My Closing Thoughts

Well, our week of working with the children and young adults of HODASSU has come to an end.  We are all very drained in many ways, and looking forward to a day of rest preceding our safari adventure that will start on Wednesday.
As I look back on our week I am think about the preconceived notions that many people have, myself included, about doing mission work in Africa. No doubt many of the thoughts that come to mind when we think about Africa is the AIDS epidemic, as well as the many other diseases that have dramatically changed the face of this continent. We think about the orphans that these diseases have left in their wake, and about this children who are left to fend for themselves perhaps having to raise other siblings. We think about children with no shoes, one old pair of clothes, who get few meals a week. Well, while we wouldn't have to look very hard to find these things, I was very surprised that our experience on this trip has been very different. The group that we have been working with as near as I can tell all live with their families (perhaps not with parents, but some sort of relative), they are fairly well dressed (probably wearing some of their best for us), they all have have shoes or sandals (although many choose not to wear them when doing sports), I've even have seen one or two with cell phones. By some standards they are pretty well of given there surroundings.
However, just because they are not plagued by some of the main problems that we think of when we think of Africa, doesn't mean that the don't have there share. For deaf children in Africa, which is the majority of those that we have been working with, living in housing situations with two maybe even one parent and many other children they are often the outcast within their own home. With so many children to take care of, often due to family members dying and having to take care of children that are not there own, parents have little time to focus on teaching and raising a child who is deaf. Because of this these children grow up with their own parents thinking they are useless, unable to communicate, unable to help around the house, behind all their siblings. Even many schools are unprepared for the deaf, while their are schools for the deaf most don't have classes for children under a certain age. So, they are placed in regular schools where they can't hear the teacher, and thus fail the first year, and then they are passed the second time through just to keep them moving through the system. A pattern that continues until they are old enough for the deaf school, by which time they are very behind.
Such are the kids we have been working with this week. Children who have been viewed as less than much of their lives, yet from the first morning when we saw them they greeted us with genuine smiles on their faces, something that didn't change the following mornings. Such strength to choose joy when it rarely an option given is uncommon, and inspiring to behold.
I often wonder about people in parts of the world such as this, who live such difficult lives. Whether, they are stricken with some horrible diseases, or orphaned at a young age, or in such poverty to not be able to afford shoes, or to be deaf in a society that views the deaf as useless. I wonder about the strength it must take to live through that, and why God choose to have me born in America? Would I have the strength to live the life of a deaf child in Africa, or did God choose for me to be born in America because I don't have that kind of strength? I know God does not burden us with more than we can bear, so perhaps we live the lives we live, in the countries we live because God in His infinite wisdom knew that this was the life we could handle. Irregardless of the answer I am thankful to have the blessings I have, I am thankful for those who choose joy even when it is not an option given them, I am thankful for the time I have spent with these kids, and I thankful that even in a seemingly small way that we were able to bless there lives in the same way that they have blessed ours.

Matt Brown