anugraha mane.

One morning last week, David and I and Judah and Amelie took a bumpy, hour-long auto rickshaw ride across the city to a very busy road that boasts both a railway station and a bus station.  The auto driver dropped us off at the cracked sliver of sidewalk, and we waited, backs to an empty lot of rotting garbage and who knows what else, trying not to breathe too deeply or look too closely.

The fifteen or so minutes until our friends Milton and Jebba came to meet us seemed like an eternity with huge buses jostling by and crowds of people staring openly at us.  No matter where we are in this city we are assured of seeing people, people, and more people.  Needless to say, we stood out like four sore thumbs.

When they arrived, Milton led by motorcycle, and Jebba squeezed with us into another auto to take us to their home.  The roads were tight and winding and crowded.  Turning down a little clean-swept alley, we stopped at a row of homes and piled out.

Milton and Jebba live less than a mile from the train and bus stations, and that is significant because in the bowels of those stations live countless street boys, in their teens, too old for orphanages.  And Milton and Jebba’s home is called Anugraha Mane, which in our local language means “Grace House.”  They are giving their lives to reach out to as many of these train-station-street-boys as possible.

We spent several hours inside their very humble home.  We sipped chai and snacked on biscuits, and I attempted to learn Jebba’s way of making chai which is far superior to my own.  We hung out with their sons, Atfrin (age 10) and Advin (age 2).  We tried our best to talk despite the language barrier.  Judah and Amie played with toys on the floor and roamed through the house and had a grand time.  We filed up the narrow outside staircase to the second floor, where currently two teenage boys are living.  We know these boys from church and their smiles always light up my heart.  They are friendly and talkative and big jokesters.  Typical teenagers.  But not typical; as Milton reminded us, “They have no mother and father.”

While Milton and Jebba cooked us a huge midday feast of chicken and puri and a melt-in-your-mouth potato and chickpea gravy, I chased the little kids around the upstairs of the house and David played games with the big boys … mostly chess, but some wrestling and video games too.  We spent several hours with this little family and saw firsthand that ministry to the poor and the orphan is not glamorous or even especially energizing; it is doing laundry and cooking meals and sharing your family with outsiders and getting exhausted because there is just no break.  And yet, in it all, their faces are creased with the grace their home is named for.

As we rode away in yet another auto into a haze of exhaust and dusty late-afternoon sunlight, I held my tired boy tight and fought back tears.  When you meet people like this, humble servants who go unnoticed by most of the world because their work is so simple and mundane it’s un-noteworthy, you are left with a mingled sense of awe and bewilderment.

For spiritual nourishment, I flock to my well-schooled preachers and ministries with bright-colored websites and clever bloggers.  But here, in the heart of my city is a man who wakes up and goes morning and evening to the dirty, smelly bus station searching out homeless boys – many who are exploited – befriending them, offering them a hot meal and lessons with a tutor, and a chance to hear about the God who loves them.  Few respond.  They fear what their handlers will do if they leave.  But for those one or two, it is worth it.  They are worth it.

For some reason, I can think of nothing that reminds me of Jesus more.  And I am shaken.