It was still early in the morning. The full force of the day’s 120-degree heat had yet to set in. I decided to make a morning run to the market while it was less than blistering out. Actually it would be more like an early morning stroll. The children were just beginning to stir, and the compound was still relatively quiet.
I slipped through the large, blue, tin double doors that hung precariously off wooden posts to form our front gate. I looked across the mounds and precipices that formed the road. Then I saw them.
A pair of young teenagers with an elderly grandmother sat in stoic stillness in the coolness of the shade of our fence. As greetings are important in our culture, I bent down to shake their hands and offer my hello.
“Can you help us?” the young man asked.
Telling them that I was just on my way to the market would not work in this context. Sometimes love is inconvenient and interrupts your morning plans.
“What can I do for you?”
The fifteen-year-old boy looked intently into my eyes. I looked back into his and saw a young man much older than his years peering into my soul. He introduced himself as Elijah (not his real name). He went on to explain that he and his sister had lost their father and were living with a grandmother who could not care for them. If they had to return to the village they could not continue their schooling.
Thousands of children in Sudan cannot attend school. Our home exists for the worst-case scenarios, and I saw no apparent risk to the safety of these children. According to my thought process, they were not in immediate jeopardy and did not qualify for our home. But God had different thoughts on the matter.
They saw my hesitancy, and tears sprang to their eyes at the thought of being resigned to the village and no education. Elijah’s younger sister, Beth (not her real name), handed me a dog-eared, faded photo of their father’s funeral. A younger version of the two in front of me stared out from the picture, their faces flat and expressionless, their eyes filled with grief.
Papa, what are You doing? I silently prayed.
Take them in. They are to be part of your family, and they will be a great blessing, was His answer.
I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Beth wanted to be a nurse. Elijah said he hoped to become a doctor and pastor. I saw destiny written on their lives. So I said, “Yes. Welcome home.”
Even when something does not fit our criteria, even when we think we do not have any more room, even when it does not go with our plan, love makes a home. We must then throw out our plans and limits and yield to His limitless love.
Later that week I was on my way to see about parts for repairing our delinquent generator. As I picked my way through the uneven terrain, I spotted a swatch of fabric on the side of the road just by our gate. It was a small scarf of deep purple with gold embroidery that looked as if it would be more at home in India than here. I have no idea where it came from. It was definitely not native to Sudan. It was filthy and matted.
Jesus told me to pick it up and take it home. He wanted to show me something.
What? You have got to be kidding. Are You sure? Well, okay then.
This was not completely out of the ordinary, as God often speaks to me through simple things in the middle of my everyday life. Yet questions ran through my head. Could it be salvaged? Why did it catch my gaze? Was it even worth the effort? What was Jesus trying to show me?
When I got home I took the mangled fabric and soaked it overnight in washing powder and water. I then scrubbed it and set it out to dry. In the space of less than 24 hours it was transformed into something beautiful, displaying colors of royalty.
As I looked at it glistening in the sunshine the following morning, I knew I was looking at an object lesson from heaven. The smiling faces of Elijah and Beth entered my mind. Beth had become our worship leader and Elijah a cherished big brother for our children. They truly were a princess and a prince of their Papa in heaven.
Love has eyes to see royalty along the roadside and glory hidden in the unexpected gutters of life. Jesus desires the destinies of those who have been trampled and tossed aside to be restored to their full beauty. His love washes us clean, and His grace makes us new. He calls each of us in from the roadsides of life to come home to His heart. And until we find our place in His heart, we will never truly be at home.
Papa’s Place
Moving to Sudan has been an opportunity for me to learn at deeper levels the reality of the Kingdom in my own life. One of my greatest lessons has been discovering more about the heart of God as my Papa. In my head, I always believed in Him as my Father in a generic sense, but recently my heart has begun to embrace what it means to be His daughter who is simply loved.
A few weeks after arriving in Yei, I found myself in way over my head with building estimates, quotes and details. I do not do numbers. Math was my worst subject in school. Furthermore, the building God had provided for us to rent defined fixer-upper, and I had never before renovated anything larger than a small bedside table. Suddenly I was swimming in numbers and projects in a foreign culture and language. How I wished my earthly dad could have zipped over from Florida to manhandle it into a semi-livable state. He can fix anything! I, on the other hand, have managed only to do myself bodily harm with a hammer.
I looked at the crumbling walls, the hideous yellow peeling paint, the filthy floors, the lack of running water and electricity, and I just about cried. I had signed the lease in faith. I did not even have money to make the down payment, let alone pay the rent and fix the place. I hired our first contractor in faith as well. Soon the bills came flooding in.
