LETTING GOD LOVE THROUGH YOU.

THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN AT A SPECIAL THANKSGIVING SERVICE within the compound of the Anglican Church of Kenya's Diocesan Headquarters for Eldoret and area.   I was there at the invitation of the Founder of a Special Clinic for Physically and Mentally Handicapped Children.   Cannon Percia Hutcherson (seated right centre in the photo) a retired physio-therapist, had come to Eldoret in her retirement to offer the Diocese assistance in helping children within the Diocese that might be challenged physically and even mentally.    She must have almost 80 by then, and remained in Eldoret to fund and build a Special Clinic within the Diocesan Office grounds, to be known as The North Rift Rehabilitation Centre.    She was responsible for giving hope and new life to many hundreds of young people AND their despairing parents.   The Bishop The Rt. Rev. Thomas Kogo also attended the meeting (seated on the left), and I shared in part as follows:-

'I FEEL GLAD to be here today

and to see the SUBSTANCE of things hoped for; the EVIDENCE of things not seen!

And to see the outworking, in part, of a VISION that is still ongoing.

GLAD to see the Love and Value God Himself has set, those who are so often neglected,

hidden away and despised.     Those who through no fault of their own

suffer some physical or mental disability.    Those often made to feel OUTCASTS from their own family as well as the rest of society.

There are so many people in our world, both young and old who are often shut away from the community, even from their own families, because others feel ashamed of them; ashamed of their disability.    They live a life of seeming hopelessness, even loneliness and isolation.

IT IS A MIRACLE TO ME

that God should have given a woman in her elder years such a heart, and such a Vision, with Faith to see it come to pass.

PERCIA HUTCHERSON

is an inspiration in herself, and she has inspired many others to catch the vision, and work with her, with God's help, to bring her Vision into being.     We see the First Part of it today, and in SEEING it, we have no doubt the rest will follow on.    What God begins He also finishes!

We need people like her!   We need Clinics like this one.   A Centre where we can bring our outcasts back into the community and the family, with hope;  a Place of Healing for body, soul, and spirit.

I have mentioned the work 'outcasts'     Isaiah 16v 4 in the BIBLE mentioned them too.   I hope I may be forgiven if I take the words a little out of context, and apply them to those with various human disabilities.

GOD SAYS

'LET MY OUTCASTS DWELL WITH YOU

Be a Shelter to them.

I like these words.  I like the CHALLENGE of them, and the implication behind them.

They suggest the very opposite to shutting them up, concealing them, leaving them exposed to ridicule and neglect.     It fits SO WELL with something that King David did as recorded in

2. Samuel 9

IT IS WRITTEN there that King David took Mephibosheth, the crippled teenage son of Johnathon into his own house, after Johnathon died.    It is written that Mephibosheth referred to himself in front of David, as a 'dead dog.'

That is how he probably had been made to think of himself - a helpless, good for nothing cripple.   But David had him to live with him in his own house, and to eat with him daily at his table.

THE KING took him in.

The King sat him down at his own table.

The King let him put his FEET under the table with his own - even though he was a cripple.

I LIKE THAT!     That is what JESUS would - and does - do.   He want US to do likewise.

