Eat Mud

I remember when I was a little girl my sisters and I had a tree house in the back yard. We designated an area in the tree house that was our official “kitchen”. We tied a sand bucket to a rope that we attached to a tree branch in the kitchen and would drop the bucket down and whoever got the short end of the stick would have climb down and go fill the bucket up. We would fill the bucket up with white sand (sugar), black sand (chocolate) or water (oil). We then had a little pan that we would mix them in and we would make “cakes”, well mud cakes anyway. We loved doing this because we felt like we were grownups in our kitchen. However, we would never eat them… I mean even at less than 10 years old we all knew not to eat mud. Mud was gross, it made you sick, and it left a gritty taste in your mouth (so mom said). I never really thought about this again until recently I had a friend that emailed me a link to a story by BBC news.
(see full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8682558.stm)
It was a story that hurt my heart to read. To briefly sum it up it talked about families in the slums of India that literally eat mud. They don’t eat it because they are pretending to make a cake; they eat it because they have nothing to eat. It tells a story of a family who usually has one meal a day but recently has gone to sleep with no meals, just mud. I couldn’t believe this! I mean I expected the potbelly kids and situations like this from Africa, but from India! I didn’t realize that 1/3 of the very poorest people in the world live in India.

As usual my mind went to the kids who don’t even have parents. If these children who do have parents eat mud what do the ones who don’t have parents do? In 2007 UNICEF estimated that there were more than 25 million orphans in India with only just over 3,000 adoptions taking place in 2006. Not only are these children not having anything to eat, they also don’t have anyone to care. I recently heard a message about orphans. In this message it talks about when this couple was trying to adopt and the long process they had to go through. They talked about how they were assigned a child and shortly before they were able to go get the child it died. He said this is common and happens sometimes in adoption process, however, one thing he said really stood out to me. He said before they were matched if that little girl would have died she would have had no one. However, since they had been matched to her she didn’t die without anyone caring. She died having a mom and a dad and a family caring for her. I thought this was so profound as I don’t often think of orphans as having absolutely no one. If there are hundreds of families in India eating mud, how many more children are there that are in that situation and no one cares.

You will never guess the most amazing part of this story. The friend who told me this is from India. They felt like for the past year God was telling them to go back to India and start Bible Institutes. These places will be a place where anyone can walk in and be taught the bible (NT or OT) overview in about an hour. They told me how there were so many people coming to know Christ through this because they were just waiting to hear the news. However, they ended their email to me saying “pray for me, I know that in doing this there will be much persecution and loss of life.” That is someone who understands the heart of God. That is someone who understands families eating mud, children becoming orphans from a parent dying of aids, and hearts being forced into Islam. They are truly someone who understands India and they are willing to risk their very life to show them Christ. I’m both convicted and saddened. I’m convicted as to whether I would be that willing to walk into a situation knowing I would most likely be murdered because of my love for Christ. I’m saddened to say that I would prefer my comforts here. I pray more than anything that this person’s life is honored. More than the popular Christian speakers in America, more than the mega-church pastors, and more than the Christian book writers; may this person’s life be one we point at and say “they counted the cost, they knew the need and they took up their cross and followed Him.”

More than an orphan

I haven’t blogged in a while because I just got married a month ago to my best friend! I suppose a small part of me thought the passion for orphans would go away after getting married. I guess I thought it would be like the baby bug. You know, when everyone else around you has a baby and seems to be happy and you think… I want a baby, when in reality you only want on because they have one. However, my passion ended up not being a “bug”. In fact the exact opposite happened. About 2 weeks after we got married my new husband went to a Christian convention and heard about the needs for orphans. On his way home he texted me saying “I hope you’re ready to adopt orphans or move overseas” to which I jokingly replied “fine by me!” However, I do have to say it was comforting to know that this person I had decided to spend the rest of my life with agreed with my passion. A few days after that I came across an organization that shattered my current perception of orphans. I was looking on a church website at some organizations they partner with and came across an organization called Life Impact International. Up until this point I think I thought most orphans had it hard but I didn’t realize how hard. Life Impact International works with orphans in Thailand and Burma. Their three main areas of focus are to rescue, restore and heal orphans due to the cyclone Nargis, human trafficking, child slavery and child soldiers. They have an amazing video I posted below (see rescued post or click on the utube link at the end of this post) that gives an overview of their passion and tells a little more about why they felt the need to start this organization. What I didn’t realize is how uninformed I was. I didn’t realize that there were 8.4 million children caught in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, or other illicit activities (Facts on Child Labor, International Labor Organization, 2003). I also didn’t even comprehend that every 2 minutes a child is trafficked for sexual exploitation (Rescued, SobaiFilm, www.lifeimpactintl.org, 2009). The children that life impact international rescues would either end up child soldiers, in slavery, or sex slaves. Not only would they not have parents but they would also live a life of hell on earth. In Thailand and Burma poverty is extreme and many women are beggars. When you are a beggar it is helpful to have a baby. Even in America I am more likely to give a woman with a baby money than probably anyone else just because I feel bad for her. However, once that child reaches a certain age they are older, eat more and are no longer any help to mom with begging. So many mothers sell their children to either the government or a slave trader. One of the stories on the website tells of a child who was in this very situation. She had gotten too old and her mother decided to sell her into human trafficking for $18 American dollars! However, Life Impact International happened to come into contact with that mother that day and worked out a deal with the mom and the trader to pay $24 American dollars for this little girl in order to save her. They then took the little girl back to the “safe home” they have for these children and she has lived there since. A while later her mother sent the little girls younger sister there to live in the safe home also so that she might have life that is different than the predicted outcome for most of these. This completely shocked me. I will often go to somewhere and easily spend $24 on an outfit while I could be rescuing a child for $24!!!! After this I began to be heartbroken over the situation and started praying more and more. Yesterday I went online and looked up the adoption statistics for the country of Thailand. In a country where 800,000 prostitutes are under 16 only 56 children were adopted from Thailand last year. That is when I knew I had to write a new blog. Whether anyone reads it, feels a challenge from God, prays for this organization, helps them financial, or even adopts; I’ll never know. But what I do know is that hopefully, through my desire to raise awareness of such issues, someday you will have the opportunity to share with someone else something that breaks the heart of God. If you would like to visit Life Impact International’s website to find out more please visit http://www.lifeimpactintl.org/

May we offer up a pray for these children to prove Psalm 10:17-18

You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AryiBKkWq18

RESCUED