The Heart Of The Slums

I wish we could show you everything we've seen today. I wish we could express it to you with words. I wish you could have looked through our eyes and seen the world as we saw it. I'm sure, thanks to Zach, you all will see a lot of pictures from this trip very soon. You'll see homes made of mud and drift wood, rivers of sewage slicing through dirt roads, people and pigs sifting through garbage like equals and many other things. We spent the afternoon in the slum visiting members of Tom's congregation. As you can imagine, Zach's camera was clicking away all the while as we walked from house to house. When we got home, we spent some time looking over photos (there are a lot of them and some are really good). Comparing what we'd experienced with the photos was interesting, and as I continued thinking about it, this idea of thunderstorms came to mind. That may seem like a really odd connection to make, and it probably is, but please allow me to explain ;P Thunderstorms don't come 'round very often in New Mexico, but I remember a few pretty good ones from back when I was youngster. At those times my room was completely blanketed in darkness. I would sit on my bed with my covers wrapped around me and I would stare out into the void. Suddenly, lightning would rip across the sky and cast a white glow all about my room, but just as quickly as it had come the light would go and everything would be dark again. In that brief moment I would catch a glimpse of my room, but I couldn't really see my room the way it truly was. I would often see things that weren't really there and miss things that would have been obvious if I had flipped the light switch on. I think that's what a lot of what we're going to share will be like. We can offers you glimpses, lightning flashes, of Korogocho and what it means for a child to grow up in such a place, but we cannot bring you their whole story, or even our whole story, in blog posts and facebook albums. We can only give you glimpses, and I'm becoming more and more convinced that even after all the things we've seen so far on this journey, all we really have is a lightning flash ourselves.

I think We The People have become numb to a lot of things in recent years. There are so many charities and organizations groping for our wallets and flashing pictures of starving children in our faces that we don't know what to do. Sure, we feel bad at first, but as the phone calls keep coming and the commercials keep rolling and another place needs my generous donation of $30 a month, we can begin to feel overwhelmed and even throw up our hands in despair. What can we really do in the end? We only have so much money to give! So eventually, our eyes begin to gloss over when we get a new request for aid, our ears block up when we hear about the starving kids in Africa. After all, we've heard it all before. We've done our part and that's good enough.
I'm not trying to bash Americans in this post, that is most certaintly not my goal. The things I've written above were my own thoughts, my mentality. When Tom came to visit us in New Mexico, I could look at all the pictures he had of the slum and the school and not really be phased because I'd seen similar things before.
But what about now? Now I'm here, and things that were only pixilated before are now full of life. It's one thing to see a crumbling town in a photograph, but it becomes a very different thing when the smells fill up your lungs, and you can taste rotting fish in the air, when little faces with little hands are reaching out to pull at your clothes, and you can hear their voices all around. It's one thing to see them on your TV screen, it becomes a very different thing when they can see you, too.

That's really what I was trying to get at with the whole thunderstorm spiely dealy earlier. There are so many things we're thinking and feeling right now that we just can't put it all into words. It's a little frustrating because we really want to share this journey with all of you, but at the same time it's really helped open my eyes. This trip has already blessed me in so many ways. I'm learning and growing along with precious children, and I'm being encouraged by men and women much wiser than I am. We have seen terrible things, places where using a term like "living conditions" would be ironic, but at the same time we've seen incredible faith and hearts of gold. Hidden in the slums of Nairobi are precious souls, some lost, some found, and all in need of a little more Jesus. We plan to spend all of Saturday in Korogocho and that is going to push us. We're over half way through our journey here and we cannot keep on through our own power. Pray that we never forget that the God of peace goes with us every step of the way, even to the heart of the slums.

P.S. I'll try to have an actual play by play of the day up in the near future (just for you, mom :D). That was what I'd originally planned for this post to be, but that fell apart pretty quickly, and now I'm afraid that it's too late for another post :P. I'm also not entirely sure that I thought this post throguh very well, so I apologize if it doesn't end up making very much sense. Anyways, new posts to follow shortly! Your continuing support has meant the world to us! Thank You and Goodnight!

Laterz,

Justin