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THIS PHOTO, taken in 1976, is of myself, and a 12 year old boy who was both Spastic and Epileptic and who became part of our family until he was in his twenties.    We had not had a disabled child before.   His name was HOSEA MWENDO.   He was an 'outcast'.
Esther and I, together with one of our older boys (Peter-John Odeyo), were travelling back to Eldoret from Western Kenya.  We had stopped not far from Maseno, at Luanda Market, to take more fuel into the car.     It had begun to drizzle, and people were packing up their stalls, and slowly dispersing from the Market area together with those who had come to buy.      Suddenly we noticed an ungainly half naked boy stagger into the road in front of us.    One eye seemed to have been damaged, and was bleeding, and one arm, was bent across his chest rigidly.     He had seen us from across the road, and made a bee line for us, drunkenly.    We watched him in some horror, for he looked SO forlorn, and neglected.    On reaching us his left arm shot out toward us with a hand spread out like the talon of some bird of prey, and he croaked, hoarsely ' Pesa!!'  or 'Money!' as it would be in English...   Esther tried to ask him questions but either would not or could not answer her.    Peter got out of the car and accosting a few passers by tried to find out if he was known,    He was told the boy had been in his condition since he was born; he has Fits as well! He had been cast our of his home by his widowed mother,  and ever since wandered aimlessly begging, often spending the night under a lorry with the dogs.    No one had ever heard him speak more than the pitiful 'Pesa'.
The Petrol was in the car, and I had paid the pump lady.       "Well it would be nice to help him", but really we are not equipped to help someone with his kind of disabilities.   And we drove off, down the Maseno Road to Kisumu.    The sky was black with rain clouds, and the flash of lightening and rumblings of thunder seemed to turn the prospect both in front and behind seem very foreboding.
As we drove onwards towards Testimony in the now heavy downpour of rain, Peter quietly asked from behind be as I drove 'What would Jesus have done?'    I said nothing.   I felt very unhappy.

THE next morning I said to Esther, "I have to go back to look for that youngster"     Peter John said "And I am going with you."      And so the two of us got into the car again and drove back to Luanda, some 150 kilometres away    We arrived mid morning, and with the Market all of a bustle around us, we searched for the boy.     Eventually we found him stretched out under a lorry, dogs licking his wounds.     We got a blanket from the car and Peter-John crawled under the lorry, wrapped the boy, still unconscious, with the blanket and carried him to the car.      People actually backed away from him as if he was some kind evil spirit himself.      With the help of a police man we managed to locate the boy's mother, but she wanted nothing to do with him, and told us to take him away.     So we did.   He suffered FIVE fits on the way back to Eldoret.     During that night he had seven more!   Peter John had him to sleep in his room, and each time Hosea was seized with shaking, and screaming, we all gathered around his bed and prayed in the Name of Jesus that the Fit would cease - and it did immediately do so.     Every day the fits became less, until they ceased after the second week.   They never returned, and he never had to take any drug  to protect him.
In the 3rd week we too him to a Dr. 80 kilometres away, in Kitale.  Hosea was still not talking, and he still was unable to use his right arm.     The Dr. prescribed exercise only for the arm, and a single little pill once a day for a week for his muteness.    He said that he had got used to not to speaking over the 11 or 12 years of his life.   He believed the pill would put him at liberty to begin to do so, until we might feel he was speaking too much.     He was right!    In a week Hosea began to talk - not fluently, but a little hesitantly as he remembered words and how to put them together.    It was slow, but in the end Hosea responded to loving security and company.     He did not attend school but he learnt how to count and account for his money after he grew to have a job as a labourer.    He regained the use of his arm.    He talked all the time! He finally went back to Luanda where he built himself his own house from wood and wattle.     And everywhere he went and to whoever he met he told the story of how God met him and pulled him out of the dirt and hopelessness of his life as a young boy, and went on to put him right, physically and mentally, till he could earn his own living, and fend for himself.   "It was all because of God's Love" he was fond of saying.

WE were all very much spoken to by this incident.     We had turned away like the Pharisee because Hosea looked just to difficult to help, too dirty, too sick, too unattractive in every way.   We left him - but the Love of God turned us back again, and God showed the way to persevere and see the Answer to all of Hosea's challenge and problem.          It was not the last time.    But out of hundreds who have come to live with us in our home we did not find more than three physically challenged children come to our door.      BUT the door IS OPEN now to the whosoever.    Open to AIDS sufferers as well.      

Do you think you could also open your door - the door to your heart first and then the door to all you have?     There ARE so many with nothing and no one.     Think about it.

Our loving regard to each and every one you who know and pray for us.

John Esther and Daryl Green