Monday Morning

Long and bulky mounds of trash cuddled against the dirty store fronts. A shoe at the bottom of the pile moved and whatever was underneath rolled over.

One of the kids sleeping beneath the trash stirred enough to notice us. With one eye open, he gave us a groggy smile. We met him last week and he remembered that we brought milk.

This boy nudged the pile next to him and another head popped up.

We started making friends on a new street in downtwon Nairobi. The ministry is going well on our normal street and it was time for us to venture out to find some of the younger boys and young mothers.

One boy in particular made a huge impression on us. He told us the same story two weeks in a row - an indication that he wasn't lieing. Joshua says he is 13, but is most likely 11. His mother sells drugs and home-made brew. When he was of school age, a Catholic orphanage took him in.

Joshua said the orphanage kicked him out three weeks ago. What really happened is that his mother came to the orphanage and got him. There was nothing the Catholic orphanage could do to keep him. Joshua's mother did not take care of him, so Joshua took off for Nairobi in search of somthing better.

Guess what?!? He did find something better. He prayed to received Christ. Joshua said in his first week in Nairobi, he tried the glue the other boys got high on. He didn't really like it, but did it at night to fight off the cold. After he became a believer, he decided (on his own) that Jesus wouldn't like him inhaling glue, so he stopped.

Joshua said living on the streets is a bad life. He fears for his own life everyday and night. "These older boys murderize," he said to me in a hushed voice.

Pray for Joshua in his new found faith. Pray that we will be able to find an orphanage for him where he will be away from any threat of his mother pulling him out again.