Today we experienced why we travel all this way and what it truly means to be the body of Christ half way across the world. We were blessed as the children of HOREC greeted us with song and dance and Scripture and testimony. Alice is a young girl that will leave HOREC this week to head to high school and she summed things up well in her greeting to us when she said, “We are a success story. We are a miracle. We are not orphans because you have loved us.” It was very humbling and we felt like we were the ones being blessed as they took turns speaking our names as they had been praying for us and our trip. We also realized that many of these children know their Bible better than we do!
After the children sang to us, we simply spent some time meeting one another. We presented the children with two guitars from people back in Durango and they were so excited to strum them. Thomas presented the laptop to HOREC that was purchased by the students at Escalante Middle School for the children at HOREC so they could get familiar with computers.
Then came one of the most awesome things I have ever gotten to do. We had challenged the congregation at First United Methodist Church in Durango to do Christmas differently this year by reminding them that it’s not our birthday, it’s Jesus’ birthday. We encouraged them to spend as much on helping to provide clean water for the children at HOREC as they would spend on their own Christmas. The well at HOREC is hand dug and mostly dry, providing little water that is not fit for human consumption. The congregation gave more than enough to put a well in and today we got to share that with Christine, who is the founder director of HOREC. She did not know that this was coming and she literally was speechless. The only words she could say was that, “God is so good. It’s a miracle.”
HOREC is a miracle, with Christine having a vision of a home for those thousands of kids each year who are “throw-aways.” They have no parents and many of them are sick (HIV/AIDS is most common) and the Kenyan government and medical system does not believe it is worth caring for them because, “they are going to die anyway.” Then you see these kids thriving and loving one another and it is truly God’s hand at work. Just over three years ago Christine started with 20 kids in a two bedroom house against the wished of her husband. She then got the acre of land which only had one building on it that was usable. Now there are more than thirty kids, a boy’s dorm, a girl’s dorm, a dining hall, a kitchen, a small classroom, a chicken coop which now has more than 100 chickens, a few goats and another acre of land to grow food.
Finally, before we left for the day, the children received letters from each of the students at Escalante and the kids had a wonderful time reading their letters and hearing from children in Durango, CO how they are loved a half a world away. We headed back to our hotel with a new perspective on life and love and how God works in the world. Grace and Peace, Jeff
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