HONOUR YOUR PARENTS

FOR THE LAST SEVEN WEEKS I have been giving ten minute talks on the TEN COMMANDMENTS.
It is quite surprising that so many adults, quite apart from children, do not know them. Every Friday I attend the School Assembly and usually give a short address - so currently I am taking one Commandment at a time.
The biggest response so far came from the 5th - 'Honour thy father and thy mother.......' Many of the School children and a large number of the children in the Homes have experienced or are experiencing family divisions and splits. Many do not KNOW their origins! Many others are estranged or in other ways at odds with their parents. Not an easy Word to have to give with so much 'resentment', 'rebellion', and even disgust in so many hearts. Greater respect - at least superficially - seems to be given by those within the Islamic and Hindu communities.

I asked the question WHY? Why should we honour our parents? I only had ten minutes and I had to cover a lot of ground. I shared that I personally had never known my own parents; had not seen even a photo of them, heard their voice, or discovered anything about them. Was I also expected to honour my parents? After all neither were married to each other and neither had shown any interest in me - I had been given up for adoption when I was just two months old. I had little to admire about them. Why should I honour them? Probably I should honour my adopted parents, who took over the responsibility of bringing me up, more reasonably? WELL, my answer was that YES I did need to honour my true parents regardless of who they were, how they might be, or even how they treated me - just because God had chosen them to be the ones to bring me into the world, and to contribute to my actual 'being', personality and character. I am who I am because of them, and each of them is very much part of me. To hate, disrespect, dishonour, or wash my hands of them, would be to turn against myself, and disrespect and dishonour myself. At this point many of our older students and young people seemed very discomforted. Later I was to learn some had broken down - one had gone home to confess to her parents how she had had a wrong attitude toward them, asking their forgiveness! Amazing. We should be grateful for our parents whoever they are or were. Without them we could not be here, and could not be who we are. More importantly we could not have had the opportunity to KNOW God or SEE His Creation. Yes I cannot do less than honour my parents - not necessarily their lifestyle or even the kind of person they might be or have been - but just because God had ME in mind in bringing them together. Thank you God - for my parents. In a way this was easier than it was for me to honour my adopted parents. As I grew up with them I was to criticise, judge, and at times disrespect them for what I thought I knew about them. It was only AFTER I left home that I came to see them differently and to be grateful for what they endured in me - a stranger in their midst!

IT IS NOT ALWAYS AN EASY LABOUR OF LOVE to bring up and at times endure, children or have nothing of yourself in them. Our own three children Esther and I understood and bore with greater patience and understanding just because we could see ourselves in them! But children fostered or adopted were not so easy. Especially when we had not known anything at all about their true parents. Hard for us. Hard for them too since they were not able to look to us for help in any way to understand themselves. This is, of course, a daily situation that is lived with in each of our four Children's Homes. Each home tries to be a Family, and the couple running it try to be parents........but the shortcomings on both sides are obvious, and thus there are for the parents and the children times of distress and miss understanding. No all our houseparents find themselves able to cope indefinitely with this experience.
JACARANDA COTTAGE has seen more houseparents come and go than any other. FOUR couples have come and gone, and now the fifth are preparing to leave. Phillip and Roseline NZOME will be gone before Christmas this year. We knew they were not finding the going easy, and eventually they have felt that they cannot continue as parents any longer. They plan to farm, and hope to return to their home, east of Nairobi, and do just that. Their two young daughters and younger son will of course go with them. They have been Mum and Dad to the Jacaranda Family for just about 4 years. In August I commented about them, and wondered how long they would stay, hoping it would be many years into the future. It is not to be, and now we are seeking the Lord to discover another couple to offer themselves. Until they come along Calvin (the assistant Houseparent in Jacaranda) will carry on there. Please pray with us for this need to be soon attended to.

BARACK OBAMA has been elected President of the United States of America - and if you lived in Eldoret and perhaps the rest of the Country - then you would think he has also been made President of Kenya as well!! The whole Country had a fiesta and ate and drank themselves silly - we were even given a Day's National Holiday to enjoy it all. AMAZING. Have you ever heard of any other leader of any Country on earth including the USA, at any time in our past going so joyously mad about one man? Not even Kennedy enjoyed such popularity. The whole world has gone after Obama in a similarl way that it went after Princes Diana.
Almost he has been received as a God - or perhaps as a Saviour - and not just by those of the coloured races of the world. BUT IT IS STILL RAINING in Kenya! The World Economy is still affecting - progressively for the worse - Kenya's daily life. NOTHING has changed yet!
But the FIRST week of the month finds us yet again provided for; step by step, day by day, and week by week, we continue to walk with the Master at our side. AND more and more children claim our hearts, and clamour for our attention.............I think that if we had the £50,ooo still needed to build the NEW Jacaranda Cottage we might NOT knock the old one down but just FILL it again with MORE children. Sometimes we feel as Noah and his family must have felt safe in the Ark, whilst so many were drowning, and shut out, in the rising flood around them.

BUT we are glad to be alive and HERE. It is a special blessing. We are learning to Thank God more and more, for ALL THINGS.

John and Esther