WHAT’S IT FEEL LIKE?

We just came back “home” to Swaziland, Africa, after spending a few weeks in wonderful America—land of over-choice.

What a feeling to hug necks at the airport and to embrace the rest of the family and ‘Cup Team at Ben and Susan’s house. The grandkids hugged us long and hard.

We know the challenges and risks these courageous and industrious people have faced while we were gone. Jean and I wept and laughed and thanked God for the privilege of ministering here.

Then as we toured the AIDS orphans CarePoints hundreds of kids came running, giggling, and singing to us. Kids that are alive because we do what you help us do here. Try to describe that feeling.

And then it sneaks up on you. You begin to look past the giggles and into so many fevered eyes. It wrings your soul.

Some familiar faces are gone. New ones have come.

And then it all seems to center-up with a young lad at Mangwaneni. 'Cup Nurse Sister Teresa shows us the sores in his mouth and throat and on his body. He has AIDS. His guardians will not let us take him to get the ARV medicines that can improve and extend his life.

I struggle against unholy feelings toward the cruel ones that have told us to just let him die.

The newspapers tell of raped children, little ones thrown into toilet pits, and some deliberately scalded with boiling water--precious little lives Jesus died for.

How do you deal with the feelings that brings?

Maybe it’s more than a grammatical curiosity the “suffer” in the verse that says to suffer the little children to come unto Him is a homonym for pain and travail.

You already know I’m crying as I write this. I’m crying out to God to please help us do all we can to reach every child possible .

What a wonderful, horrible place Africa is.

God, please let me be a missionary to Africa the rest of my life.