Changing my clothes

Today I was thinking to myself...I have nothing to wear.  I need a change of clothes.

While in Kenya, I met a Pastor of a tiny church in the slums.  Kibera slum is one of the largest slum areas in the entire world.  His name is Amos.  He worked at the orphanage my sister and I volunteered at in Nairobi.  He took us to his church on Easter Sunday, and I will never forget that day.  I can still close my eyes and hear the praises of the people under the tin roof.  It was pouring rain as the mud began to seep under our feet.  I can still smell the sweet scent of the rain mixed with sewage as it flowed past the church.  After the service we helped Amos bring out bags of old toys and clothes from the orphanage.  Before we left the States, we had received hundreds of items from our generous community for the babies at Hope House Orphanage.  We asked for support for our trip and also donations for the babies and what we received, was beyond what we had dreamed or expected.  In the weeks before the trip I would receive packages in the mail and on our doorstep daily.  I would open them to find tiny onsies, cloth diapers, bibs, blankets and so much more.  This was three years before I had my son,  but I felt like I was having a baby shower, and to be honest it was more special to me than my actual baby shower three years later.  It’s not that I didn’t love and gush over every gift that was given to us as we were about to become parents, it was just that I knew these babies and the mothers that abandoned them, or passed away, never had a baby shower.  My living room was soon over taken with piles upon piles of baby clothes.  Someone brought me all these matching blankets and hats knit by little old ladies that just knit them for babies that may need them.  I didn’t even know these women!

Needless to say I was inspired.  I had never raised funds or support for anything and I was blown away by the response. 

        Back to Easter 2008.  Because we were able to bring so many new things to the orphanage, Pastor Amos was able to take the used toys and clothes from the orphanage and bring it to the slums on Easter.  And he asked us to be a part of it.   When we opened the bags, it was a free for all and people were grabbing things faster than I could hand them out.  It was cuh-razy.  There was a small baby crying on the floor, practically getting trampled….I picked her up and watched as her mother dug through the pile, trying to find something that would fit her baby.  They looked like scavengers and I wished I could’ve just given them everything in my closet at home.  I thought of all the clothes that hung there at this moment that I never wore.  After her mother found some clothes she looked up and realized her baby was no longer there and I could see the panic in her eyes.  I quickly gave her a wave to let her know her baby was safe and she smiled at me.  It was a smile filled with gratefulness and it is permanently burned into my brain.  Another image I will never forget is of a little girl in the corner clutching a ratty old stuffed monkey.  She was not going to let that go.  It was the one thing she had escaped the madness with, and she wasn’t going to give it up.  I watched her pet her new stuffed friend and it took everything inside me not to burst into uncontrollable sobs.

 

The sermon we heard that day was on giving.  I watched as people gave what little they had and I thought about all the excess we have and how we hold on so tightly to what we “earn”.   That day I made a commitment to bring these stories home and share them with everyone I knew. 

When I returned to the States, I never was able to verbalize what I saw and how I felt.   I didn’t know what to say when people asked “how was Africa?” That was like trying to ask someone after they woke up from a near death experience “How was heaven?”  The reason we don’t know what heaven is like, is because we have never been there.  I couldn’t explain Africa to someone who had not been there.  Not everyone can go to Africa though, and not everyone is called to go there, so after years of trying to figure out what to do to help my friends there,  I am finally in a place where I hope I can give you a taste of what it was like.  Now I have something to say.  

Today I put on the same t-shirt and jeans I wear most days and I thought, I have so much so wear.