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Not a Soul in This World for Little John I have returned to Alabama and it is good to be back in the place where I receive mail but which vies for where I call home. If home is where the heart is, I must say that I maintain a dual citizenship. I surely love to be here with my intimate friends and family, yet I long to be with the orphans of Sudan who literally have neither.
Some days later, however, I had the blessing of stumbling upon him once again. John told me that he thinks he is five years old. That is what his mother told him before she and his little sister died. John's little sister, Abuk, died first and then his mother stopped eating so that she could give all of the food she found to John. John's mama died soon after Abuk. John did not cry as he told me about his mama. He just said that he missed her because she was his only friend because his father died before John was old enough to know what killed him. I asked John if he wanted us to take him down the road to the IDP camps so that there would be other people who might help him. He said that his mama told him that he would be safer in the bush than in the camps where the militia came into get new slaves; John did not want to become a slave. John's mama told him it was better to die a Christian in the bush than live a Muslim in slavery. I pulled James aside to ask him if we could take one more orphan into our orphanage. He reminded me that just the day before I had told him that I was concerned that he had taken in 50 new orphans since I had last visited him (raising our total to nearly 450) and that we still didn't have enough sponsors to take care of the ones we already have. I had told James that I knew it was very hard for him to watch the orphans around him starve to death or be vulnerable to slave raiders and hyenas, but we simply could not take more in until we had provision for our current 450. Through tears, James agreed to not take more orphans. Now, here I was facing what James faced every single day of his life. I thought of “ Schindler's List” final scene where Schindler counted the cost of his watch, his car and every single possession he had held onto and how many lives he could have saved if he had let go of those ‘precious' possessions. I thought of what James felt every day. I thought of what it meant to leave little John on the roadside, where he felt safer than in the IDP camps. Now being beyond tears, I knew I had no right to violate what I had just asked James to commit to - to alleviate my conscience. James and I prayed together over little John. I promised John that I would tell others about him. He wanted to know “who” I would tell and what they would do. I told him that there were too many people for me to tell all of their names but some would be black like him, some would be white like me, some would be brown like the Arabs that he was afraid of, but that all would pray for him. I gave him a blanket and all the food that was in my bag. John smiled. We left. James and I both cried. Click here to help us take-in more orphans. Kimberly Smith President
FOLLOW UP TO LITTLE JOHN'S STORY: Dear Fellow Servants, I barely know where to begin. Your written responses to the story of this precious boy, Little John, have been overwhelming in the very best sense of the word. Somehow, though, it seems I failed to communicate both the depth of despair which the masses of orphans are suffering in Sudan and the height of power that we have to change their reality. Let me try again. We have had many commitments to sponsor orphans this week (more than at any other time in our history). Our problem is that almost all of them have been in this form, “If you'll go back and find John, I'll commit to sponsor him.”
Please understand that I am not calloused toward Little John. My heart still breaks for him. I spoke with James just today. He is more heart broken than any of us for he looks at hundreds of “Little Johns” outside our safe orphanage walls who cry to get inside where there is a protective fence with loving teachers and good food (like the child pictured on the right). James is the one carrying the weight of walking by them and saying, “No little one. I am sorry, but I don't have enough money to feed all of the ones we have inside. We have no room for you, yet. I will call for you when we have met our current commitments.” Make Way Partners is the ONLY orphanage receiving these precious Darfur refugee orphans. Currently, we have 450 orphans. Just four short years ago, EVERYONE told us we were crazy; there was no way to build and operate an orphanage in a lawless land of rape, slavery and genocide. God has shown us there is a way. We are His way for the impossible when we simply open ourselves to Him. There are thousands more orphans – we are not only committed but also experienced and well positioned to build an entire orphan-care network in Sudan, but we need your help!