I woke up one day feeling completely overwhelmed. Had I bitten off more than I could handle? Had I missed it somewhere? A one-word prayer escaped my lips. “Help.”
I rolled out of bed in the dimly lit mud hut I was renting at the time. I took my iPod and journal to the window and decided to spend the morning with Jesus. Yet the only prayer I could summon was still, “Help.”
He did. He reminded me why I was wading through a bog of details that stretched my faith and patience almost to a breaking point. Soon we would open our doors (once we reattached them to the building, that is) and fill those rooms with the children He brought to us.
How clear it became! Décor was on my mind, so Jesus met me right where I was! He showed me a vision of long hallways with beautifully furnished rooms, each distinctively decorated and waiting for its occupants. Every doorway and room called out, longing for the ones for whom they were created. His attention to detail was meticulous. Each room was furnished not with mere functionality, but with what God knew its occupant would most enjoy!
I looked around at my sparse mud hut and laughed. The contrast could not have been greater. But I got the point. He reminded me that in the same way we were preparing a house, Papa had prepared His place, too! I was longing for our house to be ready and filled with orphaned and abandoned children. I was longing for them to discover that they were actually chosen and adopted as dearly loved sons and daughters. If I was longing for these children I had not yet met, then how much more did our Father long for us? The longing for His house to be full pulsates with every beat of His heart.
In His Kingdom no one is turned away, and no one is left outside. No one is left to wonder if they belong. His love finds us on the roadside and brings us home to become royalty in His house.
I would not invite the children I was gathering to come home to a place with holes in the roof and rats nibbling at their toes. I would not send them to filthy, unfurnished rooms. I would not invite them home only to hand them a mop and bucket and tell them to clean their own rooms, build their own beds and find their own food. No. I was actively preparing night and day to paint and clean and build and furnish the house with all they needed. I did not want these children to come and feel as though they had to earn the right to live in the house. I wanted them to know they had the right to be in our house because we invited them to be part of our family. We invited them to come home.
Tears began to stream silently down my face as a greater understanding of my Father’s love for me grew in my heart. It dawned on me that I had in the deepest part of my heart misunderstood what it means to come to His house.
Part of my heart still felt and acted like an orphan. I did not truly believe I was created simply to be loved as a daughter by my Papa in heaven. I had felt it was too good to be true that Papa loved me just because He loved me. I was busy looking for strings and expecting the unspoken catch to emerge. Deep down I did not really believe He wanted me to live in His house, so I was constantly trying to prove myself and earn the right to be there. I felt that if I worked hard and performed well enough, I would be accepted. If I did not, I just might wind up back on a roadside somewhere.
And suddenly here I was in the middle of the African bush. Here I was scouring the countryside looking for children who needed to live with us, and I still had remnants of orphan thinking in my own heart. I was a little girl who needed to know that she, too, was welcome and safe in Papa’s arms. I had not been invited to His house just to pick up a broom and be put to work. I did not have to be good enough to earn my keep. Papa began that morning to show me the place He had prepared for me as His daughter. I was worth dying for. Is there any question that all He is and all He has is mine?
In His total kindness, God allowed me to come to an impasse in my journey so that He could bring a greater level of freedom to my heart. I realized that because I was not fully at home in His house, I was struggling to believe He wanted to make His home in ours.
An unspoken weight of worry was pressing down on me. I would have never said it at the time, but it was there. Where would the funds come from? How would it all happen? What if I failed and fell flat on my face? As I tried to make the whirling in my brain stop, Jesus dropped a verse from John into my mental fray: “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).
Really, Papa? If You and Jesus are moving in with us, then I guess You have our needs covered, right? The heaviness of having to figure it all out lifted just a fraction as I thought about this truth.
I was preparing a place for His children to live. The doors were being attached to their hinges, the floors cleaned, the walls painted. It was His promise from heaven into which we were stepping—His promise that a place would be made ready to welcome each child He brought us, His promise of home.
Because He Loves Us
Simon and Steven (not their real names) are rascals. They are also really great teachers. These two little guys have taught me a lot about the face of God’s love and the heart of our Father.
One desperately hot day not too long after we first opened our doors, an older man came to visit. Wearing a tattered shirt that almost looked as though it had a clerical collar, he had his two sons in tow. Their mother had gone insane, and he was unable to care for them.
I looked at the six- and ten-year-old boys before me. Fear and shame were etched into their eyes. Both of them were wearing rags that looked as though they would disintegrate if you so much as touched them. Their minds seemed to be held captive in the grips of hidden darkness. What would it mean to love them as Jesus did? I knew they were to move in with us and come home.
