Paul Myhill's Blog

Innocence Lost

"The chain on the door is to keep the rogues out. Before I put it there, they would break in to steal from us and rape us."

Janet, a thirty two year-old mother, shared this with me matter-of-factly, accepting rape as an inevitable occurrence in the Zulu shanty town we were visiting, an area that police rarely go into. The way in which the information was conveyed was as impacting to me as the information itself. Janet wasn’t crying and crumbling over the fact she has been raped repeatedly. She simply communicated it much like we would communicate going out to the mailbox to pick up our junk solicitations and bills. Just another fact of life, another routine incident.

The rogues are youth and men, often addicted to drugs, who break into the shacks, robbing victims to feed their habits or lust. To be "real men" the witch doctors tell them they must have sex every other day. To get a high, they need funds. Both can be found in poorly-protected tin shanties occupied by widows and orphans. "If they get in, we offer ourselves so that our children aren’t raped," Janet further explained.

There is no surprise that the area we were in was the AIDS and drugs capital of South Africa. Such things go hand in hand. When tied to a tradition of outright male dominance and the cultural requirement for frequent sex, you’re left with a boiling cauldron of abuse and disease. Tin shanties are simply cages that hold prey, incubators that hold diseased victims.

Janet used to have a chair sitting on the flattened dry mud she calls her front porch. After she put the chains on the rusty front door, she discovered that she had to move the chair inside also. The rogues would use it to get up onto her roof, pry back the tin sheets and drop in through the ceiling to rape her. I heard the sounds in my head: the sound of men lumbering up the side of the shack, the sound of heavy footsteps on the tin surface overhead, the sound of crowbars dragging across the thin corrugated barrier, the sound of metal against metal and nails popping, the sound of creaking sheets bending against the will of determined predators. The sound of screaming.

Janet is HIV positive, no doubt infected by one of her attackers or perhaps the husband that left her for another woman. Her 8ft. by 8ft. shack has two decorations – a teddy bear stuffed high into a corner, and the memorial program for her mother’s funeral held by a clothes peg to a metal edge of the shanty siding. A teddy bear and a funeral program. Innocence and loss. Innocence lost.

Today is World AIDS Day. According to an AP report this morning, "South Africa has an estimated 5.5 million people living with the HIV virus — the highest total of any country in the world and more than one-sixth of the global total. About 1,000 South Africans die each day of the disease and complications like tuberculosis. Even more become infected because prevention messages haven't worked."

Please remember the infected and affected world today. Mothers like Janet.

PA IN PROGRESS

Eighteen-and-a-half hours on the same plane? I have to admit that was a record for me as I traveled from Johannesburg, South Africa to Washington D.C. with a one-hour non-disembarkation stop in Dakar, Senegal. I’m used to 15 ½ hours on the same aircraft, but this was rather brutal. The additional three hours are a killer. What’s more, that prolonged torture at 38,000 ft. commenced after a 2 ½ hour flight from Lusaka, Zambia and before a final 3 ½ hour flight to Denver with just over an hour connection time between them all. Yep, I had spent at least 22 of the last 24 hours in the air, zooming across nine time zones, constantly trying to find a non-existent position of comfort, watching stale movies that I’ve already seen three times, and visiting a tiny smelly bathroom where people mistake the wall and floor for the hole.

Even though the South African Airways plane, an Airbus A340-600, is apparently the longest commercial aircraft in service, longer than the original flight distance covered by the Wright brothers I’m told, I was stuck in cramped quarters with a rather large passenger sitting next to me who had little sense of personal space. I don’t mind being a pillow, but I prefer that the person resting their head on my shoulder is either my wife or has at least been granted explicit permission beforehand. And it also helps if the person has showered ahead of time. Yes, that has to be a requirement and this particular person hadn’t met it. I had visited slums in South Africa and Zambia on this trip, slums where families of ten share 100 sq. ft. of hot sweaty space, but at least they know each other and can walk outside if need be.

The public address system, referred to as the passenger announcement system by South African Airways, interrupted the video monitors occasionally with the capitalized subtitle "PA IN PROGRESS" as flight attendants passed on relevant information and cautions. The PA and IN were set surprisingly close to each other, giving a more applicable title to the broadcasts.

I have a love-hate relationship with travel. I’ve flown over one million miles in the past fifteen years and it opens up conduits to other worlds, worlds of exotic adventures, cultural delights and emotional highs. But it means paying the piper with preservative-laden airline food and precious time spent away from my sweet family, not to mention the loopy jet lag they have to witness when I get back home. They understand why I do it and, quite frankly, suffer more pain than I do while I’m away. One of our children always gets sick, something always breaks, and the juggling of balls and spinning of plates become almost too much to bear.

