eLi went to the Mathare slums in Kenya

eLi speaking with families in the slums

I have just returned from a trip working with Compassion International to the Mathare slums in Kenya. While there, I held the hand of poverty. His name was Francis.

He may have been as young as five or as old as ten years old. It is difficult to be certain because children in this region look much younger and smaller due to severe malnutrition. Francis had never seen me before, but he reached out his hand to me. He never asked me for anything. We just walked together holding hands through the slums. Francis never let me out of his sight. He just held on and smiled.

Compassion is doing an amazing job pairing sponsors with needy children, but Francis is not yet a sponsored child. And he may never be. He is on the outside of hope looking in. I don't know how many meals he goes without. I don't know if his parents are alive. Most children in the slums are raised by their grandmothers because their Dads are absent and their mothers have died from AIDS. I don't know if Francis will live another six months or six years.

What I do know is this:

Mathare slums

Jesus said that He has gone to prepare a place for Francis. That in His Father's house there are many rooms.

I am sure He has one picked out for Francis and each of us.

But what will that house look like? Will it matter if it is made of gold or out of sticks and metal sheets? What makes a house a home? Is it the wood that frames it or is it the loves that fills it?

I was reminded of the answers to these questions while walking through the Mathare slums in Kenya...holding the hand of Jesus.

"Birds have nests, foxes have dens but the hopes of the whole world rest on the shoulders of a homeless man, You were a homeless man, You did not have a home." Rich Mullins


To learn more about what Compassion is doing to help children like Francis and to see what you can do to help please visit www.compassion.com