So many are begging to come into our safe orphanage. I cannot ask James to go get Little John, bypassing all of the little ones that he would “step over” to find Little John. However, I do commit to you that as God provides through you sponsors for each and every one of our current orphans, who we have simply taken in by faith these last four years, we will take every other one that we can find and provide for. We are a very small organization with more than 90% of our general resources going straight to the field and 100% of child sponsorship funds going directly to provide food, medicine, education, shelter and loving care for the child that YOU sponsor. John is not “just” some poster child. He is real and hurting. Yet, he does represent masses of children in his exact same situation. Please help us where we are, and through your godly provision, we will save them one child at a time. Click Here to Sponsor a Child Today! Desperate for Him, Kimberly Smith President 2ND FOLLOW UP TO LITTLE JOHN'S STORY: Dear Fellow Missioners, So many of you continue to write me asking about Little John that I thought I should write an update about him. In February 2009, I visited the same Internally Displaced People's (IDP) camp to which James and I had been en-route when we first met Little John. The reason for going to the IDP camp called for high levels of hope. God heard the cry of the people for a well inside that camp, and part of His Body from Alabama donated the funds to drill a well for them. So, we were on our way to witness the beginning of the well-drilling! Yet, part of me was deeply somber as we drove along that same bumpy road. A few months ago when we found Little John on the side of it, it was rainy season. Water flooded each side of the road and our truck kept getting bogged down in the mud. This time, the searing heat of dry season left deep and hard-crusted ruts, which we painfully bounced over. My eyes wandered to and fro seeking Little John or any hint of people who might know of him. The road was barren. Where had all the people gone? Just a few months before, thousands of people lined this road where they endured violent rain storms and raging flood waters. Hundreds of broken families huddled together with only a few sticks holding tattered pieces of clothing over their heads masquerading as shelter. Once inside the IDP camp, I worked to transition each conversation I shared with those celebrating the well, to asking if they knew anything about a little orphan boy named John. “Sure,” they said. “There are many.” Of course, I felt foolish. I know there are so many orphans and John is a common name, but I wanted to know about a particular one. I tried to describe him and tell a little of his story. Again the response, “Sure we know many like this boy. All of them had their mothers, fathers and baby sisters to die. Do you want to meet them?” I long ago learned that “meeting them” translated into “taking them and accepting responsibility for them.” Quite a few of our own orphans still do not have sponsors. Again, I painfully remembered my promise to James, “We take no more orphans until we have sponsors for all of the ones we currently have.”
So, for the next hour or so I held my “gift” praying over him while I mingled through the people looking for “Little John.” In the end, I never found a lead that led to Little John. I returned my “gift” to his grateful mother, and I piled back into our truck to return to our nearly 500 orphans in Nyamlel. Because literally thousands of people began praying for Little John and many still are, I can only hope that wherever he is, he feels some sense of God's comfort through our prayers. “Little John, you are not forgotten.” Our child sponsors are not just supplementing school fees or providing one hot meal a day. They are literally saving a child's life and raising him or her up in the Lord. Many of you will remember that the year before we built our first orphanage, we lost 278 orphans in our area. The number one cause of death was wild dog or hyena attack. It is God's provision to tell you that in contrast, even though we are still extremely third-world fashion (no electricity, running water or nearby hospital), we have not lost one single girl since moving them in over a year ago. Not one. We have continued to lose several boys because their home is not quite finished. Praise God! It will be finished soon; by May 2009 our boys will move in! You can be the instrument to make sure there is one more space in our orphanage to save a life by sponsoring a child today. Click Here to protect children at risk in Sudan! Your sister in Christ, Kimberly L. Smith President |
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Please
meet John. John first captured our camera one day as we sped
by him en route to the Internally Displaced People's (IDP)
camp. He was alone on the side of the road, but the Commissioner
of the area was with us and he said he was on tight time constraints.
So, we did not even stop to talk to John on that day. 
That
is great, for Jesus certainly teaches us to go save the “one
lost sheep”. However, in Jesus' story, he said that
there were ninety and nine safe and one was lost. In
Sudan today, it is more like we have one safe and the ninety
and nine are all lost! As George Muller lamented in
his memoirs, “In our world today, the numbers are nearly reversed.”
The
situation is complicated. In this photo, you will see
me standing and offloading a bag of USAID/World Food Program
food bags that the UN drops in Sudan. However, the UN does
not stay on the ground (like we do) to oversee and ensure
fair distribution. Thus the food falls into the hands of the
corrupt. On the bags, it is clearly written, “WFP NOT
FOR SALE.” Yet, the
corrupt businessmen seize the food, and it does not make it
into the hands of the starving orphans and widows who desperately
need it. It makes me sick to do it, but SOMETIMES WE
BUY THAT WFP FOOD TO DISTRIBUTE TO THE MOST DESPERATE simply
because they are dying and no other food is available. On
this most recent trip, donations from staff and friends from
Focus on the Family funded a “WFP” food purchase and the Focus
on the Family team helped to distribute the food. 
The
conversation about so many needy children brought a mother
over to me. She handed me her baby boy who appeared to be
about six months old. “For you. Thank you for the well. He
is for you. Thank you.”