So it’s been a while.
The past three weeks have been life-changing, to say the least.
Dirty, dirty children.
And thatched mud houses. A scorching, blistering heat of 40 degrees Celsius and mornings which begin before 5am. Endless streams of African patients clad in the brightest of colours against their ebony skins. Dry, dry grass.
a picture of the compound at Arcos-Iris ministries (www.irismin.org
)
Hungry, hungry children.
And quiet mornings alone by the sea listening to the waves and reflecting on what it means to be there, finally, in Mozambique. 
Mozambique. It is the one of the world’s most impoverished country, ravaged by war and strife. It is, out of the many other places I have visited, the most heartbreaking and heartwarming place I’ve ever been to in my life. It is a place filled with
dirty, hungry children.
A thousand children. That’s how many children the orphanage, no the ministry, feeds a day. They don’t call themselves an orphanage. They call themselves a Home, a home of hope, of healing and of love.
There are 300 children in the Home, but they do not call themselves orphans. Their parents may have passed away, but they know they have Someone in heaven they can call Father, Friend and Brother.
And rightfully so, because they are much more than an orphanage.
They are a Children’s Home, a primary and secondary school, a widow’s workplace, a feeding programme, a social enterprise, a medical clinic, a church, a bible school, a place where broken people can come to to find a bit of friendship, a ray of sunshine, and a sliver of hope.
young children at the school
widows making bead necklaces. Ten necklaces earn them a bag of beans and rice.
Never have I seen a more holistic ministry than this before. And at once, I could finally understand why God had called me to go specifically to Iris Ministry to visit.
And I guess, you could imagine my reaction when I got there only to realize that the name of their ministry, Arcos-Iris (pronounced as Ar-coos Ee-rish) means, in their local language… Rainbow.
It was then that I knew, for certain, that God had called me there for a purpose.
On my third day, when I woke up at 5am for my usual morning walk/jog by the beach, I saw a rainbow in the sky, just as I did three days before I left for Africa in Singapore, when a huge rainbow appeared in the sky just hours after my final papers for medical school ended.
I just knew, God had a message there for me in that place.
The past 3 weeks have been life-changing, to say the least. For once, without my phone, without the Internet and without being contactable, I could finally be alone with God to truly enjoy His presence and feel, hear, listen to what He had to tell me
in
frag
ments.
Fragments. They were everywhere: Dead coral pieces were enmeshed in the dry, red dirt as the compound was based upon what used to be sea; Children from the Home had bits of incomplete stories of parents abandoning them and giving them away; and patients with incomplete bodies (the crippled and blind and the unwell) formed a long line each morning at 5am outside the clinic.
Broken branches of the baobab tree would be strewn on the ground after a brief rainstorm.
There were fragments everywhere. And it was in the quietness of that still, hot place, that I could see them more clearly.
Rainbows happen when light, passing through water, becomes fragmented into 7 colours.
Arcos-Iris. For all it’s brokenness, it was also a place of hope and healing, love and light.
There was dirt. There was begging. There was hunger.
But there was also baobab, compassion and food.
There was not enough, and yet, there was always enough.
During my stay there in that little, forgotten place, God broke my heart empty, wrung it out and filled it with compassion for the needy. And yet, because of how God is God, He also came to me, sat with me, listened to me pray and cry and talk endlessly… … and showed me who I was, who I am, who I am to be. Unlike many of my other trips where I visited to do something, I truly felt that this time, God had led me there so He could do something for me.
There were tears and joy, greed and sacrifice, hunger and contentment, all mixed in a bag of dirt and glory and hope and mercy and love and endless, endless love.
In their physical poverty, hunger, and strife, I saw the spiritual manifestations of each of them in my life.
Dirty, hungry, angry.
Do you ever feel that you, like those dirty, hungry, parent-less children, need or want to be loved and cared for in some way you feel you need to be loved?
The truth is, each of us are filled with Fragments. Fragments which need to be picked up, pieced together and mended. Fragments which need to be relieved from condemnation. Fragments which need to be seen as beautiful mosaic rather than broken shards.
On the day before I left, a villager working in the kitchen of the ministry gave me a Rainbow capulana as a gift, which is a traditional African wrapskirt. She, out of her poverty, gave me her skirt our of generosity, because she said she wanted “to bless me as she would a daughter”.
To me, it was God’s way of reminding me of His message of hope, not just for the many parent-less children in that place, or the many broken lives we come across every day, but His message of hope… for me.
For you.
For each of us.
But only when we come to our senses to realize that we need to stop being a flood or a rainstorm or a blizzard. And realize, instead, that we are but vapor.
Here today, and gone tomorrow. It is that humility and brokenness that releases a certain power.
For when Light shines through vapor, it is then that Fragments become a Rainbow.
Arcos-Iris.
It’s been a beautiful 3 weeks.
* Wai Jia has just returned from Africa yesterday. Her 17-day trip to Africa was extended as her parents gave her a surprise by extending her stay in Johanessburg to go on a safari drive. She would like to thank all of you for all your prayers, love and support and apologises for not being able to write back to every one of you.
She has had to cope with a fever from a serious leg infection (cellulitis) from Mozambique as well as a broken hamstring which overcontracted in wintry Johanessburg and is recovering well. Nonetheless, her spirit is at peace and joyful and she has begun school. She will continue to write about her experiences and stories in time to come.
Thank you for journeying with her.
Bless you.