Eliud is eighteen.
An orphan for ten years, he lives alone in a home made of cardboard, wood and corrugated metal. It’s eight feet long, five and a half feet high and five feet deep.
Because of a sponsor named Nick in Northern California, Eliud has enough – but you and I would call him poor.
Eliud prefers it that way.
After an intensely intimate conversation in Eliud’s home…
We walked together through the second largest slum in Kenya. Past the homes of it’s 800,000 residents.
We sloshed through a mixture of mud and garbage. Two new friends talking in the rain about wealth and poverty.
“I’d like to ask you a difficult question,” I warned. “I’ve been waiting a long time to ask someone this and I’ve finally found someone wise enough to answer it. Are you ready?”
He smiled slightly back at me.
“What does it mean to be ‘rich’ or ‘poor’? How much must a man have to be called rich?”
“Well,” he said, “I think it is true that a rich man has great wealth and a poor man does not have his basic needs. A rich man has new cars and a big house. The poor do not have basic needs.”
We passed a small opening in the sea of rusted metal. Inside, pornography played on a television for men with a few shillings. “Cinema” the sign read.
“In my country,” Eliud said, “to be rich requires corruption. I would rather be poor with God than rich with a corrupted life.”
We turned a corner and walked down a driveway onto church property where lunch was being prepared. Brad and I stopped under an awning and drank in Eliud’s last words of wisdom.
“A poor man can see forward. A rich man becomes blind until he cannot see good and wrong.”
There was a long pause.
“You’re right,” I finally confessed. “I am rich. And it makes me blind sometimes. I once thought I was too poor to share more but then I met my first sponsored child. She showed me how much good $38 can do. You are an amazing young man. Nick is helping you by being your sponsor but you are helping him by being his sponsored child. You are helping him see the good God can do when we share.”
His eyes watered just a little. Payback for all the tears these kids in Kenya have wrung out of me this week.
Even in this recession of ours the average American has a big house, more than one car, spends around $100 every month on soft drinks and more than $50 each month on cable. Not basic needs. We are rich.
There is only one reason more than 800 children from Kenya are still unsponsored at Compassion.com today : Because the wealthiest Christians in the world have become blind. We don’t see the extent of their poverty or our riches. We can’t see the good in sharing and the wrong of being an average American.
I sponsor three children and one leadership development student. Thousands of kids have been sponsored by my blog readers and concert audiences. My family and I simplified our life a few years ago so we’d have more to share. But God’s not through with me.
God is still opening my eyes. I’m dividing my water and electric bills, my fast food and magazine subscriptions by $38 tonight and I’m seeing more good to be done.
I pray your eyes are opened by Eliud’s words too. Please see and sponsor a child.
“Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.-PROVERBS 30:7-9
Today I stoped “just reading”. Today I canceled useless automatic expenditures and sponsored by first child. I know it will change my life. God bless and may He open more eyes through the work you are all doing.
Whoo-hoo! Bri, you will be immesely blessed by this. I can assure you. Congratulations on sponsoring your first child.
Praise God! Thank you, Bri!
I pray God changes you completely through this sponsorship relationship…that God opens your eyes and draws you near to Him.
Bri that is awesome. We sponsored our first child last April. I can tell you, if you allow God to do it, it will change your life.
Write your child often. You will get joy from doing so. Send them gifts often and you’ll be the one getting blessed. Pray for them all the time and God will soften your heart to a place you never thought possible. Slowly this precious child will begin to consume your waking moments and those when you’re falling asleep. I know cause I speak from experience.
Eliud is right on. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his very soul. “I would rather be poor with God than rich with a corrupted life.”
You know, I’m all for learning as much as we can from great Christian leaders on the scene here in the US. And don’t get me wrong, great things are happening. But, oh what we can learn from God through the “least” of these. I think that in the end we will really see who is the least…
Great post! Can’t wait to talk to my wife tonight about Kenya. We have 2 sponsor children right now, but there is more we can do. Thanks for your heart, Shaun!
I say it in every comment, but thank you. Thank you for sharing Compassion and Eliud and Kenya. Such a beautiful post. I pray we would all have scales fall from our eyes.
a
[...] Reading about Eliud and the 799,999 other people that live in a slum in Kenya: http://shaungroves.com/2010/03/sight-for-the-blind/ [...]
