her sister; left, and never returned. The burden was too much for young Musa’s aunt, having several children of her own, and so Musa and his sister were taken to our Life of Favor Children’s Home in Jinja where Irene Nangobi and her staff have cared for them since.
Thousands of miles away in Andhra Pradesh, India in our Learning Estate Children’s home, 8- year-old Susmitha has not yet consistently found her smile. It’s not hard to understand why. Her father abandoned her before she was even born. He divorced her mother and remarried and has never returned. In India, when this happens, young mothers do not have a lot of alternatives if they are uneducated. None of them are good. All of them are labor, and quite often the job requires the mothers to travel hundreds of miles away from their children. Even then, the rate of pay is such that it is not enough to provide adequate care for themselves or their children. The children are basically raised by the neighborhood in the slums. Sometimes it is an aunt. Sometimes a grandmother. Other times, just an unrelated neighbor or neighbors.
These children wander the streets with little supervision and are harassed by authorities and business owners. They live without education. For all practical purposes, they are alone… without hope.
This was the life for Susmitha before she was taken to Learning Estate Children’s Home.
Yes, these two precious and innocent young children may be thousands of miles away on separate continents, but they share the sad title of the word “orphan”. Both are fatherless. Both have mothers who cannot or will not care for them, by no fault of their own. Simply by being born they inherited this title and all that goes with it as well as all that does not. Like two little birds trapped in a cage they were simply victims of the endless cycle within a culture of poverty; a fate shared by millions of children with different names but the same or similar circumstances.
There was a time in the early years of Orphan’s Lifeline International when most of the faces were like that of these two. So young, and just beginning to cross that first bridge in our programs wherein we strive to provide them with the most basic and critical of needs. Food, shelter, a warm, soft bed of their own. Their first Bible, mentoring, nurturing, love and security, knowing that each day there will be more of the same. It is during this time that we transition them from the hopeless feeling they have lived with to a life filled with hope. One in which they can dream about who and what they might become and slowly but surely, begin to believe in those dreams as they cross new bridges throughout their lives in our children’s homes.
When you have been doing this good work for more than 22 years, it means that it becomes generational.
Those children who were so young back then have grown to become young adults. Young adults who are just now coming into their potential because of the love you have shown them. It is those young adults that we have been writing about over the last several months. They were the first children in our homes and now they are crossing that final bridge before they go out on their own. They are finishing up their higher education and some have already crossed that bridge and have careers. And, in some cases, new little families of their own. Families that they are fully equipped to care for. Families that will be taught about Jesus and the steps to salvation. Families that will give back to their own communities. Families that, like all families, will have their own struggles but have been given the opportunity to begin life on an even playing field. The odds are no longer so deeply stacked against them.
And, as they move on in life, the space they once occupied is filled with new children, including Musa and Susmitha. This is true in all of our Children’s Homes around the world.
Just imagine what that must be like for these young children. Imagine how hard it must be at first. To trust that the bed is really theirs when they’ve only slept on the hard ground, often without so much as a blanket. Imagine what it feels like to have a full belly, perhaps for the first time in their life. Imagine what it must feel like once they realize that there will be good and nutritious food each and every day!
Imagine the wonder of having companionship and friendship every day in contrast to the utter loneliness that has been the staple of their existence. The warm feeling of a hug from a loving caregiver each and every day in contrast to the knowledge that their mother is far away and their father is gone forever.
What must it be like to attend school every day when they have watched other children heading to school in their uniforms, but never even dared to dream they would one day be in that school line? Just imagine a life in which daring to dream about anything good only ends in bitter disappointment where the dreams and hopes are consistently shattered.
I truly believe you have done what Jesus would do when it comes to caring for these children. You have shown them His love in your selfless actions and have forever changed the lives of many children over the past two decades.
And now, just like these two young children, there will be thousands more whose lives will be changed over the coming years.
As you watch them grow, never forget where they came from and what their lives would have been like if they had even survived. Only half of them would have. This is important because the pictures you see are those of smiling and happy children. Simply because, they are smiling and happy children. They have full, healthy faces and bright, sparkling eyes that reflect the love and care they have been given.
It’s easy to slowly forget that it wasn’t always that way. That these children you are watching didn’t used to play and feel carefree and secure. They didn’t go to school and they didn’t attend worship service. They didn’t know God and they didn’t know Jesus. They just existed and barely so.
It wasn’t all that long ago that they were in those cages. Trapped in a dismal existence without any hope.
As this new generation begins their journey and cross the bridges you build for them, always keep those cages in mind. Never forget that without you, the doors to the cages of poverty that imprisoned their mind, body and souls would have never opened.
But now they are free… and they will take flight.