Paul Myhill's Blog

Child Soldier (Longing for Death)

The year I was numbered eight years old, they began to teach me to be tough, to hate, to have a heart to kill my enemies. This was easy. My only family was the army and I hated them too. I couldn't run away, though. There was nowhere to hide. A few years before, many of my friends ran away. I thought I heard the guns barking in the distance but I don't know. Only a few returned out of many ten's of fingers of children that fled.

I began to train with weapons when my instructors decided I was near my tenth year. This was good because I spent less times quarrying rock and my back and legs did not ache as much. Because so many of my friends died, there is a void in my heart.

Some of my friends would go to bed with the older soldiers at night. They escaped the sound of the rope in the morning and, afterwards, there was money in their pockets to buy small things. It frightened me, though, because many of them wept in the days that followed. Some became very sick and if we are sick in that place we most likely die. There is no help and no hope for the sick there. The dark spirits are very powerful.

What is death like? Do I wander around like a ghost or can I just forget that I am alive and sleep a very deep sleep? These are the questions I asked myself sometimes, but most days were too difficult for the lips of my thoughts to speak to me.

View part one of this story here
View part two of this story here

To be continued...

Child Soldier (The Rhythm of the Rope)

My first morning I still remember. I woke that day to the rhythm of the rope upon my body. The song of the rope I know well now. It woke us very early every morning, before the great light had risen in the sky. It struck the flesh of all who were not rising from sleep quickly enough. Most of us did not wake unless we had to. Our bodies ached fearfully and in sleep we could forget. The rope that bit our flesh seldom causes us to bleed but there are times, oh yes, there are times.

We would gather to attention in the courtyard. There we stood and drilled. Every day was the same.

The rope was our companion as we marched out to the fields to work. All of us had to labor in the fields. We also worked in rock quarries, we built roads, we carried the burdens of the soldiers, sometimes many days by foot. If we had ridden on a truck to work, we would be like pigs going to market. And who would want to do that? They would be going to market to be slaughtered. Yes, we learned that we were animals. The difference is we speak and other beasts are dumb.

After a stretch of work in the morning, we would get a break. We were given food in dirty, cracked bowls: rice with some vegetable broth. It gurgled painfully into the knot that lived and twisted in my stomach. I think it was an angry spirit that came to steal what little food I got. At night I was given maybe half a bowl of the same food...if I was fortunate. If we tried to take more, the rope slithered across our shoulders.

The rope's only comfort is that it is familiar.

View part one of this story here.

To be continued...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

I wrote the following entry, and a few that follow, at 4:00 AM as a storm rained down on a tin roof overlooking a courtyard in Bujumbura, Burundi last year. I’m not sure why it took me so long to post them, perhaps because they fall more into a ministry philosophy category than one of in-field reporting. Regardless, we have developed this model considerably further since I penned these initial thoughts based on our discussions. I look forward to sharing more with you on that later...

Continuum of Care (introduction)

True holistic or ‘whole’ ministry not only means providing for all the functional needs of the individual, but possessing all the potential solutions available for that individual. It entails having all the options at your disposal to meet the needs according to a ‘continuum of care.’ Where an individual’s needs and circumstances fall on that spectrum dictates the prospective approaches and solutions. For the potential orphan, it involves first trying to prevent orphaning, second, rescuing the child after orphaning.

More specifically, the rescue and care of abandoned and orphaned children should follow a progressive continuum of options that all involve the coordination and direct involvement of the local indigenous church located in the community.

PREVENTION/DELAY

Prevention involvement should primarily focus on keeping dying families or guardians alive for as long as possible, or by supporting high-risk struggling, impoverished, or single-parent families. In other words, the goal should be to avert orphaning and abandonment, or to at least significantly delay it.

Indigenous churches, as they engage their communities, conduct home care visits and provide much-needed medicines, food and other assistance for this purpose. Naturally, they also have significant additional ministry opportunities into these families as a result.

TRANSITION/RESIDENTIAL PLACEMENT

If orphaning is still imminent, the church already has a history with and familiarity of these children due to its prevention and delay involvement. Requisite trust has been built with the families and the kids. The church prepares the family for death through counsel and practical programs that help to safeguard memories, family heritage and continuity. Meanwhile, the church looks to see what extended family options currently exist or helps to convince and support otherwise uncommitted relatives to step up and take in these children. Again, this provides further inlets for the church to reach and minister to families. The church is given witnessing avenues beyond just the interest in the children.