I will be honest and say I have been a little disheartened by the thought of what good does my few dollars do in the grand scheme of life, especially in these areas. But reading your post made me realize that it doesn’t matter what I think it will or won’t do, but that God will take it and bless it. He will take my puny loaves and fish and make it something so much more. Tonight my family and I will sponsor our first compassion child. Thank you so much for your beautiful post.
I can’t tell you how much these posts from your trip have moved me. Eliud’s story is simply amazing. I have already talked to my husband about sponsoring a child or two!
I’m not sure how one is chosen, but I would love to go on a Compassion trip!
As a sponsor, you can visit one of your children by contacting Compassion and arranging it. They have group tours to a number of countries each year or you can arrange an individual visit.
Tammy, I hope you are able to go ahead with the sponsorship of a Compassion child. You will not regret it!
Thank you again! You are giving some of us advocates of Compassion some great stories to share but more importantly you are convicting us to what is important. I came to realize too a while ago of who is saving who. I know I am blessed to have my Compassion sponsored individuals in my life. They given me a chance to make a choice to be saved from the blindness.
Thanks for being willing to learn from Eliud, Shaun. I find I’m always blessed by those living in physical poverty when I am able to see them the way you all have in Kenya.
If nothing else, these blogs have moved me to want to write my child in the Philippines more often.
Yes. Whenever I talk about Compassion (or World Vision), my one-minute win is to tell people that sponsoring a child change’s a life — your own. Thank you for sharing this young man’s wisdom. May God save us in our abundance.
Thank you Compassion, for all you do! I only hope one day I can be a Compassion blogger!
Thank you Shaun and all the Compassion Bloggers for sharing your trip to Kenya with all of us. I pray that you and the Compassion Bloggers safely navigate yourselves from the extreme poverty that you all witnessed and testified about to the extreme wealth of this country.
Thomas
These blog posts bring me to tears, in fact I have cried more in the last week than I have in quite a while. We already sponsor through Compassion but I am feeling the need to look a bit deeper into our finances and see if we can take a 6th child. God bless you for all of your insight.
Thank you. I’ve been so moved reading the various blogs from the current Kenya trip. I hope many more kids are sponsered.
[...] Sight for the Blind by Shaun Groves [...]
Shaun, I’ve been praying for and thinking so much about you guys. This trip to Kenya is seriously rocking and moving me. Thinking about sponsoring a child in Kenya.
I just sponsored my first child in Tanzania. My journey has become.
Good for you Becky. May God draw you near to Him and open your eyes through this experience.
begun! not become!
I’ll become. I am dropping my Blackberry and getting a basic phone package to support a child. Thank you for your voice.
You’re glorifying God through your presence, the visuals, and your voice. Thank you for being a vessel to Kenya’s darkness.
Thank you for the kick in the gut I needed it!
My husband was recently laid off and for 4 months, we had a very meager income, only what little I make. During that time God has blessed us over above anything I could ever think dream or imagine. Now that my husband is working again, I want to spread the love that God has so graciously given us.
Beautiful beautiful ugly post. I mean that with all love and respect! It’s a post that we Americans need to see!
you know what’s ironic to me? how much more they know about the heart of God, the real, genuine importance of life and faith when all that surrounds them would be evidence to a complete lack of those very things. But that’s a mysterious God for you I suppose. And that’s what humility should look/feel like– being shown by someone with so much “less” how little you really have. Can we get this kid a pulpit?!
I love that you are leading us by your example. Not bragging about how many children you sponsor or get sponsored, but realizing that even though you are doing so much, you can do more.
Thank you.
[...] Groves shares some insight he’s learned from Eluid, an 18 year-old Kenyan man. An orphan for ten years, he lives alone in a home made of cardboard, [...]
[...] Groves shares some insight he’s learned from Eluid, an 18 year-old Kenyan man. An orphan for ten years, he lives alone in a home made of cardboard, [...]
[...] wanted to share this post with you. And I want to encourage anyone who is reading to get off the fence and sponsor a child [...]
I am humbled by this article, I have sponsered children and am doing research for a missions trip to Mathare in October 2010. It is not through Compassion, although we sponser children through them.
We are going through our church. I could not just read this and not comment. I am overwhelmed by the amount of poverty that I am seeing through the research and completely humbled by the hope and perseverence. Trust in God and faith. We should have just a quarter of the faith that the people of these articles have and the USA would be glowing from the glory of God! Eliud is amazing and I have learned something from him! I pray for God’s blessing and hands upon him. That he would be used in a mighty way. In Jesus name, Amen.