what all those psalms are really about.

Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
"He won't call me to account"?
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness
that would not be found out.
The LORD is King for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.
Psalm10.12-18


sometimes i think about all the parts of the bible i've never been able to relate my life to, words and complaints and pleas to god for justice, mercy, freedom from brutal oppression. apparently there are a significant amount of places in the world that need such words of encouragement, nations at war and fatherless children living in terror and affliction. i like that my world in africa finds comfort in these formerly "superfluous" chapters and verses.
psalm 10 is a marvelous example of a part of the bible i've never know what to do with. my life has never been in need of these words...until now.

here in muizenberg my life has picked up speed. in the past 3 weeks i've probably averaged 10 hours a day in the lives of the kids. yesterday i hit the peak with 18 hours, minus eating lunch with the team here from nashville. 18 hours is alot of time in their lives. more is revealed and shared with me as i sit, walk, and eat with them in their world.

drama abounds, to be quite honest. sure, we are a rather contained specimen of the global "street kid epidemic" but we are a holistic one for sure! name an issue, we'll have a story about it. just yesterday at church a congolese man gave melissa his phone number. he was cute, but not cute enough to override the fact that he had offered ricky 200 rand to get melissa to consent to having sex with he and his 2 brothers. this is one way they make money.
another way is through giving their own bodies to sexual immorality. in the past week we've confronted 2 muizenberg pedophiles preying on our kids. last night a vw golf full of men pulled up and offered the kids money for sex RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.
mingo is a drug runner, so he is often found on the corner of the game shop, strolling up and down church street with his yellow fannie pack, half out of his own head from the drugs his older gangster roommates feed him as payment for his "work".
keyton can be found curled in a ball outside checkers asking for small change. that is unless we are taking him to capricorn where his drunk mother and stepfather forgot to leave him a key to get in the house 3 days in a row. we searched capricorn for her and when we found her keyton was so upset he didn't even care anymore about taking a shower. he just grabbed a handful of clothes, shoved him in my lap, grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the car where he sat in my lap and cried into his 10 year old arms. how many times has he gone through that, and how many of these kids the same--yet with no one to hold them and love on them afterwards. and i wonder why they steal from me and the rest of the world around them?

neiltjie's been off tik 8 days today. he got paid for breaking into houses, stealing pipes, and selling them this morning at the "scrapyard"--exactly what it sounds like it would be, a yard full of scraps. last night after a dramatic 2 mile walk where we yelled and cried and cursed at one another for some recent behavior on his end that was hurtful to me, he pulled me aside and cried for an hour straight about his stepfather and his drunk mother and his dead brother and his dying brother and his little sister who has no one to clean her diapers and his little brother, kadoya, who keeps showing up on the streets of muizenberg as well. he's never opened up to me like that. but neiltjie and i have a long road ahead of us, because he's invited me into the reparative work he longs for in his life. school, moving home, helping his mother avoid abuse--he says all this is what he wants now, that he's tired of this life on the streets.
bala asked the same. he wants to go home. he's been on a tik binge since i cannot remember when and just last night he opened up to me. he's lost so much weight and broken so many laws as aof late. he spent he last week stuck with some older gangsters in capricorn who told him he was a homosexual if he didn't smoke tik with them...7 days later he was still there, smoking tik, trying to remember why it was such a big deal to be called a homo after all.

these are just a few stories out of life here. clearly prayers are in high demand. i beg you to pray for them. neiltjie and russie told me yesterday that all they need to not do the drugs is for someone to ask them not to, to watch them and hold them accountable. i've been given permission to beat them all if they use--and i have my ways of finding out the truth on a daily, hourly basis!!!
again, here are their names:
damien, carl, ricky, neil, brian, andrew, bala, keaton, kadoya, russell, randall, doofy, brontino, and mingo.

You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.