When I was six years old I was collecting an allowance, simply because my parents were gracious. In Sierra Leone nine year old boys are fortunate to go to work breaking rocks in a quarry, because then they may be able to eat.
When I was nine years old I would lay in bed pretending to fly in outer space, saving the galaxy. In Sierra Leone nine year old girls are in danger of being rented out by their family members.
You may remember Sierra Leone as the country whose civil war inspired such films as Blood Diamond and Tears of the Sun. There is a scene in Blood Diamond where prisoners are wallowing in a swamp, churning and turning the mud with feet and hands under the glare of their rebel masters. Death is a breath away. In those days evil had descended upon that small nation like a horde of West African mosquitoes.
I remember Sierra Leone as the place where I almost lost my life to malaria and typhoid. For me, it is where the romance of travel and missionary life soured like milk under the scorching heat of human waste and wasted humanity.
Eight years later Sierra Leone remains to me a shining star of hope for the world, for exactly the reasons I mentioned above. If I’ve confused you please read my previous post Where Hope and Mushrooms Grow. You have to understand that if Jesus brings hope anywhere, He must bring it to Sierra Leone.
Regular readers of this blog will know by now that I support an organization called The Raining Season. The purpose of my writing is not to endorse them (though I do). I just get so excited when I see someone doing what God asks them to!
That little boy breaking rocks? His story is a Raining Season story, and you can watch it here.
The little girl being rented out by her uncle? They are praying and working to rescue her this week.
The Raining Season is in the business of mining for children. They are rescuing these diamonds of life out of the mud of poverty and abuse, but it isn’t under the stares of a malevolent taskmaster. They strive alongside the tear-streaked face of Jesus, who said, “Let the little children come…”
