"In other lands across the sea are little children just like me,
and I must go and tell them there that Jesus' love is everywhere."
Well, not me. My nephew leaves tomorrow, and will be the third from our family in the past few years to walk the paths through a few remote villages, a prosperous banana farm and soon to be orphanage in Zambia, Africa. Situated very close to the Zambia/Zimbabwe border at the convergence of two rivers, the farm we have helped establish will soon be home to 50 Zambian homeless children.
Originally, the vision was to establish a banana farm with other cash crops to be used to feed the local villages and generate revenue for the farm. As the project has matured, it is now (almost) able to support an orphanage.
HIV/AIDS is well beyond epidemic proportions in much of Africa, including Zambia. Many children from as young as three years old are facing life on their own as their parents have died from AIDS. Grown ups are dying daily of AIDS the hard way - with no medicine or relief from this terrible disease. The children die slowly, as there are just to many of them for the rest of the community, which is struggling to eat already, to absorb.
Africa as a continent has so many problems. The whole world has reached out to this part of the earth for many years, and it doesn't seem like things are getting any better. Their worldviews, political conditions and tribal heritage all work against them. These problems can't be fixed by planting some bananas and corn. But the children need to eat. They need to learn. They deserve the opportunity to be the generation that changes their destiny. And I am very proud to have had a role in making that possible, even for just a few.
One inescapable fact as I walked through this other-world is that these people are just like us. They feel pleasure and pain, they are emotional and ambitious. They want better lives and good things for their families. They want a life they can be proud of. They want to love and be loved. They are passionate, caring, wonderful people, and I genuinely loved being there and meeting them.
My hope for my nephew is that he will develop an appreciation for the life he has here. I hope he comes home with a burning desire to make the most of what he has been given, knowing that but for the grace of God he might himself be one of those homeless Zambian kids. We have been given much in this country, and to squander that gift with a self-centered, party boy life is inappropriate to the point of immoral.
My hope is that my nephew would gain a little more respect for his family, and realize his dad is more than just the guy that chews his ass all the time. Maybe as he wonders around remote Africa, he can see a little more substance to his dad's heart. Maybe when he gets home, he can connect a little more with the vision of the business and the family, and figure out how to join in.
My hope is that my nephew will realize that the world is full of bigger problems than whether his Iphone can connect to a WiFi hotspot, and that he has the ability and responsibility to help solve some of them.
My hope is that he will grow up a little, and continue to grow in to the man he will eventually become. I hope the ugliness and the beauty of all that's happening in Zambia will impact him as much as it impacted me.