Every morning at the Village of Hope begins with God and ends with God. While the sun is creeping in through the netting and thin curtains on the windows, from across the yard you can hear the children singing. Each day they wake up at 5 am praising God, then doing chores before school.
While the kids are at school the Lipscomb team goes wherever they feel called to help around the orphanage that day. Some of the team would go help teach in the schools, some would go assist in the clinic and other various projects such as painting the houses of some of the staff would occur throughout the two weeks.
We also went to three different villages and had VBS activities in the second week. After school we got to spend time with the children playing soccer, basketball, talking on benches under the trees or helping fetch water. At 5 o clock the children go get their water from the well and carry it to take a bath, then we all have dinner and another devotional at each house at 6 o clock.
The prayers of these children are so heartfelt and precious. Different children pray for different aspects of our lives such as those who are sick, those who are travelling, those who are lost, our parents, our families, and our every day struggles. When you take the time to recognize how blessed you really are it’s amazing to discover that you wont forget to pray for all the needs of others.
The children at the Village of Hope have gone through so much heartache such as abandonment, neglect, abuse, slavery and so many evil things that have been overcome through love for Christ and a new amazing drive to make each day count. This trip is so special because the first week you are overcome by the power in the love the children have, but the second week you are overcome by the knowledge you have of the horror this country holds and the even greater hope that the people here have.
There are villages just outside Village of Hope with hundreds of children just like these who are still starving, there are hundreds of children still enslaved on a lake in northern Ghana who are not yet freed, and there are hundreds of people who receive water when it rains but also receive the greater chance of contracting malaria, a life threatening disease that is easily cured if the resources were always readily there to do so.
When you come to a place like Africa, you don’t understand how you can ever make a difference when there is so much evil in just this one little area let alone the entire continent or the entire world; but when you come to a place like the Village of Hope you realize that because a few people had faith that a difference could be made so many children’s lives will be different. God makes impossible things possible.
One day a little boy Daniel was carrying buckets of rocks on his head back and forth across the campus for half an hour because they were building something and had to get it all moved. I finally asked him when he would be done carrying all the rocks and he sweetly and without complaint responded “We do the work together until it is finished.”
Wouldn’t it be crazy if we lived our lives like that? Our sole human purpose for being put here on this earth is to keep doing the work together until it is finished, and as long as we have that love, evil can never defeat our God or what we came here to do. I will never forget what these children have given me. They have taught me that no matter what my circumstances are, I can wake up and go to bed with God and I can start living like I know what’s happening.
Suddenly money doesn’t matter to you unless you know it’s going towards something that will benefit another human being. I will never forget to cling to my Bible the way some of these little children clung to mine like it was treasure. We would lay on the sidewalk at night and they would ask me sweet questions like “Does God live on the moon?”
I hope that I can remember not to grow up too much and forget to wonder where God is in the things we see every day. Why can’t God live on the moon? He can live wherever He wants because to them He is in everything they do each day and I will take that hope and love with me for the rest of my life.