I sat down this morning to my cup of coffee and began to journal. I kept thinking about Intentions. And as I began to write...I thought...I think I've written about this before. Hah, sure enough...my second trip to Sierra Leone...I was thinking about the exact same thing! I wrote this right after participating in The Raining Season's first feeding program in Kroo Bay. Kroo Bay was named The Worlds Worst place to live by the United Nations in 2009. Each time I have gone, there has been a riot of some kind. But...imagine...hundreds upon hundreds of people breaking out in fights outside the building we were working in...children yelling, crying, bones breaking. What began as a our efforts to feed children who we met singing, clapping and laughing quickly turned in to mass hysteria. As I sit two years removed from this experience. I still haven't learned my lesson on my good intentions. Sometimes we walk in to a situation and without batting an eye have created...unnecessary drama. Well...anyways...maybe I should listen to my own advice some times :-)
Good Intentions. In relationships we all have good intentions. There is usually a person in the relationship who means well. Whether it is for better or worse, in an ideal situation, we have the best interest of the person we are relating to at heart. Is this always true? No. But stay with me. I have a friend who has been in a rough place in life recently and I have had the best intentions of being there for them. I felt like they needed someone to be there. They needed a shoulder to cry on. More than that...I wanted to be that person because of how much I care for them. Loving them will help them get through this time, I thought. But what a person actually needs and how we see to fix it are not always the same thing. Did this person need ‘my’ love…maybe…but perhaps there was a deeper need I was not meeting.
A few days before I left for my trip I ran into a homeless women and her child with Down syndrome. Standing in the cold with no coat, I decided it would help the situation if I were to pull over and give her my coat. The mom promptly told me…I can’t carry any more things, and my daughter will not wear your coat because she does not trust you. My intentions were good. I did not meet their need, this time.
Which brings me to my next point. Relationships require trust…which requires time. On our way down here a Finish man sat in front of us as we drove to the dock to board the boat to Freetown. He asked me what we were doing and when I told him he said, "you’re only here 9 days? What can you do in nine days but show your face and leave?" I thought, "We sure can do a lot in 9 days, sir!" This all may sound like rambling but inside my head I’m beginning to sort through some questions about relationships. Not only with our loved ones but the broken hearted, the orphaned, the forgotten. You see we can have the best intentions but if we are not feeding the actual need we do no good. If we don’t take the time to ask, "what is it that you need?" we may be trying to build a house on sinking sand. My friend may well have needed me to leave him alone. And rather than assume I could fix the problem with a coat I should have asked the homeless women what I could do for her. Because we can have the best intentions…but when I look at the works of Jesus…he didn’t assume…he got in there and found out what the problem was. And more poignant than that…generally he had TRUST of the people he was relating to.
I see this happening here in Sierra Leone. I see The Raining Season building trust and taking time to address the need they see in front of them before jumping in and fixing the problem they see fit to solve. I see intentionality. They are addressing things from the inside out. They are building relationships one-step at a time. But…simply asking the right questions doesn’t always solve the problem right away either. Nothing is ever easy.
Today in Kroo Bay…I saw desperation. I’ve seen it before. Last time Beth and I were here we created quite a mob as we past out baby dolls and had to be escorted out with the soccer team barricading around us to keep the children from bombarding us. But today…it was unimaginable. I don’t quite know how you problem solve that. So many variables are involved in the reason why this village lays in the extreme poverty that it does , that all the good intentions in the world will do nothing without a little trial and error.
We went in today to feed 5000 children! Initially, they were going to bring in 2500 and give them two meals to take to another child. Once we got there…things looked a bit different. We began handing out a plate of rice with a fish sauce and water to each child. As the first group of children finished their meals they were escorted out of the building and the next round of children were going to be brought in. Things began to get a little chaotic, but we got them fed and out. Then…hysteria broke out. We ran out of hot food and were just going to give a bag with 2 cups of rice per child as they came through a line. More and more children and parents began storming the doors of the building. Children began beating each other up. Strangling one another. Pushing, shoving. Crying. As children came through the line we noticed many of them limping and we knew things outside were not going well. They began having us hand out packets of rice through the window because we could no longer safely bring children in to the building. We calmed the crowd down and tried to bring a few children in. As I looked down, a little boy ran by crying and holding his hand tightly…his fingers were broken. Another little girl ran in crying holding her hand tightly and Cari and I ran to see if she was alright…her finger was either sprained or broken as well. With no tape or medical supplies, Cari and I were able to use our pony-tail holders to splint the little girls finger as best we could.
What do you do when your best intentions begin to create such hysteria that desperately hungry parents and children are hurting one another so severely? How do you problem solve that? What system do you try next? How do you problem solve that according to the context of the culture that you live in? I’ve heard of it being done in other countries…but this is a different relationship, you see…you can’t do things the way you would do them in Nashville, Cambodia, Panama, Russia…it has to be done the Sierra Leonian way. What way is that? How do you help a village voted the World’s Worst place to live?? It goes without saying that it was an incredible blessing that enough money was raised to feed 5000 children. A Feeding Program began today that will continue over the years and, by trial and error, a model will be implemented to help children get a hot meal without being stampeded to the ground. But…how? It wont be done in 9 days time. It will be done by the sustainable presence of organizations like TRS that are willing to move in to the neighborhood. Organizations that are willing to say…this can look differently…organizations that say…Dreams. Spark. Change. I believe we are all in a place to have a sustainable impact in ministries like this…but, if anything, I think we should begin looking at our intentions within our relationships. Are they what the other person needs? Are we building trust? Are we moving in for 9 days, long enough to show our face and then hitting the road? Or are we building sustainable, trusting, meaningful deep relationships where we get to the root of the matter and figure out why God placed us in that person’s life? I’m sure beginning to figure out my place here. No answers yet…but I’ll let you know when I do. Until then...Help me fight to SAVE the ORPHAN! We'll keep trying things till we figure out how to restore God's kingdom together!
Intentionally and Unconditionally (hah), Regina
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