Painting with broad strokes

Picture, if you will, the Mona Lisa. Yes, the famous painting. Think hard about it. Do you have a good picture of it in your mind? Good. Now time for some questions. What color are her eyes? Is her hair straight or wavy? What color is her blouse? What color are the shades behind her?

When you imagined the Mona Lisa what did you see? Chances are, you imagined a portrait of a girl staring back at you and following your eyes everywhere you go. Maybe you pictured something like this:

Yes, you are right. That's not the Mona Lisa, but that's about as much as you can picture. You can't really see the background. But try to picture that now in your mind. Deep burgundy shades half drawn over the window allowing a glimpse out at the quiet meadow as a silent tree dots the landscape as the hills fade into the distance where they meet the sky. Now can you picture it. Have a good image of it in your mind? Good. Keep that image cemented in your mind before going on any more.

One of the main things I like to do with this space is to paint a picture. However, I strongly feel like the picture I paint, much like the snapshot of Mona up there, is incomplete without the rest of the details. I can talk about teaching lessons and tutoring kids, and that's the shiny foreground, the thing that draws your attention in, the big idea. That big idea is incomplete, I believe, without understanding the context behind the picture. In the foreground, for example, can be kids studying in my house.

In the background, the thing you don't see at first, is that the reason I have such a heart for the kids studying and reaching for excellence in academics is because of what their school looks like. They are in a classroom with seventy other kids, sitting on the ground underneath a cashew tree while their teacher lectures on a chalkboard for three hours then they all go home. Suddenly, the picture of the kids sitting and studying feels incomplete, doesn't it, without realizing what is there in the background (or in the case of school, what is not there).

Or take this photo from a while back with the kids moving the new mattresses into their beds. You the boys all buzzing over the mattresses and me making sure that people don't take two (yes, somebody tried to put two mattresses on their bed, it was pretty funny though watching them try to climb up into bed). What you may not notice in the background are the mosquito nets on the beds.

Those simple little blue nets are what help us keep malaria at bay. Whereas the average Mozambican gets malaria about two times a year, our rates are significantly less than that just by the simple practice of sleeping with a net at night. This allows the kids to be healthier, happier, and (during school) not have as many absences due to being sick.

How about this one. Its a little out of focus, so just imagine it is a fancy watercolor by Monet or somebody. If there was a video of this picture it would have about a million views on youtube only because there is nothing funnier than somebody getting drilled in the nuts by a soccer ball.

What isn't obvious in the picture is that the soccer ball only has about another week to go before it pops and bites the dust. That's about the average life of our soccer balls, anywhere from two to four weeks. That's where you folks come in, because folks help out by sending money. Most the time for whatever is needed, groceries, utilities, or to do something special for the kids, and recreation is just as special to the kids as having bibles or clothes or food.

That's why I like to tell stories on here. Stories can help give a fuller picture of what is going on. I've discovered as I visit and talk with people, that they do a pretty good job at the foreground, like with Mona again. You picture the eyes, maybe notice she has wavy hair and pursed lips, you may not note the color of her blouse gut you know the general hue and shape of it.

In the same way, people do a pretty good job of imagining my life and the ministry at the orphanage. They picture the kids, playing games, going to school, doing bible study in the evenings. They see the difficulties of their circumstances and poverty, but that's mostly because, duh, everyone knows that it is hard being an orphan is a poor, third-world country. What you are imagining is not wrong, it's just very incomplete. You're seeing only the foreground.

Remember how I asked you to imagine the Mona Lisa, especially the background, with the fading horizon, the drapes, the trees. Remember all of that. You remember that picture you painted in your mind? I hope so...

...because you remembered it wrong.

Ok, now that wasn't exactly fair on my part. There is no window, no shades, no fading horizon. There is a path, a river, and what I'm going to refer to as forest/blob on the left. The tendency much of the time is to assume how the background is without really looking at it. That's what I try to do here, paint a picture not only of the foreground, but to complete the story to give more depth and meaning and beauty to the story that is unfolding in these kids' lives.

I've discovered many folks understand that poverty exists. They don't understand that many folks where we are live on less than a dollar a day. They understand that corruption exists in all level in the public and private sector, but can't ever imagine that I'm stopped by police on a daily basis asking to see my papers and harassing me for made-up charges. When I say how much our kids are picked on and disparaged for living in an orphanage it is heartbreaking. When I mention the depravity and poverty and abuse from which many of them have been saved it's tremendously and joyfully overwhelming.

Those are the stories I'm trying to tell here, to paint all parts of the picture.