29 May 2011

UNDER THE WATERFALL: Patrick ButlerMay we revisit Rwemikoma, Uganda for a moment? Hope For 100 adoption project founder Rocky Gill said it was the most important part of the Uganda journey for him, as far as perspective of what Parental Care Ministries does. I agree with him.

Rwemikoma may not be the remotest place I’ve been in the 24 countries I’ve visited, but it certainly is a contender. The Parental Care (PCM) School is located on a hillside an hour's drive down a dirt track in hill country about two hours out from already remote Mbarara where “Pastor Emmy” — Emmanuel Nnyanzi, the school’s founder — lives.

The thing about Rwemikoma — what really grabs the heart — is that these kids represent so-called “real” orphans, the ones so out of the way no one will ever see them, help them, remember who they are or whether they live or die. Those are the cold, hard facts.

The Parental Care School staff have their work cut out for them. There is a palpable difference even between the PCM kids in the district capital of Mbarara, from the neighboring Ibanda district hillside village of Rwemkioma. You can feel the lack of understanding and insight of the world in the children, who have had no basic training and direction — until they stumbled upon, or more likely, God brought them to, Parental Care Ministries. The PCM teachers are diligently preparing the children, training them and encouraging them that they have a future and a hope. And it’s working.

The staff at Rwemikoma brings that awareness of the world, plus God’s perspective on it, to these precious kids at Rwemikoma.

I mean, these kids are precious. They hug you so tight and are so vulnerable you can’t help but hug them back. The warm smiles are golden. The gladness in their eyes is genuine. The hope in their hearts is revealed in heaps by their song and prayers. One child prayed for the meal with such an outpouring rush of gratitude and thankfulness, Rocky almost leaped out of the group to scoop him up. “This child doesn’t have a sponsor?” Rocky asked the staff incredulously. “I am your sponsor now,” he said to the boy, hugging the surprised, shy and smiling child. That’s what it’s like here in Rwemikoma. You see these kids and you just know you have to help them. You know this is the hard place that needs the soft answer to break the oppression of life’s most bare-knuckled circumstances. You know they need you to live and God is showing you them for a reason.

Rocky and I both found kids to sponsor and more are waiting to meet their supporters in a far away place called America. You cannot imagine what this means to a small child in a village so difficult to access that their own countrymen won’t venture there unless they have to. To those children who actually get a supporter, it is as if God himself sent his angels to help them, give them hope and are helping them to stay alive physically and spiritually.

I saw the expressions in the eyes when the kids got packets of trinkets from their supporters. It was nothing short of the breathless gratitude, the realization, that they were not forgotten after all. They were remembered.

And so He is remembering them. God is using those who know him in America and England to be his agents of blessing — a practical, heavenly blessing — to children who don’t have a chance without a break from above. We represent that break.

How can we resist His calling to help? How can we reside in the shadow of His daily provision for us and not share our bread with the orphan and the widow? Now is the chance to do that sharing.

Mark Barret told me that there are some folks in America who want to know “where the real orphans are.” They are in Rwemikoma, trust me. This is the place anyone can make a radical difference with some minor assistance. There are children with no parents such as little Sylivia whom I “adopted” as a sponsor, kids with a single parent who can’t provide for their children and desperately need assistance and kids with two parents who are so poor they are “diggers” — those who cut roots out of the ground to eat and that’s what they have. No Americano for them tonight while they watch the playoffs as we do. Roots again for dinner.

The staff here is teaching more than 100 kids in a couple of mud huts made into schoolrooms. I saw the curriculum. I met the headmaster and the teachers. These are the noble ones you can rest assured are fighting the battle and making the difference for kids living on the edge of oblivion.

Now is the time and the opportunity to step up and be that angel God wants to send to a waiting child in the middle of the jungle. Please do it now before the fog of forgetfulness sets in and that forgotten child fades away in the midst of the forest and the mists of your memories.

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