OK so here is the point we thought we were just building an orphanage but it looks like we are in the church raising business as well, and we need help with the funding of all that the Lord is putting in front of us. Join in the mission, there are new souls, new territory to be won for His glory and no time to waste!

When first we met Pastor Andrew in Kayunga, a poor area of Uganda, it was February 2011. Most of the 30 pastors that Andrew mentored were crowded under a hot black canvas on a hard dirt floor. Each of these pastors had church buildings of their own but they were there in that humble place to honor their “pastor.”  It was that day that the Lord impressed upon me that it was the time of Andrew’s favor. All of his years of faithful service would now be answered by Andrew’s God. In the last twelve months it has been the privilege of H.I.M. and our donors to work on this project for our Lord and His servant Andrew. Pastor Andrew plans to have another conference for his dedicated group of pastors exactly one year from the one that we attended. At this writing it is now February 2012, the building, by the grace of God, is complete. One elder commented that he remembered hearing two passersby in the 1990′s speculate on who had cursed this church that it would never grow/build. God has shown Himself able to uphold His own. Thank you to all of those that helped Hesed get this Kingdom project done.

The first Satellite building or Hesed House is well on its way! The Faith Chapel team [the sponsoring church] will go to Malawi in part to inspect the progress this April. They will also participate and contribute to Bishop Samuel’s Annual Easter Conference.

If the picture seems to show a double wall in front, it is because our Hesed Houses will each have its own covered front porch.

In order to build an orphanage you need concrete, which among other things means that you need small stone to mix with the cement, sand and water. This is a picture of a young person who spends his every day sitting on an equatorial sun baked furnace of granite, making his living by endlessly breaking big stones into smaller stones. We were there that day to buy the product of his hours. We are in Malawi to save children by the grace of God, from a life of hunger, sickness, ignorance, abuse and an existence of no hope breaking rocks.

There will be one “central” building which will be two stories totaling about 4000 square feet. The central building will be our warehouse, our central kitchen and housing both for our visiting team members and those orphans that are “on deck” to be moved into housing in a permanent satellite building. The central building will produce all meals for all of the residents that are housed in the various satellite buildings that surround the central building.

The satellite buildings are much smaller, family style houses [each a Hesed House]. The permanent residents will consist of one widow who will be the house ”grandmother” and ten children who will be encouraged to be ”siblings’ [either all brothers or all sisters].

So here is the really great news; Faith Chapel of Churchville New york has committed themselves to building the first Hesed House!

But since there are about one million orphans in Malawi, not to mention the millions in Ethiopia we have room for so many more Hesed Houses. Want to help? Contact me I would be glad to discuss it with you.

What I had not noticed before when reading the book of Judges and the story of Gideon defeating of the vast army of the enemies of Israel with a mere 300 men, was the jars. As a part of the plan Gideon had all 300 men put their lit torches in jars so that the fire could not be seen until the time of the battle. Like the fire of the Holy Spirit in Gideon the torch was there present in the jar but the light was not visible. This made me think of the words of Jesus in Luke 8:16 “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar.” And in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, “we have this treasure [which Paul alternatively describes as; The Light of the Gospel, the Spirit of God and the Light of the Glory of God] in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. I recognize that I am definitely the clay jar in this analogy.

When Gideon wanted the fire to shine out into the night to help defeat the Lord’s enemies he broke the  jars. Notice that instead of just pulling the torches out of the jars Gideon showed the men that they should instead break the jars. Sound overly forceful? Well Jesus said “…the kingdom of heaven has been forcibly advancing and forceful men lay ahold of it.” Mt 11:12b. I am not sure that I ever understood that verse in Matthew before, but now I am thinking that the verse is about my volitional and forceful dying to self. My personal clay walls, with the ever present help of the Holy Spirit, must be broken off with forceful self determination. I must do it for the sake of the light of God that is in me, that it might show through my life.

I know this is a process and I am to this day, way too much clay and not near enough light. But isn’t that true of many of us? We take the Holy Spirit into ourselves with great ceremony and then proceed over time to actually thicken our clay walls. In the face of the bothersome leading of the Spirit we seal up our cracks and crevices lest we be forced to look at the battle we should be winning. All the while, at the cost of the light, we spend our time decorating our jars with pretty paint and maybe a “Jesus Saves” bumper sticker on the side.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. – Antoine de Saint Exupéry …

The summer of 2010 I had the personal revelation that I had never wholly let the Spirit of God in me shine out and direct my life.  In repentance I asked the Lord where I should be rather than where my plans would take him, and He said to me, “Go to Africa.” I have to tell you that Africa is a place I said I never wanted to go, but I guess it is time to break open my jar.

How about your jar? Do you dare to let Him shine? Will you, like Gideon be willing to do His impossible feats of daring? Will you decide to forget about yourself and run into the battle holding up only His torch?

To tell the truth, Dawit is horrified by much of what I and my American housemates once threw in the trash.  When you grow up in a country so consumed by poverty and hunger it’s hard to see things go to “waste” (like empty food containers and styrofoam packaging), so the idea of throwing away “food,” however loose that definition, is over the line.

(In all fairness, it’s a constant struggle to prevent food from going bad here as the refrigerator isn’t nearly as cold as it should be and the food lacks the preservatives that we’re used to).

The solution:  Throw the chicken remains in a pot, add all other left overs from the fridge (some veggies, rice and pasta from the days before, etc), lots of salt and boiling water and (whalaa!) you have soup for the homeless!  Now sure, it wasn’t exactly soup that you would find in a nice American restaurant, as the “chicken” was largely fat and skin, but it added flavor to the veggies, pasta and rice and, most important in this cold, rainy season, it was hot.  We then put the soup into a few empty food containers (like pasta sauce and jelly jars, which I have learned are most certainly NOT garbage), and Dawit headed out into the night in search of the needy.

Dawit didn’t have to search for long.  He had intended to go to the bridge in Bole where homeless people typically gather at night (a short distance from our neighborhood), but he encountered so many people on the way that he never left the main road in front of our house.

We repeated this ritual last night, and it’s something that we hope to do every few days or so.  But when Dawit got back last night he was upset that despite having taken more food than on the first night, he still didn’t have “enough” for all the people he encountered.  In fact he had ran out of food even more quickly, having encountered even more homeless people.

That’s the problem, isn’t it?  We never have enough to meet the world’s needs; whether it’s hunger, orphan care, poverty, or anything else. This inevitable failure has paralyzed better men and women than me.  The way that I get past it (and it can be a struggle) is to remember that it’s not my job to meet all the world’s needs, or even one need, completely.  My job is just to try, as best I can, to meet the needs that God puts in front of me, knowing that I will never “solve” even those problems on anything resembling a grand scale.  For me, that need is orphan care.  For Dawit, it’s helping the Jewish community.  It’s different for everyone, but it’s always something and the solution can be as simple as rethinking your definition of garbage.