Life in Kabalagala

Where sin runs deep, your grace is more.

Where grace is found is where you are.

And where you are, Lord, I am free.

Holiness is Christ in me.

These lyrics from the latest Passion CD, Here For You have been stuck in my head this whole week.  Starting on Monday we went to minister to a school in the slums of Kabalagala. The school is called Rays of Hope. It is very hard to describe what life is like for children in Kabalagala and many other slums like it. In a place where witchcraft, abuse, abandonment, and sexual immorality are rampant, the only way to encapsulate the spiritual warfare and the evil presence is to quote the lyrics above; it is a place where “sin runs deep.”

Just to give you an idea of the situations we have encountered there in just 5 days, let me share with you a few.

-Shaamira, now ten years old, is a beautiful girl who attends Rays of Hope and always carries a smile on her face, despite the daily pain and embarrassment she feels as she bears the weight of deep emotional and physical scars. When Shaamira was 3 years old, she asked her step-mother for a drink of water, becoming annoyed by Shaamira’s request, her step-mother intentionally spilled a pot of boiling water all over Shaamira’s body. She received third degree burns all over her body that burnt through skin and muscle and exposed bone. Because of lack of medical care here, Shaamira’s body is marked with gruesome scars. Also, her skin did not heal properly and as she grows, she faces the daily pain of her scarred skin stretching and not adjusting properly.  Shaamira needs help from an American doctor who can help heal her physical wounds, but more than anything she needs the healing that comes from knowing her Heavenly Father loves her and calls her beautiful despite the distorted skin all over her chest and arms.

-On Tuesday, ten year old Patricia, who is a Rays of Hope student, was heard screaming. Having no food that day and no means of obtaining it, Patricia had agreed to give her body away to a man, in order that she would have about 25 cents to eat that day. She was brought back to the school and hung her head low in shame. When asked if she knew that she was worth so much more than that and that Jesus had paid an incredibly high price for her life, she answered “no” with tears filled in her eyes and walked away.

-Joan is a 7 year old orphan girl who attends Rays of Hope. She was born completely normal, but after her caregiver agreed to sell her soul to a witch doctor, Joan soon lost her ability to hear and is now deaf. She is the sweetest girl. However, being an orphan girl who lives in a slum, there is little to no hope for her to survive. Thanks be to God that a family from America is in the process of adopting her and brother Derek and that she will soon learn to communicate through sign language and be in a home with a loving mother and father.

-On Friday morning, eight year old Brendah was also brought in to Rays of Hope. Spotted in her school uniform, she was found hanging around older boys who were doing drugs. Eight years old…

As you look among the children, there are scars that mark their bodies. Each of them has stories of heartache where they have been raped, abused, and abandoned by their earthly parents, aunties and uncles. Of the 300 children at Rays of Hope, over 250 are orphans and over 50 have AIDS. I long for these children to know that they have a Father in Heaven who knows every pain they have felt and longs to heal them and hold them in His arms. I pray that in the midst of such evil, these precious children would find that Jesus is their only Hope. As you climb to the top of the slum in Kabalagala, you will hear the students at Rays of Hope singing “I love Jesus, yes, I do, I love Jesus, He is my savior, He is my best friend.” These words echo down through the slum, to the Mosque that’s walls are inches from Rays of Hope, to the prostitute along the roadside who sells her body to men, to the little boy who is beaten by his auntie, and to the witch doctors who are bound by their sin and worship of the devil.

As your heart becomes burdened by these stories and for these children, please plead to our Heavenly Father on their behalf and ask Him what role you might play in furthering the gospel in these children’s lives and what that might look like. A program is in the midst of being set up, where each of these children at Rays of Hope will have the opportunity to be sponsored by families across the world. Please contact me at ecastle91@yahoo.com if you would like to learn more about this.

So, to wrap this up…I find joy and comfort and in knowing that God is not for the perfect and those who are without fault. Rather, “where sin runs deep, His grace is more. Where grace is found is where He is” and in Him we find freedom, forgiveness and healing. God’s grace is greater than the evil and corruption in Kabalagala and I long to see Him redeem these people as He has redeemed me and my evil heart.  I know that He will, because I see His faithfulness in my life, despite all my sin, so I will labor in prayer for God’s will to be done in this slum and that He will break the chains of evil and be exalted above all other names.