fallen

We went to the village again at the beginning of the week. The good news is it had rained a good rain and I was able to help with weeding our peanuts. The bad news, is, well, when we first got there our friend informed us that his two cousins who are also former child soldiers, had along with their uncle, raped a young girl of 13 years. They were most likely high and/or drunk. They've since ran and no one knows where they are. If they show themselves again they will be arrested. The girl was tested and found to be HIV+. Whether or not she was before that they don't know, but if they catch the men and any of them is HIV+ then it's a capital offense, or at least life in prison, because giving someone HIV is charged as murder, rather than the 18 years they would otherwise be sentenced to. It's so disappointing to me. We had taken those guys to Father Heart, we had talked with them, prayed with them, but it seemed nothing was releasing them from the grip that marijuana and alcohol had on them. If they had never been captured and taken as child soldiers for 3 years, maybe this would never have happened. But the uncle was never taken to the bush, and it was their father who introduced them to marijuana at a young age, so maybe it still would have happened. Either way, it makes me feel bad. This one mistake has changed the course of their lives. And now, as I begin spending more time in this village with Ruudy, I was hoping he would be able to reach these young men in a way that I was never able to. And now it's too late. They can't come back or they'll be in prison for life.
And then another one of my friends in the village seems to be thinking of taking a second woman, even though he has one child and another on the way, and he's a christian. The way satan can deceive us and we become so blinded that we don't see the way he has come only to steal, kill and destroy. Somehow he makes it look so attractive, so appealing, until you take the first bite and realize...and by then it's too late. Thank you Lord for redemption, for grace, for being slow to anger and abounding in love. Help my friends, heal their deepest wounds that they try to heal with temporary bandages, like money, drugs, and women. Oh Lord, only You. How we need you, so desperately need you, no matter how much we realize it or not. Minister to the depths of our hearts. Help us to recognize the schemes of the evil one and not be blinded by them, but thwart them.