I greatly appreciate my wife, the sweetheart I call, LOML. I couldn’t do what I do if she didn’t do what she does. Yes, she’s been to India, Uganda and China with me and the whole family has joined me in Mexico, Thailand, Taiwan, Laos, Burma and Peru on multiple trips, but Lisa is my rock that keeps the home fires burning while I cut through bush and dusty roads to see the faces of orphans and hug widows succumbing to AIDS. She opens up new vistas for me and has made my life much richer as a result.

My colleagues and dear friends, Mike and Scott, have penned poems and love letters to their wives while away, posting them on their blogs as a public proclamation of their love. I have to admit, I feel cheated. After all, I love writing poetry and I’ve crafted my fair share of make-you-weak-at-your-knees love letters in the past, but they beat me to the punch. How dare they do that to me? They should have checked with me first, don’t you think? Not that it’s a competition or copy-cat scenario of reduced luster, but I feel that I’m now walking a trail they have already cleared. I’d rather be on the path less traveled...or where there is no path at all.

Regardless, I swallow my pride and now do what I should have done hundreds of blog posts ago. I take this opportunity to thank my bride and to tell her here, in the presence of thousands of blog viewers, as a public announcement in progress, that:

LOML, I love you dear and thank you for the sacrifices you have made for me to serve in ministry, to honor the call God has given me. As we endure the continual progress of pain - of separation - know that we are always together and thoughts of you are always with me. I love you and appreciate you, honey! Thousands of orphans and widows now have families because of your work, your involvement in this most precious of tasks. I can’t wait to see them all give you a hug on the day when we are all around the throne, that day where we will never again be parted, where we will never again experience the pain of farewells and well wishes. The spoils and crowns are yours! For without you, I couldn’t have even caught a glimpse of them. But the greatest treasure is the sparkle in your eyes upon my return – the diamond pools of gladness and relief. I’d travel a million more miles to keep experiencing that, to know that I’m loved and missed, to know that half of my soul is in delight as it reunites with its elated other half. I’m glad to walk this journey of many winding trails with you, darling, both hand-in-hand and heart-in-heart.

And I’ll be your pillow anytime, shower or not.

P

Resplendent Africa

It’s 5:00 am in Durban, South Africa and a sunrise of red, orange, pink and purple hues bounces off of fractured clouds and is mirrored in the shimmering ocean and river below. A Hindu temple, not perceived as out of place for frequent travelers to Africa, sits on the thin peninsula across from me on the other side of two arching bridges that converge at its manicured grasses and long reflecting pool. A lonely palm tree waves at the end of the sliver of land, right before breakers that ooze out into the waves as rocks tumbling towards the great unknown.

The city skyline and new soccer stadium rise up, stretching their arms to the golden morning as the land they occupy curves around a bay that frames the purifying ocean. The city floats in the mist of a yawn while the stadium’s many cranes and supports appear as a giant singular hand bringing it into form in the crisp morning light. All manner of tropical birds are heralding the new day. Tweets, whistles, chirps, clicks, caws, shrills, shrieks, and whoo-hoos compete and harmonize in the multifarious instrumentation. A cool Pacific breeze ushers the flowing score through open windows of a room that overlooks the multi-sensory beauty of a morning that is resplendent Africa. I sip on my Five Roses tea as I try to take it all in.

The city is still somewhat asleep at this hour, with very few cars passing over the arched roadways. The tinkle of silverware being sorted below reminds me that I will once again eat this morning as early-rising workers prepare for breakfast service. Many in Africa, just beyond the beauty of this dawn, will not eat today.

And wonder if the sunrise is their last.

Broken Heart

It was a million dollar view. The wooded property on a hillside overlooks Guatemala City. Volcanoes dot the horizon and add further majesty to the scene. One would expect the rich of society to be dwelling on such a plot. A mansion could have suitably left its footprint on the land, nestled in comfort and grandiosity. Grecian columns would have matched the noble girth of trees. Rock gardens and ponds would have complimented natural terraces of foliage and sloping outcroppings. It would have been a fine estate, one of enduring legacy, one fit for a national leader or captain of industry.

Instead, a stark and underfunded Catholic orphanage sits on the land. Manicured lawns have given way to bare dirt. Grand vistas and pools of leisure have given way to makeshift playground equipment of old tires, splintered wood and rusty rebar.

The children, covered in dirt and dust, looked every bit the orphan, although they were officially part of the rescued statistics. Scabs and sores bore further evidence to ongoing lack and need.

And then there was the little boy, the one without a name.

