Sometimes the beauty I see in Namibia takes my breath away. There is the natural beauty of the stark landscape here. The animals that have such a wild beauty that people come from all over the world to see them. The beauty in our kids, some of them are as wild as the animals here, but people don’t come from all over to see them.
Sometimes I am takes aback by the raw pain I see here. I met a lady who prostitutes herself so she can buy formula for her baby. She is hard and broken. I cried when we left, her eyes were vacant. I don’t think she has cried in a long time. There are days when the task really seems insurmountable. I was sitting with the 5th grade girls recently, as we sat and talked I looked around the room and thought of each girl’s story. One of them lost both her parents to AIDS, she now lives with her older brother, another lives with her alcoholic mother who has no interest in her, they live at the doorstep of a bar. Still another lives with her very old grandmother, her mom did not want her. One now stays with her aunt, her mom passed away recently, she still cries and talks about how she misses her mother. One of the hardest things here is to realize that not many of these kids has anyone to hold them when they cry.
Yet, tonight as the sun set I experienced one of the most beautiful sights. In all this pain and misery there is still beauty. God is still God. It seems to be a recurring lesson for me here in Namibia. I am constantly being reminded of the sovereignty and goodness of our heavenly Father.
I snapped this shot of the clouds behind the barbed wire, it illustrates how I am feeling right now.