The Trip of a Lifetime

I had been working in Busia for a little under two months and I began to see myself becoming impatient with the progress of the ministry. I would go to hang out with the kids on the street with my spare time. As I approached them I would find them there in a landfill type area huddled in a circle inhaling airplane fuel that has been dumped days earlier. After weeks of seeing the same thing it’s hard to continue to visit because it just breaks your heart. The kids come to our meetings we love on them, play with them, they are able to feel like a kid for maybe two hours. Then they go back to the streets and its right back to the street life. I deeply desired an answer. I knew God was with us but I was waiting on the next move

. It was after a meeting one Saturday that I received a text from my grandmother (MeMe) that was just encouraging and insisted that I needed to rest. For the first time in a long time I sat on the couch in our little apartment and I thought how rest sounds very good. I began to think about how as Christians our first job is the just simply receive the love of the father and become overjoyed with his amazing glory and grace. We are to let our cups overflow with his Holy Spirit, love, and joy. Out of the overflow of our cups we are to poor out the amazing blend of acceptance onto everyone we meet and it’s out of that that people wonder what it is that we contain and we can explain how to receive the joy of Jesus Christ.

 For me I had been trying to love these boys with a dry cup. I was trying to be a daddy for these boys and love without first letting my daddy love me. It’s easy to do not just in Busia but anywhere. We have to let Jesus lavish his love on us and when we know that love, and walk with that love then we are capable of spreading it in a loving way. If you read the book of 1^st Corinthians Ch.13 it states very clearly “If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.” That hit me hard. I was striving to be a light but I was not doing it out of the Love of Jesus but my own love. And what is going to change the hearts of these boys I cannot offer. Not with all the money or strategic plans in the world.

So I took my grandmother up on the offer I wanted to enter a time a rest and restoration with God. I told her I would keep her updated. It was later that night when I received a text from a friend of mine who was attending a ministry school ran by a women named Hydi Baker in Pemba, Mozambique. My friend told me I needed to come, it was a great place to rest and grow with God. I looked on the map and it would take traveling by bus across Kenya, through Tanzania and into Mozambique. I wanted to go but I had a couple of issues. The first being money. I knew I would never spend ministry money on a personal trip to see a friend in Mozambique even if I was going to rest. Second how can the director of a ministry that’s not even off the ground leave on a short notice? I began to pray and it clicked I called my Grandmother and told here my situation and like all amazing Grandmothers do she decided to help me and cover my trip cost in full! (gotta love em). Then I remember how I was not the only one in charge of the ministry my best friend and founder of the ministry itself Cornel was with me and it would make since to ease off and see how Cornel does on his own for a couple of weeks. After all I have to return home at some point and it will be up to Cornel, so it was time to show some trust and faith.

Next thing I knew I packed lightly and efficiently only carrying what I needed for I was traveling almost 2,000 miles by road to Pemba. Price was awesome because bus tickets were dirt cheap and the long rides would give me time to think, read, and write our constitution for our community based organization application. So off I went an overnight bus across Kenya to Mombasa (14 hours). I caught a straight bus across the border, down the coast and into the capital city of Tanzania. I stayed a night at a five dollar hotel and then boogied on down to Mozambique. Luckily for me it was Ramadan and all the coast is predominantly Islamic so I was able to experience loud prayers and Arabic sermons. I didn’t mind, in fact it gave me a great gateway to share my faith with a lot of my Islamic brothers and sisters. I made it the boarder after a 2 hour motorcycle ride, and a couple of broken down buses upon arrival was informed that as of two weeks before no one can get a Mozambique visa at the boarder anymore. I researched and nothing was on the internet any warning but tuff luck. I looked at my options and found that the best thing would be to travel back to Der Salam the capital of Tanzania (which I just traveled a 12 hour bus ride) and get the visa from the Mozambique embassy. So I was kind of enjoying the bus rides I had read more of the bible and listened to more worship music than I had in the past couple of months combined. So the next morning I left and after meeting, riding, sharing, herring and more ridding I had made the trip to and from Der Salaam and was back at the same border. The man asked me “Are you not tired?” I just said I feel more rested than I have ever felt in my life! 2 days later I was in Pemba and I found my friend Mary Catherine and we celebrated.

Pemba left me in states of aw I was surrounded by a community of 400 radical believers from all around the world who all had come from different walks of life. Each person had a unique amazing testimony about Christ and what he had done in their life. It was a great experience. I was able to here many encouraging messages and meet many encouraging people. Jesus helped me find other people who also worked with street children and had ministries of their own. Herring their stories made me feel so at home and blessed and really made me miss the Busia Boyz! So I stayed for a week that felt like a day and I left back for Busia. To see Iris Ministry and where faith took a women like Hydi Baker made me so encouraged and I knew Jesus could do the same things he had done with Hydi in me as well. I made it back safe and sound to my home and new it was time to get back to work. I wanted this time no to go, go, go until I was burnt out and then seek God to repair my damaged soul. I had learned to make that restoration process a daily task. The first thing we should do as Christians is wake up, use the bathroom, and then start receiving the love of Christ through the supernatural nature of Holy Spirit manifested on an earthly realm. As a matter of fact why stop letting God love us. Let us just continue receiving all day even in our sleep. I hope that daily we can see the fruits of the spirit being displayed in our own lives. Imagine a life lived with Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness Faithfulness Gentleness and Self-control. It sounds heavenly, true. That’s because when you live life as it says in Galatians 5:22, you are in fact bringing heaven to this earth. A heaven people are dying to feel a heaven that will wreck someone’s persona of a life lived in the comfort of self-interest and self-investment. When the purpose of life shifts away from us and we humble ourselves to see how small we are and how big our God is its simple to see that the purpose of life is to spend these 80 years (if you’re lucky) just receiving Gods love he has stored for use since the beginning of time. As Daniel writes in Psalms 139 “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God knows us, he loves us, he just desires for us to know him, to understand he is not a distant God that just sits on his thrown and observes but that he is love, he is alive and he is here.

When I started living with that mentality it made life, ministry, and my relationship with God a lot easier and more fulfilling. On the many bus rides I was able to finish the constitution. We gathered the selected committee members together and had our first meeting for the community based organization. I traveled to Kisumu for a hopeful visa renewal and on the same day Cornel traveled to the Kenyan Government office to submit the lengthy application we worked a month to complete. With some smooth talk and an abundance of favor I was able to get three more months added to my visa. With a divine miracle and Jesus present in the room Cornel walked in the office of the Director of Gender, Children, and Social Development and without hesitation the man smiled and asked what took us so long. We did not wait for two weeks like we were supposed to but Cornel left that day with a certificate of registration in his hand. Jesus.

 

To continue to follow our journeys please join our facebook group at The Shelter of United Love (S.O.U.L) Ministries and friend request Haden Hallman and Cornel Ojwang. Thank you for your support and prayers!

Believe Always,

              Haden Hallman