He was purple. He has a heart problem that prevents his extremities from getting adequate oxygenation. Is he still alive even today, a week after our visit? He’s just another boy in institutional care with an issue that his caretakers are poorly equipped or resourced to solve.

The thing that struck me is that this boy, discarded for being damaged or incomplete, is worth much more than any regal manor or stately home. The things of greatest value are already occupying this prime piece of property. They are the land’s greatest heritage, its greatest legacy.

Instead of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop the property with an architectural statement for the generations, isn’t it worth a couple of thousand dollars to leave a more lasting generational impact...to fix one little boy’s heart?

Pop-Pop-Pop

We had just turned in for the evening. The four of us were sharing a dorm room in a seminary within walking distance from the city dump. The surrounding neighborhoods were cordoned off by concrete barricades, presumably to prevent unknowing persons from driving into the wrong area and to hinder the escape of vehicles involved in drive-by shootings. We were told that even the police dared not go into some of these communities.

Pop-pop-pop. The sound was close and distinctive. Unlike the resonance of small explosions that most Hollywood sound editors use, the blast of real gunfire is one of staccato echoes piercing the quiet. Pop-pop-pop-pop.

Minutes later we heard the sirens, followed by a rapid volley of shots. As quickly as it began, it was over.

Guatemala’s three-decade civil war fostered a culture of violence and left almost 200,000 people dead. By most accounts, that many juveniles are now part of vicious street gangs, causing the country to be one of the most violent in the world. The homicide rate is astronomically high, almost ten times that of the United States.

Three people were killed in our neighborhood during our short stay in Guatemala City. The week before our arrival, a shootout in the housing development next to one of our church projects resulted in the death of four gang members who had kidnapped a six year-old girl for ransom. Days prior, they had invaded her home, murdered her parents, and were demanding money from the extended family. Multiple drivers were also executed on their routes while we were in the country. In response to bus companies’ failure to pay protection money for driving through gang territories, the drivers are routinely killed by these wayward youth, to the tune of dozens of deaths each year.

In this decade after the civil war, Guatemala remains a country beset by savagery and unrest, this time at the hands of fatherless youth – either orphaned or effectively so because of absent fathers.

The Chain (part one)

Although we were told he has violent tendencies, Julio presented himself as a jovial and pleasant young boy. He stroked and tugged at my arm while continuously begging to have his picture taken. His broad smile was comprised of a mouthful of crooked teeth framed by parenthetical dimples. Just eight years old, he lives with fourteen other children at a church home we funded a few years ago near Guatemala City.

Julio was bred for a business transaction. His mother received money to get pregnant on the condition that she would turn over the newborn to a crime ring that specialized in sourcing children for international adoption. Sometimes these women collaborated with their boyfriends or husbands. Sometimes they were prostitutes that used unprotected sex to score a bigger payday. And sometimes they were conveniently impregnated by members of the crime syndicates. In all cases, poverty drove their decision to turn womb from incubator to factory.

As agreed, Julio’s mother relinquished her infant to an intermediary that would temporarily raise him before his sale to a home for ‘orphaned and abandoned’ children. There he would stay until a lucrative adoption could be arranged.

Julio’s intermediary owners soon began to suspect that he might have some sort of disability. Once confirmed, they were unable to pass him down the supply chain. The final organization wouldn’t take him. He was damaged goods with a no-return policy.

Children of the Dump (part two)

During that first visit, children younger than six were working either independently or alongside their families to scratch morsels out of crumpled cans and cups, constantly beating off the competition of macro and micro-winged pests. Shacks made of rusty razor-edged tin, warped boards, and ripped tarps dotted the landscape of fermenting garbage mounds and craters. The children were covered in filth; it was etched into their skins and psyches. Ragged t-shirts and sweatpants were mere excuses for threads to suspend grime from gaunt bodies. Fibers were saturated with fetid sauces, drippings and smears. Little feet, often bare or inserted into dilapidated shoes or flip-flops, squished and crunched across mounds of multi-colored options and impediments. Each step could yield either treasures or treachery.

This was no place for a child. This was no life for a child.

Very few families and homeless kids live in the Guatemala City dump now. A giant landslide of refuse took dozens of lives. Eighteen bodies were never found, left to decompose within the piles they once plied. A fifty-foot wall of tumbling trash served as both executioner and embalmer. Now, rag-picker homesteads have been moved to the outskirts and curious missionaries like me have to observe from surrounding outcroppings and waste-strewn hills.

Children of the Dump (part one)

The graveyard is at least ten city blocks long and five or six city blocks wide. Mausoleum after mausoleum lines a grid work of streets that cut through the expansive cemetery of above-ground tombs. Most of the crypts are very elaborate, reminding me of latter-day versions of the carved sarcophagi in the necropolis of Hierapolis, Turkey, where the Apostle Philip was executed. These more recent vestiges do indeed show wear and tear themselves from the battering of tropical storms and the chiseling of homeless day laborers who find shelter and employment in the sprawling city of the dead.