If these first two options don’t exist or have failed, then the church turns to its own congregation – first to see if church members can raise and care for the children as their own (adoption) or as an intermediate step until another family is found (foster care). The church therefore serves as an integral community-based solution.

If the church’s capacity has already reached its upper limits, then a church-based residential care solution is needed in order to keeps kids off of the streets, herded into institutions, preyed upon by traffickers, or being exploited as domestic slaves in other community homes.

Group residential care, however, still has to be designed to provide a family environment, albeit a large one of fifteen children or so. Church families, that may have existing kids of their own, are recruited to care for these additional children in church-based homes with full funding provided for food, clothing, education and other critical needs. It’s a long-term obligation - a lifelong commitment - to what, in essence, equates to a group adoption.

In these large family settings, widows can complement the live-in care provision. Formerly disenfranchised and ostracized, many of these ladies need a home themselves and a renewed sense of purpose and belonging. They know loss and pain and are therefore uniquely qualified to counsel and comfort children who have lost their parents.

Volunteers from the church body are also on hand to provide assistance, mentoring, and skills development for the children in the group home.

RESCUE

There exist many young children already struggling on the streets and in garbage dumps and brothels. The indigenous church still goes through the necessary steps to find and support extended families for their rescue. But, absent that, these children also need to be incorporated into families within homes overseen and run by the church.

TRANSITION/REHABILITATION

Many orphan care ministries speak in terms of ‘transition’ or ‘reintegration’ concerning children that age-out of the system. For the children in World Orphans’ church-based homes, these words carry less meaning. Under our current ministry model, our children remain fully integrated in their communities and daily experience what healthy families look like. There is no big disconnection between the environment of their upbringing and the next season of life in the ‘real world,’ only the normal anxieties typically associated with making it on your own.

What’s more, these children never graduate from a home, much like we would never graduate from our own families. The families are told that their care for the children is not a 5, 10 or 15-year commitment. It’s a 65-year commitment! These kids are now part of families, families that they will still visit; families that they will celebrate life’s achievements and milestones with; families that will gather together for reunions and holidays.

There are children we serve, however, that can be deemed as in need of transition. These are children in countries that raise their orphans in state institutions, or in countries where circumstances placed them into large privately-run orphanages. They also include latter-stage children that have been on the streets or rescued from other dire circumstances. These kids need comprehensive help through well-designed intervention programs that prepare them for the next stage of life.

In many cases, these children are immediately placed at the mercy of evil forces that prey upon them as soon as they are released from institutional care. If the church doesn’t step in at that point, the kids are soon immersed into a world of drugs, prostitution, slavery, or forced military conscription. Their lives are typically harsh...and short.

To avoid this highly-vulnerable period following institutional release, World Orphans is establishing transition homes, again owned and run by indigenous churches, that take in children before malevolent parties have a chance to grab them. This residential care format provides the necessary training (including social and skills development) to allow the children to better integrate into broader society at a later date.

SELF-SUSTAINABILITY

Whether it’s a child leaving a primary or transitional home, or directly aging out of an institutional orphanage, there is a further opportunity and responsibility for an indigenous church. Much like we would help our own children with ‘next steps’ resourcing and care, so is it with children from any type of residential care program. They need assistance to take the first strides of self sufficiency. That may come in the form of additional training or higher education, but can often mean a simple micro-loan to establish them in a trade, small business, or other income-generating scenario.

Why go this extra mile?

Because it could mean the difference between stopping or perpetuating the vicious cycle of orphaning and abandonment. It’s not just the specific child (now young adult) in question, but also their future offspring. The child needs to have every chance to be successful and self supporting so that they don’t, in turn, abandon children or fall to the ills that take and destroy lives after children are born.

Would You Press the Button? (part two)

I see the button as an allegory, a metaphor of sorts.

The fact of the matter is that we press that button every day.

As we go about our daily lives of comfort and excess, without consideration of how our choices and actions might impact others, we adversely affect ‘strangers’ the world over.

When we buy a new bathroom rug because the last one is apparently out of style, we keep an eight year-old boy, Rajan, chained to a loom in Nepal.

