So You Kill Me Because You Now Call Me Rat or Mosquito. I’m Still Your Neighbor

How is it that one day you are friends and maybe neighbors and the next day you work up that person you now call them a rat or a mosquito. How does it work someone tell me that you listen to a speech or a sermon and all that you walk away with is anger and a heart to bring bloodshed.
No one has the right to take away someone’s life regardless of what they have done. How do you get to play God over someone life, you can’t and you shouldn’t buy if you are watch out God is watching. 
They do say once you take someone life it changes you but then how do you face those people in the future when peace is declared. I have watched a lot of the genocide in Rwanda and people who killed people, friends & relatives during the genocide and now they can’t live with themselves, PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Even war veterans can tell you that you will struggle after a long time in combat killing people in the act or war or peace. 
There is no coming back from that point, from the place where we kill each other for whatever reason, it looks cool because you are a gang or crew. The killings on Burundi have stunned me, I saw a video of a man who arms where tied to the back and so were his legs and a young person had a small knife like a butter knife by which he was slicing his throat like he is cutting a chicken or goat. 
What gets into a person to do such work, carry a huge stone and throw it over someone because he is from another tribe plus the King said we should kill the foreigners, just because we don’t like Jews let’s eradicate them because they take all our jobs and money away. What gets into a person to justify that and what gets into a family man to live his beautiful family to kill a neighbour for whatever reason politics, money, tribal or land. 
I pray someone has an answer. 

What’s you portion 

The World Greatest Secret…

 The heartbeat of God is Mankind and it has always been man and so many times we forget that. Many will say to succeed in life you will need to be selfish I say No… Some call it Mother Nature some call it karma call it whatever you want. If you touch a man’s life God will inturn touch your life… 

There is one principal that I was taught by Dr Andrew Reid coming from Isaiah 58 which you can summarize to say if you get involved in the healing of other God gets involved in your healing, If you get involved in the growth of other God in the process start to develop you through it all.

I don’t know how it works but as you work to grow and help someone in the process someone will be doing it to you without you knowing. One way to get the attention of God is to impact and touch the life of every other person around you, if Jesus came to earth and decided to selfish there will be no remission of sins. 

Let’s start with someone, someone you know or may not know, let’s help other people. The only thing we will take to heaven is people, let’s invest in people, invest in building others, building mankind and you will see Getting involved in your life as well…  

My Journey Into Champions For Life

“Please can all the kids go and take their drugs, and i was like what i thought i was at  Christian camp and the answer was a resounding Yes. So then why are you giving them drugs was my second question and the response wasn’t far from sarcasm its because they take drugs. Please help me understand what you mean and she responded after I fired a lot of questions, its because all the. Children take medicine, drugs anti retroviral drugs ARV”

This was at a camp in December 2009 my fist time at a Champions For Life camp and my first real contact with children infected with HIV Aids. So my story goes on, I was flushed with a real big stone of stigma and my response was, fear. So you are saying I have been eating , bunking playing sharing food for he last two days with children living with HIV Aids. Stigma is a big thing in Africa whether we like it or not.

Here I was with the choir, a worshipper and Christian born from childhood in a Christian home and taught to love and respect the Lord. On fire for the Lord and hungry for the kingdom I had no excuse but here I was sitting down with my mind racing up and down. All the adverts on television and radio I have seen and heard them talk about the effects of the virus and the life of people living with HIV escaped my mind.

I’m was thinking what if I’ve contracted the virus, what if I’m now positive, those ten minutes I was sitting there thinking a lot of things at the end of it i was like. Kelvin if you contracted the virus why not enjoy this camp to the maximum and it may be you last as well. Its funny now but on the day it wasn’t, now I have been to in Southern Africa including my own country I have seen so many children and stigma is still a big thing.

Whether Christian or not, unbelievers or traditional in faith, there is still a lot of stigma of the HIV + person or child. Personally I have seen firsthand our christian brothers and sisters still stigmatising people.

As you read this I would like for you to think. If God’s love is inside me and I was called his own, called to love in which areas and which  have a stigmatized and I have coke before you Lord asking for a, b, c, d. Being called to love with the love of Christ we don’t have the liberty to choose who to love and not to love. Who have I ostracized and shunned from? Being a christian this is what we are to work on love everyone.

