Home. The meaning is lost on me these days. The home I had for 32 years is now not my home. I've never not lived in Texas. But now, I live in Kenya. It's my home. It doesn't feel like it yet. But slowly, surely, it's settling into my mind and my heart. This is the place the Lord has called me to be at home.
For the last two weeks, a team of Naomi's
Village staff members have been exploring the meaning of home. We've gone into
some of the most desperate and impoverished areas near our new school campus,
and searched out the least of these. The families who have no hope. The
children who have empty bellies except for once a day, in the evenings. The
students who are in school, but significantly behind.
I can't explain the duality of emotion that
happens each day when we visit these homes. There's the excitement of possibility-
perhaps this family will be able to send all of their children to Cornerstone!
Their entire family would be changed, placed on a different path, for success
and a future, and learning that it was God who saw fit to make our lives known
to one another, as neighbors.
But there is also the heart wrenching despair
that threatens tears every time I stoop into a stick-and mud-doorframe. How
have these families survived like this? Yet they are smiling. They offer us a mug
of chai or a cup of hot water as a thank you for looking in on their plight,
desiring something better for their children, yet not knowing how to give it.
One child is seven years old and has not yet been to school. As we were
assessing his knowledge to decide what class we should place him in, I was
dumbstruck by the basic things he simply did not know. He did not know any
colors. He did not know any shapes. When I asked some of my coworkers about
this, how this was possible- they didn't really know what I was asking. So I
reframed my question: "When I was a little girl, before I was in school,
my parents would tell me- 'The sky is blue', or 'The grass is green' or 'A cow
says, "Moo."' This is how I learned basic knowledge. Are these parents
not doing this with their kids?" And the truth is, they don't. It's not a
cultural norm for parents to interact with their kids in those ways, to play
with them, to spend time with them, to talk to them and listen in return.
Parents give their kids directives, like, "Go pick three potatoes from the
garden," but the basic knowledge is left to the schools. And the public
schools here are failing. Miserably. So it's no wonder that as we search out
families with the highest needs (shelter, water, food, electricity), we are
also finding the greatest educational lack.
We are hoping to change the meaning of home. Knowing that our longing for home won't be completely satisfied until Heaven, we desire to present shadows of that home to families in the Rift Valley. We desire for these families to find a home with us, at Cornerstone. To belong. To know that God
has called us and them to work together to change the future of Kenya from the
inside out. To be in community. We can't do everything that needs to be done- but we can start somewhere.
And we believe that is in making a home for all of us, together, at
Cornerstone.
