From: Kevin Bonzo - Kenya Team, 08/15/2010

I suppose by the time most of you read this, I’ll probably be on the flight to my U.S. home. This will be the last letter I write to you as a member of the Kenya 2010 team. In the recent visits to the Karen Orphanage, I have often found myself wandering aimlessly around the property, trying to cope with emotions I don’t know how to understand yet. It's in the air for us all at the Karen property, I suppose: yesterday (Saturday), the girls' outgoing "ambassador" to us, Fridah, was unusually quiet and distant; little, playful Irene was even more "huggy" and attached to us; several of the girls, including Emmaculate and Lucy, inquired as to whether we'd be able to see their D.V.B.S. (Daily Vacation Bible School) performance at church today (which we did).

I grew up with one older brother, and I've never really known what it's like to have a sister - let alone 23. As we made our round of farewells for today, Fridah assured me of something that touches me deeply - I'm not the only one that gained siblings on this trip, but that all the girls feel that Jordan and I are now family as well. As Tom Clinton, director of First Love, told Jordan and I in passing, the Karen property has become a place for the girls to break through class barriers, race barriers, self-esteem barriers, etc. It's a place for them not only to be kids for the first time in their lives, but to also have the Christian way of life enforced by making the words of Paul a practical reality - "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). It doesn’t matter that we’re older, and it doesn’t matter that we’re “rich, white Americans” (of which, I’m neither rich nor white). We play a game of football (as in soccer), and there’s nothing keeping anyone from inclusion. We're literally one big, happy family. Isn’t that how the Body of Christ is supposed to be?

I have someone's testimony to share with you. Despite personally receiving her permission to share her story in complete detail, I shall codename her Amana – a Hebrew name that means "faithful". This is rather fitting for someone who has been through all that she has, yet still praises the Lord for His goodness. Amana accepted Jesus into her life when she was 12 years old, understanding her great need for Him.

Before coming to Nairobi (and being saved), Amana came from Upcountry in Kenya, where life was both simple and hard. She told me about many childhood experiences of having nothing to eat. She told me about having no use of electricity unless one walked to town. She told me about gathering water from a nearby stream to boil for cooking or drinking. She told me about the community, where everyone knows everyone.

Amana told me about the time she was so hungry that she had gone and stolen some potatoes for her family from a neighbor’s crops, only to have her mother physically discipline her. The mother then returned every last potato to the neighbor and apologized on behalf of the family. She and the entire family remained hungry that night.

Amana told me about how she began working as a house girl in order to help support her family after her father’s passing. She told me about how it was especially necessary, since the deceased father’s debt prompted the bank he’d borrowed from to come and take all of her family’s land from them as payment. She told me about how she’d been a house girl for three different families, none without their issues. She told me about how she was raped by the father in the second family at age 19. She then told me that she was to abort it, under orders from the father. And she told me that, thankfully, she refused and escaped from that family.

When the baby was born, Amana was only able to be with him consistently for 8 months. Thereafter, she had to leave him with her mother while she went off to find work. The Lord blessed Amana with the current family she works in (and I say “in” because she’s not just a maid, but a member of the family). She has been sending what money she can to support her son since; he’ll be 4 years old in November. On top of that, he doesn’t even recognize her as his mother, since they were separated at too early of an age for him.

Amana has told me that, most recently, a friend’s mother has advised the friend not to associate with Amana. The grounds for this disassociation regard the slander of Amana being a prostitute. This sort of thing is not new for Amana – for no one believed her when she first claimed that her pregnancy was a result of rape. Her own community and her own mother wrote her off at that time (though, her mother has since come to understand the truth).

And throughout all of these stories that Sister Amana told me, she would conclude almost every story by pausing and saying, “It’s okay.”

At first, I thought that she was simply coping with all the injustice in her life by saying a comforting phrase. But as one of our conversations was coming to a close, I started to understand; the more she discussed her faith in God, the more I realized that she really did think it was okay. She really had already forgiven each and every person in her life – even the father of her child. She really had surrendered every unfortunate circumstance up to God. In the midst of all her pain, she will never stay angry with someone forever – no, hurt will be her inevitable response because her first action is to love unconditionally as her Lord Jesus commands of her.

She freely admits that there have been many hard struggles in her life, and she openly shrugs and holds back tears every once in a while when recalling past injustices. But she will never withhold forgiveness; she refuses to dwell on things of the past. While still painful to recall, it does not stay in her mind that many people still believe she is a whore of a low-class citizen.

I am angry. I am so angry to the point of tears. To some degree or another, I have done injustice to most people in my life, whether in thought, word, or deed. Why? Yes, this is the sort of thing that God has been leading and growing me in my whole life: the call for justice. In my own life, how many times have I written someone off as a hopeless case? How many times do I “save myself the trouble” by not engaging someone in a genuine conversation to find out what’s really going on in their life? How many times have I blatantly ignored the Holy Spirit’s leading to walk up to someone in public and talk to them about Jesus or ask them if they need prayer?

How many opportunities, how many people, have been lost because I thought it wise to judge a person by my own wisdom instead of just letting God love them through me? How many times have I judged a person before I knew them?! How many times!!

It is not our job to judge who should receive the love of Christ and who shouldn’t; it is not our job to pick and choose who we talk to about Jesus; it is not our job to strike up conversation with the nice and “safe” person over the person who is “mean”. For both of them need Jesus in their lives more than anything the world has to offer (and that “mean” person could probably really use a God-fearing, unconditionally loving, Jesus-freak of a person who won’t be scared off by their prickly, defensive personality).

Love God and love others. That’s our job. Beggars can’t be choosers; we come in rags before Christ, begging for a salvation He already died to give us freely, yet we dare to think that we could possibly be in a position to choose who next to introduce to our Best Friend?

“I’m disgusted by judgment from us, when her response is so often, ‘It’s okay.’ ” I jotted this down in a flurry of emotion early this morning, before I finally let myself sleep. I am not including this bit from my personal journal to condemn you, but to be perfectly honest (as I told you I would be from the get-go). I am not including any of these harsh words to, myself, be a final judge of anyone’s actions. No, if anything, I’m trying to love the only way I possibly can at this point – and this is to simply be honest about my feelings. For Amana has taught me more about trusting God than anyone on this entire trip, I think. From her testimony, I am convicted to be compassionate, loving, forgiving, gracious, and patient. I am convicted, in other words, to trust God; for there is nothing to a human’s compassion, love, forgiveness, grace, patience or anything! All that is good comes from God alone.

And this is what my beloved Sister Amana, inspired by the Holy Spirit, taught me in our last one-on-one conversation: she said, “I just have to trust God.”