Some of the most amazing people, beautiful souls with amazing stories, that over the years have become a part of my life are some of the children who where at that camp back then. I love each one of them we have  lost quite a number but May God give us patience to listen to every one and love everyone unconditionally

MERCI BEAUCOUP TO A TEACHER EXTRAORDINAIRE

‘There is no profession that is more important, yet under appreciated as teaching.’
Having completed all of my primary and senior school in an English medium setting, it was going to be a very interesting journey attempting to pursue my tertiary level education in a French setting. Arriving in this french speaking country, we had to first learn the language. For me it was not really ‘learning’ per se, but rather resurrecting the language I had allowed to die within me after I finished high school.

Today I would like to just pause and thank someone who really made a difference in my French language year. I hope that one day I will be able to thank her in person if we ever get to meet again, but I would like to make mention of one of the most formidable teachers I have ever come across and anyone who passed through her hands will attest to this fact. Ms Cappelluto, you are a legend and I salute you this day. No one has ever been able to rival you nor reach the standard that you set for us as your students. You are truly a teacher extraordinaire!
Ms Cappelluto taught me French for two years in high school, and four years later after finishing school I still remembered my French vocabulary! In fact I will confess to the fact that I even carried all my French grammar and vocabulary books from high school and they have proved an invaluable resource in my university studies!

Wherever you are right now I just want you to take some time out and reflect on someone who has helped you reach where you today because truth be told, we have all had someone help us out somewhere along the road. It may not necessarily be someone with whom you are completely familiar with, it may like me be a teacher who made a lasting deposit in your life, but whoever that person is.

If you have the opportunity, go back and say thank you, Tell them why. Let us make a habit of thanking people sincerely for their efforts both seen and unseen.

THERE IS MORE TO THE WORLD THAN WHAT MEETS THE EYE

‘Information is pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.’ – Clarence Day

In these next couple of weeks I would like to chronicle a few of my experiences as I have lived, moved and traveled in North Africa.

At the moment, I live in the fourth largest town in one of the North African countries, which is approximately eight hours away from the capital city by bus. The city has a strong agricultural background and one can imagine the shock of seeing cows crossing the beautiful campus grounds for the first time! Oh you have got to love the surprises that come with new places! The first night in a foreign country can be one of great excitement or great anxiety. My first night is one I will never forget as many of my notions of studying in a foreign country went flying out of the window. I don’t remember much except crawling into my sleeping bag for a restless six hours of sleep before heading onto the four am bus to my new campus, eight hours out of the capital city.

Waking up on the bus out of town left me wondering where on earth the Lord had sent me. Growing up in my home country I had never been subject to any type of discrimination or racial bias of any kind that I can remember. But here in this foreign land, thousands of miles away from home, I had my first encounter of being treated differently because of the colour of my skin. The concept fascinated me. How could people assume that the colour of my skin made me any inferior to them? Instead of feeling insulted and thinking they were racist, I set out to try and understand why these people behaved the way they did towards the ‘étrangères’ or foreigners in their town.

What I discovered left me feeling very sorry for them and actually pitying them for their ignorance. When a nation of people is closed off from others (borders wise) and the only influence they have is state controlled, then there is a high probability that their view on life and people different to themselves is a very narrow-minded one. Very few of the towns folk had ever seen people of colour and so we are a ‘wonder’ to them, which often results in them hurling comments left, right and centre. It’s very easy to take offense and admittedly I did in the first year of my stay, and it still gets to me being heckled at, but now I have a totally different outlook because many of these poor folk do not have the opportunity to travel and experience a different culture than the one that they know.

So what am I saying? If you have the opportunity, travel and get out of your comfort zone. It will broaden your mind and show you that there is a world that is different from the one you have known all your life. As an African proverb states, ‘Don’t ever say your mother’s cooking is the best in the entire world if you have never left your village’. Yes, in your own small world, your mother’s cooking may be the best to you, but there is much more out there than what is in your own little world. You don’t even have to board a plane to see a world different to your own. Visit another town in your own country, you will be surprised by how different two places in one country can be. Don’t be afraid of things that are different from what you are used to. Go out there and discover the world!