INVISIBLE NO MORE

Listening, Loving and Letting Jesus Heal

BY KIM PETERSON

Kony 2012. Posters. Internet blogs. National news. It all becomes so real as I look into the eyes of the young man beside me. I have shared meals with him, sat beside him in a game of Uno and heard him laugh. My daughter has been teaching him guitar and my son played on his team in a soccer game. Yet what he experienced as one of Uganda’s “Invisible Children” and in his 3 years in Kony’s army is beyond anything we can imagine. Paul (all names of Kobwin children have been changed) was only 10 when he was abducted by Kony’s soldiers. That is just one year younger than my son Micah. He was beaten, starved and made to carry a gun and kill. And that is only the beginning of the story. “What does that do to a boy of 10?” I wonder. “What would that do to my son?” And the most important question. “What do I possibly have to offer to this young man?” So I sat with him in my inadequacy. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We had come to Kobwin Children’s Center to bring God’s love and healing to the children there. Kobwin was started with the vision of providing care and education for those coming out of Kony’s army. Often after children escape or are released from Kony, they are not welcomed back into their families or communities. Without education or a support system, life can be close to impossible for these traumatized kids. Kobwin was the compassionate response of the leaders of New Hope to the needs of these children. For 11 years my husband and I had met with people in counseling situations and led them to Jesus for hope and healing. Why did this seem so different? We came to Kobwin with a team of people. Because we knew it was often hard for children to open up painful memories, we had brought with us Chris and Rachel and Leslie, artists from New York City. Together with Constance Dobbs, a New Hope Missionary involved with Kobwin since its beginning, we had put together a program to facilitate getting to the heart of the children. Our desire was that each child feel known, loved and led to Jesus, as they were willing, for comfort and healing. So the artists had put together various art projects to help the children open their hearts.The staff, led by Manager Ikwarit Charles, had agreed to let us take up a week of school to work with the children. The first two days we led the staff through the same process that we would later lead the children through. We had them draw out the path of a day in which something good happened, complete with pictures and colors representing the emotions of that day. The next day we repeated the process with a day something very bad happened. Then we had the staff members share their stories to each other. It was an amazing time as we saw the staff reach out and care for each other as the difficult stories were shared. We also had the privilege of bringing Jesus into some of the painful memories and see healing happen. Now that the staff were prepared for what we were going to do, the last 3 days of the week we repeated the process with the children. Every child created a drawing of the path of their good and bad days and every child sat with a staff member to tell them about both. As the children were willing, they were either prayed for or led in a prayer to Jesus for healing and comfort. It was amazing to see the tears stop and faces brighten as Jesus touched their hearts. There was Donna and Sarah who were abducted to be ‘wives’ of Kony. Sarah’s body still bore the marks of the witchcraft done to her. There was Alice who was in the army 3 years, the stories she told were almost unbearable. Part of her body was missing because of a grenade thrown at her ‘just for fun’ by some of the soldiers.The effect of these experiences have haunted her many nights. There was Jacob, Ronnie and Abraham in the bush with Kony for years before escaping, each with stories worse than the last. And then there was Paul.