Lessons are learned best from children...

When it rains here, you feel it deeper than your skin. It makes you shudder from the inside out. We were at the top of a mountain and the elevation must have been higher than we have been before because I can say I was actually cold. Mutete is a village we have never visited because it is one of the areas new to GFR. After our fundraiser in January, we added 250 new families to our sponsorship list. We had one corporation, The Morey Corporation, sponsor the entire village of Mutete, which has 20 families.

I interviewed them all and heard so many amazing stories. I’ll just tell one. One particular boy named Celestine has just turned 15. Celestine has flawless light skin and clear brown eyes. He was an inch or so taller than me but his inner strength made him seem larger. His father was killed in the genocide and his mother died last year from “illness”. It is most likely that she died from AIDS as a result of rape during the genocide. As he spoke to me, he seemed a man taking life so seriously. He had on a tan, beaten up, primary school uniform. Next to him quietly stood a much smaller boy of 12, his brother Thecien, also in a school uniform. Celestine told me that he had quit school to put food on the table and send Thecien to school. There was no bitterness in his interview with me. He was glad to take the responsibility… as if he had been prepared for it his whole life. I am still processing that this evening.

We also visited Community Christian Churches orphan home! It was so thrilling to serve them. Such joyful sweet children… and even though the rain was pouring into their “house” through an old rusted tin roof, they laughed and smiled as if they had everything they needed in the world.

I am struggling to understand the joy exhibited here. I am so frustrated with not eating cake or fast food. I am even complaining to myself during showers that are not hot or the water is not working, etc. People have NOTHING here. They have had their entire lives stolen from them… and they smile?? How?!?! I don’t get it. I want joy, but I am afraid to ask for it. If it takes so much sacrifice, I don’t think I want to tempt God! And yet, I am robbed of living a life FREE! Free to praise God regardless of the circumstances. I want to do that… I really do.

Today I want to thank the Morey Corporation as well as CCC Kid’s City for the amazing financial support you are giving to this new village. God is SO good!