When we pick up a latte from our favorite barista, we fuel a conglomerate that forces Juan, a poor Costa Rican coffee grower, to sell at prices far below what would allow him to afford that same cup of coffee for himself.

When we buy the latest fancy T-Shirt with gold embossing at XYZ Casuals, we rob Ajay from ever leaving the cotton plantation that holds him and his sisters in perpetual bondage in South India.

When we go on an exotic spa vacation to Southeast Asia, we entrap Isra, a fifteen year-old Thai girl from the impoverished hill tribes, in a world of daily violation and exploitation.

When we visit that adult Website that our teachers warned us about, we enable pornographers to imprison a scared teenage girl, Imana, in a Burundian hotel room for three days, robbing her of her innocence and privacy.

When we choose to adopt a child from a country with a less-than-reputable child-placement program, we cause Esmeralda to reluctantly give up her new baby girl in Latin America.

When we select that rare hardwood for our kitchen cabinets because it nicely matches the existing wallpaper and is much grander than the neighbor’s remodel, we help to eradicate the ecosystem that sustains Daniel and his family in Brazil.

When we choose to get an organ transplant in Eastern Europe because the wait is too long in the United States, we cause the abduction of Serge, a street child in Moldova, and the subsequent harvesting of his kidneys.

Whether it’s the big and profound (organ transplants, Internet pornography, and international adoptions), or the seemingly trite and trivial (cups of coffee, T-shirts, kitchen cabinets, vacations, and bathroom rugs), we constantly enslave, maim and kill our neighbors around the planet.

What’s unsettling is that the facts are out there and are readily available. They can be researched with relative ease. But we simply don’t have the time and inclination to do so.

We’re just much too busy...and comfortable.

We keep pressing the button.

To be continued...

Cutter (part two)

"Back again, huh?" she said with a broad smile on her face.

"Yes, we’re seeing a friend who suggested we meet here. I’m always game to eat Indian food two days in a row."

She smiled and placed us at the same cozy table as the day prior.

I positioned into a corner chair with my back against a wall. Such seating offered the best scenario for privacy, to not offend. Outfitted with a small screen and headphones, I was transported to a care facility for troubled teenagers.

I was immersed into the world of a ‘cutter,’ as one served tables just steps away from me. The compound setting was all rather illusory and poignant.

As the tape rolled, I met Amanda, a young girl who had been repeatedly abused physically and sexually as a child. Like our new waitress friend, her arms were a tapestry of scars from recurring attacks on self.

Amanda shared that, even in the protective facility, she managed to find things to continue to slice and puncture her body – paperclips, the clips of pens. The resulting scars joined others worn as simultaneous badges of honor and shame. They were shown with both pride and distain.

Asked why she cuts herself, Amanda replied with a simple impacting statement: "Because then I’m in control of my own pain. I control what hurts me."

As those words sunk in with blunt force, I was oblivious to the next lines of conversation. I tried to fight back tears that could potentially bring the waitress’ untimely attention.

A girl harms herself to erase the harm caused by others? She tortures herself to provide assurance that she is the master of her own body?

Amanda was a ‘normal’ child once. She had dreams and aspirations. Perhaps as she played with dolls, she imagined being the daughter of a king in search of her gallant Prince Charming. Perhaps she enjoyed going to the mall to hang out with friends. Perhaps she looked forward to going to movies to be whisked away to other realities.

Amanda’s interview was capped by the single proclamation: "I hope that I can stop cutting and not kill myself." These words were offered in the context of what she wishes for in this lifetime.

This is her sole hope?

Most of us dream of so much more.

I pray that Amanda will realize that she is indeed the daughter of a King and that, through faith, she can be assured of a life abundant today and a new, glorified body for eternity.

Note: Restaurant cuisine style and interviewee name were both changed to protect the identities of the two teenagers involved.

On Guard

After taking the kids to school today, my wife came home in tears.

There’s a thirty-minute difference between the time Faith’s and Caleb’s classes begin. Faith was dropped off first. Lisa then took the opportunity to run to the grocery store with Caleb and baby Hannah to pick up a few needed items.

