Rescued!

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Our friends who are in Bulgaria helped us to see that the kids of missionaries are also missionaries.  We have prayed for our kids to be good missionaries in whatever way they can because the call is for all of us to be caught up in the Story of a God Who Rescues.  Last week I saw part of that answered.

So, Man Cub gets incentives for doing some extra work ($$).  He also gets fined as penalties on work undone.  So one day I looked in his little rock-star wallet to dig out 50 shillings.  And I was surprised to see 2000 shillings (about $20)!  So I asked where it came from and he answered that his little friend, Kip gave it to him.  Well Kip is a local boy and in the local economy 2000 shillings is about 1/3 of his school fees, no laughing matter. So I, together with Kip’s mom and dad, had to investigate as to how that money came around.

“How did you get 2000 shillings?” The dad of Kip interrogated.  He proceeded to explain to us that a stranger had given it to him with the instructions “take this money to your best friend and say let’s go to Nairobi together”.  The stranger was another boy with a man and a car and a woman standing down the road.   

This was attempted kidnapping.

Kip was totally naïve about strangers and he took the money and ran to our house to bring it to his buddy.  Thank God that we were at home and the boys were able to just stay and play here together.  I don’t know what happened to the strangers that day.  I didn’t even know what was happening at that time.  Man Cub certainly didn’t know that he was playing a pivotal role in saving Kip’s life!  We were pretty passive players in the story.  But sometimes, perhaps all times, who a person is and who he has been, is much more important than anything he does. A little micro-story of rescue, inside a bigger Story of the God Who Rescues by sheer relationship to His Son.

Passover

8a.m.Good Friday.

They were out of school because it is Good Friday.  Man-Cub would say “It’s Good Friday because we are outta school”.  So they played to their hearts content in the glorious freedom of MK’s in Africa. 

5p.m.Passover. 

Tonight we got to participate in our first Passover dinner.  The kids watched Prince of Egypt and we are reading in a story bible about the Exodus.  It’s a different emphasis on the meaning of this day, but one I am glad to be connecting in the synapses of their heart and heads.  Freedom.  Deliverance.

7:30p.m.Two little kids falling asleep all over me at the church service tonight.  How am I going to get them home? Daktari was here with us a minute ago, but he was paged up to help a lady with pulmonary embolism who isn’t going to make it through the night.  Now the lights of the meeting room are dimming and the candles being extinguished and it’s raining- the blessed rain that makes such sweet melodies on these tin roofs.  How am I going to get these children home?

“I’m carrying you home baby”, I say as she feels the cold water from the sky hit her sweet little legs.  Two Kenyan defense forces security guards are patrolling the night with great big guns hanging around their necks.  They ask me “habari mtoto?”- How’s the child?  I tell them she’s just sleeping and thank them for their work here.  We appreciate them. 

I think about the Roman soldiers patrolling the night in Jerusalem, Mary and Jesus, the Pieta. We sang O Sacred Head Now Wounded up there in the meeting room on the hill, just inside the staff gate of the hospital. 

I think about Garissa, Kenya.  147 mothers wanting more than anything to carry their sons or daughters home from there. 147 fathers waiting more than watchmen wait for the morning to hear from a son or daughter that they will still be coming home.  These were the valedictorians, the top students in high school.  They have to work so, so hard to get to a university in Kenya.  Their families have worked unbelievably hard at raising funds to get a student through university in Kenya.  Now the families will be carrying them home for burial.

I cannot process this event.  I cannot fathom the shock and grief and outrage.  Writing helps.  But really I can only carry my babies home and be so thankful for their sleepies that keep them needing me.  Their little requests for water at night, for one more story and the contented sigh of well-entered rest inside the mosquito net keep my heart so thankful for them.  They have no idea.

10a.m.Tomorrow- we will get up and scramble around like crazy candy addicts searching for bright plastic eggs and try to connect it all somehow to Jesus. 

6a.m. Sunday- We will watch the sunrise over a big wooden cross and stand in its shadow to decorate it with flowers.  147 mothers and 147 fathers will stand in the shadow of the cross somewhere all over Kenya with their shock and grief and outrage, and they will be able to look up at the Father who saw His Son die for them.  And He will say “I’m carrying your baby home too”.  Lord, please.  Let them see that you are there.