Chris. May 2014.

Seven years after moving to Kenya, I am handling the tough questions with more confidence now. They can seem cynical- like little pushbacks to our hope-filled efforts to help orphans, the chronically poor, victims of injustice, and the sick. “Are you making a difference?”, one might ask. Or in another form, “Is your approach going to work in changing the overall equation, the big picture, one day?” In one way or another, the questions carry a “Does it matter?” tone, which can discourage.

These queries have had a more positive flavor at times, and to be fair, may not always reflect a jaded mindset, but instead the motive may simply be cold rational thinking. The Son of Compassion, Jesus himself, said, “The poor you will always have with you….” (Mark 14:7), reflecting that serving the less fortunate has a certain degree of inherent futility involved. Even He didn’t predict a comprehensive win one day for those doing this work, at least not on this side of glory.

Yet some see 2.5 million Kenyan orphans, or 1 in 8 Kenyan girls pregnant by age 14 as numbers beyond solutions, and because they are problem “solvers”, want no part in fighting battles they might just “lose”. Others look for reasons that assign blame somewhere, to someone – a government, a race, a mindset, anything, and they take a side door out of truly engaging. Lately it seems a common trend to write an editorial or blog enlightening others on how naive they are to give to mission efforts in Africa. I only mention a few sobering poverty statistics, a few of the arguments we read and hear, a few versions of the question – “Does it matter?”.

But we now have a right and a mandate to speak, on the basis of having lived among the poor of Africa. Because we moved here and found answers first hand, not satisfied that things had to be the way they were, while also accepting that we might fail, there are lessons we can now share. We understand the concept of a cycle of poverty vividly, and can explain what approaches will and will not work to break it. And know this for sure- it can and will be broken in the Rift Valley of Kenya one day. Perhaps not in our lifetime, but the wheels are now in motion and change has begun. Thousands of children will be adults already on their way out of that cycle, never to go back, nor to raise their kids in it, by 20 years from now. Our K-8 Cornerstone Preparatory Academy, set to open in Jan. 2016, will soon enroll 450 impoverished kids annually, giving them a first-world education complete with proper nutrition, health services, sports and exercise training, music and arts teaching, and spiritual care. A Cornerstone high school will follow in the coming years, mixing excellent academics with vocational training programs in carpentry, sewing, auto mechanics, IT, and high-yield greenhouse farming. Students matriculating from these schools will be endowed with a sense of purpose, a charge, to serve the poor in Kenya themselves one day.

We will not be silenced or discouraged by the naysayers, the darker voices. As Ernest Hemingway said, “Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place, then come down and shoot the survivors.” Also, as Julie has commented so many times, there are many possible solutions to this crisis of child poverty in Kenya, and our line of work is not a competitive sport. Others may have different approaches that also work to aid children in need of relief, the love of God, and hope to make it in life. We will celebrate all victories in this arena.

But here are 3 answers to the basic question, “Why it matters?” to do redemptive work for children when the problem seems unending, without a big win in sight:

1) It matters because there are too many children with beating hearts, beautiful eyes, warm faces, crooked limbs, torn clothes, who are living parentless, with words to say and lives to share. They know facts you and I don’t, have singing voices that make crowds fall silent sometimes, and can paint, draw, sculpt, act, dance, and do math in ways that we might otherwise never know. Many of them have no chance to see the inside of a school, the high side of their teen years before prostitution or street life, or the joy of being truly loved by a family.
As I write this, there are 53 million African orphans whose collective gifts to humanity are slowly being squandered, due to a lack of an opportunity for them to flourish. Slow down and imagine the value of it all, the worth to our world….

I have held kids in rural church services, been arrested by the sheer beauty of a passing slum child in Nairobi, seen numerous babies left like trash by desperate mothers with no hope. This has become personal to me. I cannot see statistics, only growing children that God has shown me to love. Unless you allow Him to do that for you, I cannot write enough words to convey this to you. Most of you reading this are already alongside us, carrying this heart burden with us in some way.

Phillip Yancey, in his excellent book Soul Survivor, noted similarly that, “The great societies of the West have been moving away from an underlying belief in the value of a single human soul. We tend to view history in terms of groups of people: classes, political parties, races, and sociological groupings. We apply labels to each other, and explain behavior and ascribe worth on the basis of those labels… I realized I had been seeing large human problems in a mathematical model: percentages of G.N.P., average annual income, and mortality rate, doctors- per thousand of population. Love, however, is not mathematical; we can never precisely calculate the greatest possible good to be applied equally to the world’s poor and needy. We can only seek out one person, and then another, and then another, as objects for God’s love.”

2) It matters because it was never about the end game to begin with! Who said it was about winning anyway? I’m focusing on today’s battles, because it is in the fighting, the struggling for victory, that life is truly lived. I once found satisfaction in only taking on smaller manageable challenges. Man-sized tasks where a solution was assured seemed satisfying, until God led me here, into the center of a landscape of poverty that is not mine to completely recreate. Now, in this arduous and joyful, soul filling work, I remain aware of the magnitude of the task and my weakness. Thus, God can be made manifest as beautiful and worthy by working through that which is imperfect and unsuited- a small tool in a Big Hand. So if I’m asked why it matters to struggle in spite of my weakness, with so many needs to be met all around us, I will say it is so that He can be seen as worthy, as the only reason for such love to be given away. It is so much better when it is not about me.

Now please don’t think the impossibility of winning the larger war gives us an excuse for laziness or lack of a plan. If you know our ministry, and us personally, we fight like we intend to win each battle, or what would be the point of fighting? Surrendering to the enemy, those who are corrupt, the failed system is not in our DNA.

3) It matters because life is short, and there are precious few things worth living for. We were created in love, for love, and we will be measured on how we loved one day. Your life and mine are vapors, slipping through grasping fingers, ones that cannot hold on to such a divine thing as life. So why does rational thought invade so easily when it comes to heart matters such as these, diverting us from what is natural and intuitive to do? Stop. Breathe in, out. Think clearly for a moment. Get up and go find another, a weak one in need, and love them. Do so with more time and money than you did before. You don’t own either one anyway. Give up your right to knowing the results, to winning. Just love, only that.

And when that final scratchy breath leaves your lungs one day, you will know it was right. It will have been nice to feel like a fighter does, risking loss, or perhaps to know the sound and smell of Africa, to hold a helpless child before you go.

So those are my answers. Get on your feet if you have been unsure. Let’s go. We’ll meet you there with the rest of the joyful losers. At the end, when Jesus finally wipes that last tear away, we will really see why it mattered, once and for all.

With love and blessings,
Bob Mendonsa

Chris. 200 days later.