As Lisa walked to her truck, she noticed a man in his mid-fifties approaching from the opposite direction. They converged at the vehicle as Lisa started to unload two light shopping bags and a box of diapers into the trunk. Lisa told Caleb to get into his car seat.

The man asked Lisa if she needed any help.

Lisa smiled and replied, "No thank you. I’ve got it."

The man ignored Lisa’s answer and continued walking to the side of the truck and, initially obscured from view, put his hands on Caleb’s waist from behind, picked him up, and told him that he needed to get into the car.

Lisa was startled by the man’s disregard of her response and the sight of little Caleb in his arms.

She sternly repeated, "No thank you, sir. I’ve got it!"

The man walked briskly away, jumped into his car, and sped off at great speed.

At no time did this man have any groceries in hand himself, and he had approached from the opposite direction of the grocery store. This added to Lisa’s sense of discomfort regarding the whole episode.

The man’s rapid exit gave Lisa further pause. Why leave in such haste? Was he upset by Lisa’s words and tone, or simply leaving the scene as quickly as possible?

Lisa thought of calling the police, but realized that she had very little information she could actually give them.

 

(Image: Caleb at his belated fifth birthday party a few weeks ago)

As she drove away, Lisa pondered about how she’s a potential target – a late-term pregnant woman with two young children in a crowded parking lot. After all, it’s easy for someone to approach an expectant mother and ask if they want help, right? And a pregnant woman can’t really give chase, especially if there’s a two year-old toddler by her side.

It may have all been nothing – simply a Good Samaritan who was unaware of how his snubbing of her reply and subsequent actions could be construed during this day and age - a time of increased sensitivity to child abductions by pedophiles and of numerous reported incidents in busy parking lots.

But it certainly shook up my wife and one can never be overcautious about such things. We simply live in a corrupted world inhabited by corrupted beings. We have to keep reminding ourselves of that.

To put things in perspective a bit...

The following men all have something in common:

 

1. They all live within ten miles of the grocery store...and my children's school
2. They are all convicted sex offenders involving sex crimes with children

God forgives, regenerates and reconciles those who accept Him. Nobody is outside of His love and extension of grace. Perhaps quite a few of these men have now embraced Him as Lord and Savior.

But, unless we know for sure where a person stands, we are to be gentle as doves and wise as serpents.

We are to be on guard and realize that it can indeed happen to us.

...And we are to continually bring the issues to light.

World Orphans Rescue! - Portfolios (part two)

Here are just a few current opportunities within the World Orphans project portfolios:

(Image: Rescued child in India)

SECTOR: Infanticide Rescue
REGION: South Asia (India)
PARTNERS: Impact International, New Directions International
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $450,000

DESCRIPTION: World Orphans has funded a fulltime representative to help identify and establish 15 church-based homes in an area of India known for large-scale female infanticide. Some of these children have already been rescued. Others are presented to our partners by midwives who are aware of a family’s intent to kill their baby if it is a girl. These children are literally saved from the grave.

(Image: Children of Iraq)

SECTOR: Children of Conflict
REGION: NAMEstan (Iraq)
PARTNERS: Major denomination not disclosed due to security reasons
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $1 million
MATCHING GRANT: All funds received by November 15th, up to $300,000, will be matched 100%

DESCRIPTION: "World Orphans Iraq" has now been officially approved as a charity in Iraq. Our office there is currently being opened and we have been given full permission to establish the first church-based orphan homes in the country. Many abandoned and orphaned children now seek stability and security. This is your opportunity to make a personal difference in this war-torn country.

(Image: Young fatherless girl in Moldova)

SECTOR: Abuse and Exploitation
REGION: Eurussia (Moldova)
PARTNERS: New Hope International
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $500,000

DESCRIPTION: Moldova is the #1 trafficking hub for persons in all of Europe and the world’s top exporter of forced child prostitution. Our partner is rescuing orphaned and abandoned children from the streets, as well as from institutions that would sell children into sexual slavery or for the harvesting of their vital organs. Our children’s homes are being established with churches that are situated in key regions of such terrible abuse and exploitation.

