LAST MINUTE MUSINGS: With a heavy but hopeful heart

After making our way through a clean, modern airport — much more appealing than Nairobi or even Paris, for that matter — we drove among these buildings on the way to our equally new and beautiful hotel.

Bright lights. Big city.

I’ll admit it was surprising for us. Three of us from Greencastle Christian Church — pastor John Tischer, Barrett Jackson and myself — were in these East African nations as part of a trip with Missions of Hope International, based in Nairobi.

Our church, along with Harvester Christian Church in St. Charles, Mo., and Gateway Christian Church in St. Louis, is exploring a possible partnership with MOHI as it expands its ministry into Ethiopia, specifically the slums of Addis.

Only, we were seeing no slums.

The next morning, we could see that even more construction is occurring all the time as the city rapidly modernizes. It’s my understanding this has been due to plenty of foreign investment.

Joy Hamilton, one of two representatives of Harvester on the trip, said she barely recognized the city, having visited probably a dozen times, most recently two-and-a-half years ago.

As we got off the main roads and away from the foreign investment, we found an area with which she was more familiar.

The contrast was jarring.

Our destination was the Korah Dump and the surrounding slums. Here we saw the true effects of extreme poverty.

Through this series of columns, I’ve always emphasized that word — extreme — on first reference to the poverty level in Kenya and Ethiopia. Why? Because it’s experienced at a level that we can’t really imagine here in the U.S.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, poverty for a single person in the United States is earning $15,650 or less.

By contrast, the World Bank considers extreme poverty to be living on $2.15 a day or less. For comparison, that’s trying to survive on $778.30 a year, or about a 20th of the American poverty level.

It’s estimated that 700 million people are in extreme poverty.

These were the people we were seeing in both Nairobi and Addis Ababa, but Addis was worse.

Disease, most notably leprosy and HIV, run rampant among the poor of Ethiopia.

We visited a number of shanties that day at Korah, the first of which lives on most vividly in my mind.

The woman gladly welcomed us to her home but could not rise to greet us. She had lost both her legs and one hand to leprosy. We were rotating who prayed with the families we visited, but I was grateful that it wasn’t yet my turn — I couldn’t have gotten out any words.

I learned over the course of that day that leprosy doesn’t actually cause people to lose their extremities because of the disease itself. Instead, it’s the loss of feeling that leads to further catastrophic injury.

A person with no feeling in a hand or foot may pick up a hot pot or step in a fire, burning the limb beyond repair.

More horrifyingly, a rat may come into their home at night and chew off a finger because they can’t feel it.

I also learned that there is a hospital in Addis Ababa that specializes in the treatment of leprosy. In recent years, another slum has sprung up near the hospital for people trying to save up enough to get treatment for the disease. We’re not talking thousands of dollars, but only a nominal fee that amounts to single digits in American dollars.

Then there’s the matter centering a settlement around a dump. There are two reasons people live there. One is that no one with the money to choose where they live wants that land, so it’s available. The other is that it’s a way for those who are otherwise destitute to make some money.

That “living” involves gathering scrap metal and plastic from the dump in an attempt to resell it. A good day might involve filling a single bag, packed full, with scrap plastic and getting the equivalent of 75 cents for it.

Yet the children we greeted had bright eyes just like their Kenyan counterparts from the days that preceded.

Indeed, my favorite photo from the trip is when one of my traveling companions borrowed my phone to take a picture of smiling Ethiopian children surrounding me.

But there was one big difference in the children we met in Nairobi and Addis Ababa — a deeper hope to go with that light in their eyes.

The Kenyan kids we met were all students in MOHI schools. They were already getting an education, two hot meals a day, health care and, most importantly, the Gospel message that they are children of God with whom Jesus wants a personal relationship.

Their parents were getting job training and microloans to help them move toward a more stable economic future — perhaps not out of poverty, but out of extreme poverty.

When you asked kids in both countries what they wanted to be when they grow up, the answers were similar, things like doctors or artists or business people.

But the kids in Kenya looked you in the eye when they talked about their future. They knew their dreams were attainable.

The kids in Ethiopia looked away, said it without confidence. They may have had light in their eyes, but they did not have hope.

I grappled with all of this that night back at our hotel. We were debriefing on what we had seen that day, and I just couldn’t find the right words, only anger and tears.

These people are being left behind even as the city around them grows in beauty and prestige. It made my blood boil.

I’ve always struggled with the concept of righteous anger. When I feel anger, which is more often than I’d like, it’s usually from my own selfishness, not God’s righteousness.

But in these moments, I finally understood things like when the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah said, “I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in.” (Jeremiah 6:11)

To be sure, I was weary. I’m still weary. But I’m also hopeful. I’ve seen firsthand how Missions of Hope has helped those kids in the poorest parts of Kenya. I have no doubt that God has a plan to help the families in Ethiopia as well.

I can’t speak out of turn about what Greencastle Christian Church’s role will be in that effort moving forward, but I have no doubt that God is calling us to good works, both here in Greencastle, with our existing missions partners around the world and, yes, with MOHI as it expands to Addis Ababa.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. — James 2:15-17

We should all — believers or not — feel this call to good works. We should all try, together, to get through this thing called life.

Going forward, I don’t see how I can live my life any other way. This trip was a waste if I don’t.