Confronting One's Self

Five years or so ago I carved off a big chunk of my heart and left it in western Kenya. Now, truth is I have pieces of my heart all over Africa in places with hard to pronounce names like N'gua, Kiryandango, Adjumani, Ol'kalou, Narok, Kagamega, Mumias, Kisi, Kisumu, and Banana Hill. I have fallen in love in Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, and most recently, Cameroon.

But the piece of my heart to which I refer is sizable. I stumbled onto a little school for the deaf in western Kenya in a little town called Oyugis. When I arrived I found around 35 of the most beautiful and tender hearted boys and girls I had ever met. Ranging in age from 5 to 18, these children faced no future - at least no future with a happy ending. They were from the poorest of the poor families and they were deaf in a cultural setting where there is virtually no infrastructure to provide a future for them. Most Deaf persons in that part of the world have one vocation on their horizon - beggar.


The school was operated by a woman, a Filipino missionary and her Kenyan husband. They were, I thought, two generous hearted people who longed to make life better for the deaf. I threw myself into that school with all my heart. I raised thousands of dollars to assist the school. I talked other people into donating thousands of dollars to provide for better food, clothing, and shelter. I contracted a friend of mine to go to the school and help them set up a bakery project that would provide some stable income for the school while at the same time provide effective vocational training for the children as they finished school. I raised over $5000 to finance the project. It would insure that at least some of them would have marketable skills when they finished school.


To make a very involved story much shorter - I was betrayed. More to the point, the children were betrayed. I made a surprise visit to the school last year to find that the children were not any better off despite thousands of additional dollars poured into the school They were being poorly fed, dangerously housed, misused and sometimes abused. The teachers were not being paid and the funds being generated by the bakery were being siphoned off into personal bank accounts. When I confronted the principals about this, I was escorted off the property.


We lost everything we had invested in this project. The bakery ovens and cook stoves, the delivery bicycles, money for land and development. It was all gone. What was worse, I had to return to the United States and contact all of our donors and inform them that their trust in me had been ill placed - one of the hardest letters I've ever written. It was one of the most despondent seasons of my life.


We have, however, continued to work behind the scenes to rectify the situation. I have been in constant contact with the sponsoring agency who in all fairness took decisive and effective action. The offending parties were dismissed, the school was closed, and all funding was cut off. In all the agency has acted with transparency and propriety in every way one would hope.


In the ensuing year, a lot has happened. I just finished reading a series of reports which are summed up in the following: The school has reopened in a new location which provides safe and clean housing. The teachers have all been retained and are actually being paid - double what they were being paid before. The children look healthy, clean and well groomed. Most of all they are happy. The new school is in the final stages of its official registration and they have more students than they did before. Pictured here are are the students of the Immanuel School for the Deaf in Ringa, Kenya. I will post some others in the sidebar.

I am grateful beyond words for these developments. This project is of the greatest personal importance to me. I am really invested in it. Beyond all of this is what I have learned about myself. When I discovered this situation I was angry. I had to be physically restrained by friends to prevent me from doing harm to another human being. In all of my years in the ministry no one has ever been able to push THAT button. I did a lot of yelling and accusing directed toward persons who were in charge but not at fault. Most importantly, in my anger I forgot that God was still on the throne. He was aware of this situation and more than capable of dealing with it. I was devastated because these children were in danger and I could do nothing to help them - again, forgetting that their heavenly Father loves them much more than I do.

Probably more to the point is the fact that I was embarrassed. I had been taken in and it cost me and those who trust me thousands of dollars and more important to me, my reputation. I fancy myself a savvy, street wise guy who is pretty hard to dupe. I was wrong and what is worse, I had to admit it in public. I was convinced that I would never be able to raise funds for such a project again because my integrity, or at best my discernment would now be in question.


You know, humility is a wonderful thing. One of the most wonderful things about it is that it prevents humiliation. You can never humiliate a humble man because he has nowhere to fall to. However, a prideful man - he is ripe.


I am anxious for the opportunity to visit Kenya soon and visit the school and these precious children. God has supervised a restoration and things are better than they ever were before. Amazingly, He was able to do it without my help. And what's more, through all of this I have been able to face down some things I thought I had conquered a long time ago. God used me to expose some critical flaws in the care of these children and he used that situation to expose some critical flaws in me as well. Funny how that happens isn't it.