Contemplation (27 May, part V)

start here...

We drove back to Emali and met up with the others. It had been a beautiful day and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way from what we did. We laughed: for instance when Paul was being made an elder, the speech by the chief was translated as the women in their traditional garb ‘looking very ok’; so when it was his turn to reply he said how welcoming everyone had been and the women looked very ok and the men too. We cried: for some it was at the first meeting with their child and parent; I was so excited to have instantly recognised Tom that I didn’t cry until later, as I was telling his father how humbling it is that something so small in New Zealand can mean the difference between a bad life and a much better life in Emali.

One of the things that has really hit me over the last two days, in visiting the people today and listening to the people at the project offices in Emali and Nairobi yesterday, was how we are not just impacting the lives of individual children, nor their immediate family alone, but the whole village community. I would not be surprised if our letters are treated like the epistles of Paul and circulated around for everyone to read. I had not appreciated that before and I will definitely take more time to read the project reports we get about all the community work going on in Emali (which I tend to skim over as being less relevant).

The second aspect, which I was more prepared for, is the spiritual one. We have been told a few times and I have read in the past how CCF is not a Christian organisation with the focus on evangelising. (In fact, it started as the ‘China children fund’ and changed its name when all foreign organisations were kicked out by the Chinese government.) But many of the people here are Christians and it is wonderful to be able to share spiritual things with Tom’s family. As I said earlier, I am not sure how many of the rest of the group are believers, but I do count the relationship between Tom’s family and me to be special because of that bond. While the others are also told, you are part of our family, Tom and I really are brother and sister in the spiritual sense. Some of the people’s sponsored children and families are Muslim, for instance, so this just makes me all the more thankful.

All in all a perfect day and I praise God for it.