*disclaimer, contains some graphic content*

There is a boy in our programs who is very special to me. He has big, sad, heavy eyes and has been on the street a long time. He is frail and small and eleven years old. Once, a few years ago, he had asked to be resettled home with his parents. When we got there they began yelling at him, telling him he was a burden, and bad, and it was better he just returned to the streets. He turned away from his family, tears silently streaming down his cheeks and whispered to me to take him back to the streets. We rode back to the slums with that child. He was quite as a mouse that day, ignoring the other boys when they asked him why he was back on the streets when he had gone home.

He does a lot of drugs. A lot. If we ever find him outside of the street children programs he is always as high as a kite. Eyes red, responses delayed- he is very honest when he is high. Honest with a simmering anger against all of the injustice in his small world bubbling under almost everything he says.

Last night he was violently raped by an older street boy. He had been high, and came to his sense with the boy attacking him. It was close to where we have our programs and although it was night a group of other street kids found the boy in the act, pulled him off, and began beating the big boy (the perpetrator) mercilessly. He was able to escape before the police could come and no one has seen or heard of him since.

In our programs yesterday that boy was sadder than usual and even less responsive. We made sure to counsel him as best as we could. Talking to him about how it is not his fault, that God hurts when he hurts, that he is still good, and as many other truths as we could think of that we knew he needed to hear. He was freer by the end, but still somber, still hurting, still sad.

There are so many boys in our programs that plead with me to take them into our home, to take them off of the streets. On Monday, a very sweet boy stayed at the gate to the church in Kivulu slum when I was leaving and just stared at me sadly. A tear dripped down his scarred cheek and onto the grimy, black ground. I stopped and asked him why he was crying. "I wish you could take me with you" was his reply. It broke my heart.

I always tell the  boys to pray to God to get off of the street. That our God is a powerful God that can do anything. Can you please pray this prayer with me? For our children living on the streets. Please. They don't deserve it. As  many children as God has allowed me to help, I can't help them all, I can't put them all into a home or into school, only God can do that. He is the only one that ever could.