(Image: Children that have escaped the war in Northern Uganda)

SECTOR: Children of Conflict (Genocide)
REGION: NAMEstan (Sudan) and Sub-Sahara (Rwanda, Burundi)
PARTNERS: Operation Mobilization, ALARM, and a major multi-national organization not disclosed due to security reasons
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY: $500,000
MATCHING GRANT: All funds received by Nov. 30th, up to $50,000, will be matched 100%

DESCRIPTION: Widespread ethic massacre has left thousands of first and second-generation orphans. Children that were orphaned years ago are now having children that they can’t support. Abandonment is rampant. More recently, churches have been destroyed. Pastors and their congregations have been butchered. These churches are being re-established and homes for orphans are being built to care for the children that were left behind.

World Orphans
1840 Woodmoor Dr. Suite 100
Monument, CO 80132
1-888-ORPHANS

All contributions are tax deductible and eternally significant

A Child Soldier's Story (Catch and Release)

WARNING: The following account is descriptive and unsettling.

Jeffrey's personal tally after four years of imposed service as a child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army includes six villagers hacked or beaten to death, "hundreds" of people maimed, and "many, many" Ugandan soldiers killed.

He only admits to taking two ‘wives,’ but there were probably many more village girls that were violated over the years.

Young girls were also brought back to Joseph Kony so he could pick from among them and viciously rape "two or three at a time." Jeffrey explained that, often, the older girls would escape into the bush when they attacked a village. Only the youngest remained to be immediately molested, forced upon by the fighters, or taken into captivity to continually meet the ongoing sexual demands of the troops. The most innocent, the ‘little ones,’ became those who suffered the worst abuse and defilement, perhaps while in a state of shock from seeing their parents or friends fall under the unforgiving blows of a machete.

(EVIL AGGRESSION. A poster in a third grade classroom at one of our Ugandan children's homes warns against child abduction and rape)

Many of the soldiers didn’t want to keep these young girls in bondage. Jeffrey shared that on a couple of occasions he took a girl with him to fetch water and, upon arriving at the water source, told her to run and never look back. Allowing a slave to escape meant that he would have to spend a month in solitary confinement under harsh conditions. It was a worthy sacrifice to him. He imagined his own sister having to be subject to such relentlessly cruel treatment. He hoped that, if she were in similar circumstances, somebody would do the same for her.

To be continued...

A Child Soldier's Story (Brutal Acts)

WARNING: The following account is very descriptive and unsettling.

Kony’s armies of terror bore down hard on villages in northern Uganda with a malevolence that defies understanding. The only explanation is that these men, driven by hatred against God’s creation, who raped the orphan and the widow, who forced boys to conduct horrendous acts against their own people, must be possessed by demons. Kony, himself, makes it clear that he is subject to demonic authority.

Jeffrey's hands were now visibly trembling. He described to me how, after sweeping into a village, Kony’s soldiers ripped off the clothing of all the villagers, both men and women alike. The rags were thrown into a fire to be incinerated. Some people also felt the lick of the flames.

Already in a state of fright and humiliation, the real terror began.

Pre-pubescent girls were selected as ‘wives,’ many as young as eight or ten years old. The LRA commanders told the fighters, "Anybody you want, you may have. Cut or kill the rest." The young soldiers had to molest and rape, otherwise they would be "cut" themselves. No girl was too young to be debased and spoiled. And sometimes even old women were violently raped. It was sport. It was intentional degradation of both the lowly and the revered, the young innocent and the esteemed elder.

(TRAIL OF TEARS. A young Ugandan girl gets an HIV test. Many like her have been raped repeatedly)

The horrific mutilations of these villagers are now widely reported. They have been the subject of numerous press articles and books. To hear it from the mouth of one who was forced to perpetrate such acts, though, gave me cold pause. It added a new dimension of realization and repulsion. The hands quivering before me were the same hands that lacerated these lives and dreams.

Kony’s LRA troops caused male abductees to kill parents and peers. Girls were stolen for sexual bondage. Those left alive in the village were viciously scarred for life. The marauding young soldiers had to cut off limbs, ears, lips or noses. They had to gouge out eyes. They had to castrate. In short, they had to amputate or slash something, anything. If they failed to do so, they would be carved up themselves.

Women’s breasts were cut off so that they couldn’t feed their children. Men were maimed so that they couldn’t provide for their families.