As the days and weeks progressed we learned much more of their story. Shortly before coming to us, Steven had been disrespectful to a caregiver, and that person put burning meat from the fire directly into his mouth. It was held there until Steven’s mouth was seared. He could not eat or speak for weeks. He was regularly beaten and lived in constant terror. He did not know what a safe place felt like.
Steven began to show signs of serious anger issues and started acting out and fighting. In the sweltering afternoon heat one day I went to talk with him and decide what to do. I saw haunting dread in his eyes as he flinched away from my gaze.
Steven was seated in a blue plastic chair just behind our mud hut kitchen. His head was down, and he refused to look at me. He wore the expression of someone expecting great pain. I stooped down lower than he was and looked into his eyes. He had hit one of the other boys, and while this needed to be addressed I knew it was not the time.
I peered into his face and said, “Steven, I love you. You are loved. I love you because I love you. God loves you. He is not going to hurt you. We love you. We love you.” Over and over again I said it until his eyes melted into puddles of tears that soaked my shoulder as I held him.
That afternoon, as I explained the love of Jesus, Steven gave his life to the One who will never hurt or abuse him. He met the only perfect Papa there ever was, is or will be. He began learning that he, too, was welcome in Papa’s house by seeing that he was loved and at home in ours.
Why did I love Steven? Why was he welcome and wanted? Was it because he was the best behaved and the brightest achiever? Was it because he was incredibly gifted, with a budding international ministry? Not at all. I loved Steven because I loved him with the love of Jesus. Period.
Steven has been another step in my learning about God’s unfathomable love. God loves me because He loves me. Until I really understood that I still felt like an orphan, even in Papa’s house. But as my heart laid hold of more of His unconditional love, finding home became only a heartbeat away.
Victory Dances and Marshmallow Roasts
We have a lot of fun in our family. We are not all serious and somber. We love to laugh, and some of our everyday world is really humorous. This place in Papa’s heart has been one of great joy.
In our first month or so of operations, a visitor brought us several bags of marshmallows. Our children had never seen or tasted anything like that before. One night we made a fire in our front yard. We grabbed a poker and the marshmallows and went to town. High-pitched giggles reverberated throughout the compound as our family enjoyed its first marshmallow roast. It was an instant hit.
Several months later a new supply of marshmallows was delivered, and we decided to have another impromptu marshmallow party. Our kids began to shout in anticipation of the gooey white sweetness that awaited them. What I did not take into account were the eight visitors staying on our compound at the time.
We were in the middle of running a discipleship course, and eight soldiers from the southern Sudanese military were living and studying with us. This discipleship class was a bit of a holy experiment: What would happen if you put together thirty people from differing tribes and denominations, some of which did not like each other, and taught them about love and the Kingdom?
Each morning and afternoon for two and a half weeks, 22 local students joined the out-of-towners who were staying with us for a real-life journey into the heart of our King. Together we had to face our fears and pain to choose forgiveness and freedom. Jesus came and showed us that we were to be like the woven grass mats we use here. The strands of our tribes and church expressions were to be woven together, over and under, to become a demonstration of His beauty in the earth. We were never to lose who we are, but in love and honor our uniquenesses were to be woven together with other’s differences, allowing God to make something much greater than we could ever be in ourselves alone. It was a precious time of learning how to love and live in a Kingdom bigger than all of us.
Our children eagerly pressed around the fire, all wanting their special treat. Our military observers assessed the situation from a safe distance.
“Mama, they are eating fire,” they said to me. How do you explain a blazing marshmallow to someone who has never seen one before?
“Well, it is more like soft sweets that you heat up. They are squishy and sugary on the inside. You might like the taste. Why don’t you try one?”
A fleeting look of concern indicated that this was a fearful proposition. The unknown can be a scary thing in any culture. But our tall warrior friends were not to be shown up by our three-year-olds. If our children could conquer the flaming white puff, so could they. Provoked by our fearless children, they embraced the challenge one by one.
I will never forget the looks on these soldiers’ faces as we handed them the fiery balls of fluff to blow out. As our first guest made the plunge into the great unknown, he positioned his mouth carefully so that only his front teeth touched the marshmallow, tentatively nibbling the smallest bite he could manage. Our kids were consumed with hilarity at his expression.
“Mmmmm,” he said in relief after a few seconds, “tastes like banana. It’s good.” He popped the remaining marshmallow in his mouth and asked for seconds. The rest of our visitors followed suit. It was not exactly trial by fire, but almost.
