Abu holding lizard eggs that we uncovered digging up weeds in the football pitch.
Abu is a fourteen-year-old boy we recently met, who is slight in body but keen in mind. Abu cannot walk on his legs but he manages to get around well walking with both his hands and moving his feet with his hands (I know a difficult image to conjure in one’s mind.) The first week we met Abu, he was sitting on the ground surrounded by broken radios. I asked him what he was doing. He stated he was going to fix his radio because he had found another broken one with spare parts. It looked like an impossible task to undertake in my eyes because there were so many small parts and wires scattered on the ground, but Abu assured me next week the radio would sing. When we returned this week the radio was singing.
“If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more cloth you of little faith?" Matthew 6:20
This week on our return we started to clean up some of the trash and long grass around their playground. As I was pulling weeds from their football pitch Abu came over to help. I asked him many questions. He told me he was eleven years old when he came to live at the home. His father is a Muslim and thus the name Abu Bakar, Abu for short. His favorite food is rice, his favorite subject in school is math, and he can speak English, Temne and Krio and wants to be a doctor when he grows up. He grew up the first eleven years of life going to the Mosque and learning the Koran, but now he reads the Bible, goes to church and loves Jesus as his Saviour.
I asked him what happened to his legs? He told me when he was a baby he was frightened by a witch, and his arms and legs became useless. One of the Muslim leaders prayed for his hands and his hands were restored but not his legs.