And, in an ultimate act of indignity and barbarism, women were forced to lie down, be violated, and have their genitals deeply pierced to force large padlocks through holes that clamped the whole groin region shut. These locks could only be removed by deeply cutting into the same flesh that they desecrated. They would be sadistically inserted as the seed of their rapists still defiled their bodies...and as the fruit of their wombs were killed, abducted to kill, or carted off as sex slaves.

Victims were disfigured to become unattractive to potential mates and to serve as a reminder of the terror lurking in the bush. Kony wanted to stamp out the next generation while keeping the current generation in a constant state of fear. He relished in embarrassing the Ugandan government with living reminders of its ineffectiveness, living reminders of his control and carnage.

The other living reminders?

Thousands of orphans. Thousands of abducted children who, to this day, are still serving Kony.

To be continued...

"We Give Them Dreams"

The Father’s House in Kiev, Ukraine (not related to Father's House in Romania), rescues children from the streets through a multi-step process that begins with a two-and-a-half month ‘camp’ set on an island in the broad Dnieper river. The Dnieper slowly flows through Kiev towards the Black Sea and provides a unique barrier of separation between the harsh streets and the idyllic setting of the campsite.

(Image: Step One - The Father's House campsite. A place of rehabilitation.)

The camp is followed by a nine month group residential care program where children continue to learn about their value and responsibility. Afterwards, they are placed into family units in an adjoining apartment complex that is also owned by the ministry. Here, families from the church have volunteered to look after eight children each over a two year period.

(Image: One of the street boys currently at the camp)

There are six families currently in the apartment complex, helping to raise a total of 48 children that have progressed through these structured rehabilitation and development steps. After they have learned the value of family, and about a Father who loves them so much, many of these children are adopted into Christian families (often the very same families that volunteered to raise them for two years in the apartments) or placed into more permanent foster-care arrangements so that other children can eventually take their places to undergo the transformation course.

 

(Image: Step Two - The Father's House group residential home)

(Image: Step Three - Children are placed into family units in a separate apartment building on the property. Eight children are assigned to each family.)

The orphaned and abandoned children of Father’s House have many painful stories - stories of young lives of abuse and exploitation.

We were told of an eight year-old girl who ran away from home after being continually prostituted for vodka by her alcoholic mother. Nobody knows for sure when her torment began, perhaps when she was as young as six. Men would simply show up with a bottle of the liquor in order to have time with her. After receiving the alcohol, her mother would then show them into the little girl’s room. She would drink while the men freely had their way with her daughter. I can’t imagine the screams and cries that were drowned out by a drunken haze.

(Image: A young girl plays with a puppy on the playground at Father's House)

A seven year-old girl ended up in the Father’s House program after being rescued from constant physical and sexual abuse as a slave. Her impoverished parents had sold her to a gypsy family for such a purpose. When a family gets to the point of selling their own children in order to survive, especially when selling them into obviously horrible circumstances, the depth of human desperation and degeneration has reached its lowest point.

A six year old boy was taken off of the streets. He couldn’t talk and didn’t even know the name of his country. He could barely walk. He had apparently been forcibly confined to a wheelchair for years. He was not allowed to talk or get out of his prison on wheels, so that his family could use him as a prop as they begged on the streets of Kiev.

We see it time and time again – children treated as commodities in order to feed earnings or addictions.

And then there’s the story of Tatiana (not her real name). At eleven or twelve years of age, Tatiana was repeatedly tied to a metal bed and beaten severely by her alcoholic mother. During these and other beatings, her teeth were knocked out of her head. On one occasion the mother punished Tatiana by trying to cut the nose right off of her face.

During a particularly brutal episode, Tatiana’s head was forced into an oven and her hair caught on fire. The searing follicles were doused out by the pot of boiling water that was on the stovetop.

It has now taken sixteen surgeries to reconstruct Tatiana’s beautiful face. It took more work and time to reconstruct her sense of worth.

After ‘graduating’ the Father’s House program, Tatiana was adopted into a loving family and is now receiving a college education. Her nightmare turned into a dream.

(Image: A picture of Tatiana, after her reconstructive surgeries, hangs on the wall at Father's House)

"We give them dreams," said Ruslan, the Director of Father's House. "They come to us with no hope for tomorrow. They don't know if tomorrow will even come for them. They have to live and survive in the present. They don't know how to hope and dream. We give that back to them...or maybe give it to them for the first time."