Our children began to beat out familiar rhythms on our plastic jerry cans and sing their hearts out to Jesus. Worship was punctuated that night by our visiting soldiers celebrating their edible victory with majestic, twirling, tribal dance leaps around the fire. It was a sight that is forever etched on my memory: little children, village mamas and great big soldiers all dancing and spinning and beginning to find who they were in His heart.
Who is afraid of a marshmallow? Seriously? But some fears with which I struggle look equally ridiculous when I realize that I am loved and am seated in Papa’s lap. It is all a matter of perspective. If I let it, fear can keep me from tasting the goodness of our God and finding my home in Him. Fear can make marshmallows into monsters. But in His love, it has no place to operate.
That night one of our local students went home to lead a neighbor witch doctor to Jesus. This young man looked past his fear and saw the heart of Jesus. God allowed him to extract the precious from the worthless and be His spokesman. Perfect love truly does drive out all fear.
Once again little children showed the way to freedom and the heart of the Father. It was they who pointed the way home.
Washed Away
Our home is always open and often has an assortment of unexpected visitors. One afternoon a friend from the Mundari tribe to our north came to visit unannounced. He brought his wife, his baby and a young girl from their village with him.
It had been a long, three-day journey. They came all that way to bring to us Michal (not her real name), a sweet, spirited teenager. She had an incurable rare skin disease, and the doctors said there was no hope. They knew we prayed for healing, so they came in faith.
Her eyes were listless. Her skin was covered with pockmarks and sores from a severe, rare kind of scabies that had progressed so violently that it was attacking her internal organs. She was in great pain. Her condition rivaled some of the cases of leprosy I had seen in India.
Immediately we prayed. There was no visible change. We invited them to stay for several days as we continued to trust Jesus for her healing. Michal spent the first two days curled up on a mat in agony. The second night she was seated on a step in our courtyard. I went over to her, put my arm around her and held her.
A year ago I would have given up. It is difficult to pray and not see an immediate miracle, especially if it means watching someone suffer. But through times of contending without seeing visible breakthrough, God had been teaching me: Beloved, your job is to love. My job is to heal. Instead of asking only what it would take to see a miracle transpire, I was learning also to ask, Papa, how can I love this person like You do?
My heart was overwhelmed with compassion. As I held Michal, everything in me wanted her to know the Jesus who is life and healing. I asked her if she had met Him before. She looked surprised. “No, Mama,” she said with a wide-eyed innocence that was priceless.
“Sweetheart, He loves you. Jesus came to earth to show us how much God loves us. He paid the price of every wrong thing we have ever done. He wants to heal you. Would you like to know Him?”
Heaven invaded our little dirt yard that night as Michal gave her life to Him. I went on to tell her about Papa’s house and more about His love for her. In the middle of it all, God gave me the mental image of Naaman the leper, who was healed as he bathed in the Jordan River.
Jesus whispered, Baptize her, and she will be healed.
I explained about water baptism, and she willingly agreed. The following day an entourage of our children went to the brackish pond in which we baptize. How disease-contaminated, leech-infested waters would be helpful for a skin disorder I was not sure. But God is God, and I am not! Michal was fully immersed. Standing there willfully ignoring whatever was slithering around my leg, I again prayed a simple prayer of faith for her healing as she re-emerged from the water.
“Jesus, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You for what You paid for on the cross. We call it into being now in Michal’s body. We command all parasites and disease to leave her skin and organ systems and speak complete restoration to every cell in her body.”
Again we saw no visible or instantaneous change. I left the baptism site for another meeting, continuing to thank God for what He was doing even though we could not see it yet. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. I knew we had done what Jesus asked, and He was pleased. The rest was up to Him.
When I returned home later that evening, my first stop was to check on Michal. Her face was shining. The sores that had covered her body were virtually gone. The swelling had reduced, and the scarring had dissolved. It was like looking at a different girl! Full of energy and life, she literally bounced out of the door to join the rest of our family for worship.
Michal, too, had come home. No, she was not moving in to live with us, but she had found her home in His heart. In the middle of her pain and sickness, she encountered the One who is love, and He healed her.
Papa, would You come and baptize me again in Your love, wash away the past and make all things new?
Mascara and a Machete
I never thought I could add land surveyor to my résumé, but in Sudan anything is possible. After God blessed us with our land we decided it would be a really good thing to find out with some accuracy how big it was and see if our proposed development plan would work. Having the correct measurements laid out before we began to build was somewhat important so that we did not put our first children’s house in, say, the area for the administration office block. After three tries at hiring contracted workers to measure our land, three very different figures stared at us from their reports. We finally set out a-bushwhacking ourselves to measure it.
