The word orphan is associated with and literally birthed from a place of pain and unfortunate circumstances. Despite the reality of loss in the natural world, there is a kingdom that sees beauty in the broken, hope in the sorrow, gain in the loss, and family for the orphan.
Today, we want to focus on the word family. Who becomes the family of orphaned children, especially those in the Oasis for Orphans program? When a child has been orphaned, it’s possible the words son, daughter, inheritance, future, hope, and joy can become lost. At Oasis, we desire to rescue and restore the vulnerable and orphaned children in SW Kenya, but more importantly, we see them as no longer orphaned.
We see sons and daughters.
We see children with a future and hope.
While each and every child has a past, we desire it to become a part of their story, not an excuse.
Something our staff is constantly discussing is the idea of family for each child. As a people who have big hearts, it’s so easy and natural for us to love these kids as our own. This is an incredible feat and a noble cause, yet we want to make sure these children first know God as a Father to them. Second, we want them to be reconnected with other Kenyans. As we look at the stories of these Kenyan children, we see the future. Our desire at Oasis for Orphans is to raise up Kenyan sons and daughters, with a full inheritance and legacy in the Oasis kingdom mission. These identities, this family, will carry on long after our current staff and missionaries are gone.
We have tried so many times to prematurely give an inheritance or pass on a legacy by calling it a partnership, but the missing component is the family relationship. An inheritance isn’t fully received or built upon when it doesn’t get passed on to family. We cannot wait for the time when we have sons and daughters to whom we can pass on the torch one day. We look forward to the Oasis sons and daughters who will one day have the keys to the sites, who will be the ones to make sure there are not another 110,000 orphans after them.
So today, our team looks at these children through the lens of family inheritance—fully children of God and fully Kenyan. Our decisions and our next steps are all driven by what is best for these children. In a later blog, we will dive deeper into the end goal for these children as they become adults.