People of lesser means are laid in multistory sepulchers adorned with colorful epitaphs and creeping plants. Some of these stacked vaults have been bashed in, and the remains removed, due to families’ inability to pay the regular maintenance fee. Rusty metal barrels ominously sit next to open graves, presumably to transport the former occupants to no-rent areas…or perhaps to the adjoining dump.

Large black vultures circle the edges of the cemetery, marking the boundary where interred trash merges with interred bodies. I stood on an outcropping, a place where these filthy beasts roosted on monochromatic crypts devoid of pomp and circumstance. A scene out of an Agatha Christie movie, swarms of birds perched on dead trees and equally-dead tombs while their brothers and cousins filled the air with the constant whooshing and whomping of large wings in motion. The morbid foreground panorama is placed against a background of trash and slums that reach to the horizon.

The stench of wet vulture droppings is mixed with the stomach-wrenching odor of decaying waste, hauled in by a continual line of trucks weaving in from the city’s compacted neighborhoods of three million residents.

Some of those residents were directly below us, sifting through the fresh refuse swarming with maggots and flies, looking for items of perceived value and sorting recyclables into piles of future subsistence income.

The last time I was in the Guatemala City dump was quite a few years ago, but just a few years removed from the country’s thirty-six year civil war, the longest in the Americas I’m told. Tensions were still high and wounds were still raw. The images of families working through piles of waste, in a country where many people had been laid waste, were disconcerting, to say the least.

To be continued...

The Sum of the Parts

...In part, a portal that whisks you to exotic worlds and immerses you into the real cultures behind the curtains – the byways of life and the gritty existence of people struggling to survive against pitiful odds. Along the journey, children are found left in the wake, abandoned and orphaned by powers and principalities that seek to destroy them, to destroy communities and nations.

...In part, an exposition of the Biblical mandates of caution, judgment, justice, care and blessing regarding the "least of these." An intimate look at God’s truth and what it means for us today in the midst of millions upon millions of children that simply desire to be loved.

...In part, an acknowledgement and exploration of the mega-issues of our time and how they are all interrelated, interconnected – and addressed – through the rescue and care of parentless and discarded children. In short, a unified view of the greatest outreach opportunity of our time, an approach to shatter vicious cycles that ensnare humanity and to mobilize masses to attack the core issue of spiritual separation.

...In part, a plea to realize and engage the amazing front-line force that God has placed and mobilized for the most significant global task before us. A rebuke and encouragement to put aside personal motivations and to instead join the bride in all her radiance - to support her, cherish her and strengthen her – by "letting the little children come" to her.

...In part, a synergistic, synchronized framework of action to help bodies of believers - both near and far - to reach out in an organized holistic approach that will change the very course of history...by changing the children’s lives that will immediately and ultimately impact it.

...In part, a consideration that the One who became incarnate in poverty, thrust out immediately as a refugee, and adopted in love and obedience, would use such as these for the completion of the wondrous commission we have been given.

...In part, a treatise that puts forth the absurd idea that we, in affluence, need those, in physical and spiritual depravity, for our own sanctification...that the orphan, widow and stranger are indeed precious gifts to us.

The sum of the parts?

A literary adventure that I’m presently embarking on: a book that reflects upon my exposure to over two-hundred care contexts for the fatherless in over sixty developing-world nations; a book that draws upon lessons learned in leading a ministry that has helped to provide five hundred homes to orphaned and abandoned children; a book of transparent admission of the many mistakes along the way; a book to inform, engage and mobilize for the most powerful world evangelization and church growth strategy of our generation.

Stay tuned!

Turkey Posts

My trip through Turkey has had me staying in some rather 'earthy' places, from the basement of a 100 year-old church to cheap hotels that make most missionary guest houses look like five-star luxury accommodations.

I’ve also had an extremely packed schedule, involving early mornings, late nights and 1,491 miles of travel in a compact car during a three day period.

Needless to say, I haven’t had much Internet availability or computer time along the way.

I’m presently back in Istanbul after various meetings, the chance to preach at two church services (Russian and Turkish), and – bonus - the opportunity to see all seven cities of the churches of Revelation, plus Colossae, Hierapolis and other cities of Biblical significance.

I have some amazing stories to share – stories of wonderful historical encounters; stories of trafficked girls finding redemption; stories of near-death experiences; stories of churches waking up to the call to care for the orphan and widow.

...But I’ll simply have to share them with you later.

Thanks for your prayers!