Tito, Eudita, Peter (our driver) and yours truly set off with a panga (machete), some paint, a hammer and, of course, the measuring tool of choice, a fifty-meter tape measure. It was a bonding time—one of those postcard moments that leave an indelible impression on your memory because of their absurdity. A tape measure?
There I was wearing a party skirt in the middle of the bush measuring our perimeter with a tape measure. The thought of it still makes me laugh. We giggled and sang, danced and prayed around the barely fenced periphery. It was a trek into the realm of the peculiar. Forty acres and many laughs later the mission was accomplished.
As I walked around our land with our Sudanese family, I really felt as though it was a homecoming in many ways. It was a beautiful day where the blue sky was rivaled only by the green bush and red dirt. Mango trees and coconut trees dotted the horizon. Birds chirped, and butterflies danced across our path. A random set of mud huts turned the scene into something out of adventure travelogues.
I had come home in more ways than one. I no longer felt the need to fit into someone else’s box of missions or ministry. I was beginning to live loved by Papa. I was encountering a freedom to be myself even in the middle of the bush, all the while loving and honoring the people around me. If I wanted to look nice and dress up to go bushwhacking, I could. If I wanted to wear mascara, I could. I might live in the bush, but I did not have to look like it. God’s Spirit offered freedom, and that freedom came from having a heart that had found its home in the Father’s love. Everything else was just peripheral.
Religion is adept at building boxes and selling them as prime real-estate commodities for our hearts. Expectations create icons in which we live in a constant dance of conformity. What reputation am I measuring up to? Comparison is a compromise that can put us at risk of becoming an echo of someone else’s song and losing the voice God gave us.
I am most fully effective when I am who God created me to be. I was not created to live in a box but to live in Papa’s house. His house is where I am invited to become fully who He is calling me to be. He does not have cookie-cutter children.
It may seem silly, but standing waist deep in the bush in a party skirt wielding a panga felt like freedom. It was a little picture of the truth that when we do find our home in Jesus’ heart, every part of us can be fully alive at the same time. God used mascara and a machete to call me deeper into living a life unboxed, free to respond to His love as I fully find my home in Him.
Visited by Jesus
Our older boys amaze me. They each have stories that are worthy of feature-length films. Seventeen, eighteen and nineteen years old, these boys have lived a journey that would make Hollywood take notice. But until now their stories have remained hidden threads in the fabric of a nation recovering from decades of war.
Their memories are reminders that the war was not so long ago. It was not so far away. And it was real.
Three of our boys came to live with us from a mountainous, isolated, landlocked region that borders southern Darfur. The people there were heavily affected by the war and experienced dynamics similar to those now happening in the neighboring region of Darfur. But for the most part, the pain of the peoples there was largely unseen by the outside world.
The childhoods and homes of these young men were decimated by war. As young as eight, nine and ten years old, they would run into the caves with the women when the armies came and hide there for weeks at a time, braving the darkness amid poisonous snakes and deep crevasses with no light and little to no food. All the while bombs surrounded them, and they feared they might never see their loved ones again.
Yet the faith of these boys is inspiring:
Mama, God did not forget us. He took care of us. The antinofs would come. You could hear them coming a long way off. They would drop bombs that would explode, and then people would get sick. Our skin would begin to burn. But God protected us. No one died. The northern armies would poison our wells. We had no other source of water. So we just prayed and drank the water anyway. And no one even got sick; it just cleaned out our intestines.
Their stories unfolded night after night as we sat around drinking our cau-cau (local coffee) by the fire. Their “man council,” as they dubbed it, became a time for recalling God’s faithfulness and probing into the deep issues of life around them. It was a time for daring to see. Home has become a favorite topic. You can understand why. Can you imagine what it means to find home when your world is at war? If ever I need a reminder of God’s promise to make His home with us, I have to look no farther than these boys’ stories of faith and God’s faithfulness.
One Sunday morning I awoke to hear that one of these boys had had a dream the night before. Following are his own words describing that dream:
So, it was last night when I had a good dream that we were visited by Jesus. Really it was just by the gate. We were sitting with these children here, and Jesus came, and everybody was scared. He told us not to be scared because He is our brother who always stays with us every day here at the compound. He has just come to visit us. He is sent by our heavenly Father to bring for us His greetings.
I told you greetings are important in Sudanese culture. Even God brings them when He visits here. He understands where we live.
Not only does Jesus want us to find our home in Him, but He also desires to make His home with us. How do I know this? He walked onto our compound and visited one of our boys to tell him so. He wants us to be at home in His presence and from there become the face of His love to a homeless world.
True worshipers worship in spirit and truth