Valerie and I want to thank all of you who prayed for us as we visited the home of Sikh family yesterday. As often happens, things did not go the way we expected, but the Lord worked in a powerful way. None of the girls got baptized, at least not yet. When we arrived we learned that the girls had not told their father, Johnny about the baptism. They were expecting him to be gone for the day and they were going to be baptized secretly. But as things go, Johnny had a car problem and spent the day close by. We felt that this was definitely the work of the Lord. It would have been a bad idea, to proceed without Johnny’s knowledge. There is definitely something happening in Johnny’s heart. He had told his younger brother, Bilay, that we were coming and was eager for us to go over and pray with him for the healing of his son, who was in a serious car accident in September. His brother welcomed us as if we were sent from God. Before we prayed he told us this amazing story:
In the Sikh tradition there is one month in which every Sikh must give generously to the poor. This is actually monitored by the leadership in the Temple. It was at this end of the month, about a year ago that Bilay and Johnny realized that that had not complied with this rule. Being dairy farmers, they decided to take 100 packets of milk and distribute them to the kids in a Christian School in Kisumu. As they did they saw a very white child sitting in the corner. He was actually an Albino! On rare occasions an African couple will give birth to a pure white child. The child’s name was Fanni and he was 7 years old at the time. Bilay asked about the child and the teacher told him that the child had been abandoned by his mother and father and was now living in the care of his grandmother. Bilay was moved and asked “What can I do for this child?” “No one has paid his school fees”, the teacher said, so Bilay promptly put 5000 schillings on the table for the fees. Thus began a relationship between an Indian Sikh and a young African Albino. In a short time Bilay found out why Fanni was in the custody of his grandmother. When this white child was born to his dark mom, his dad immediately accused the mother of being unfaithful and having a relationship with a white man. To make matters worse the woman was then told by her friends and relatives that having a white baby was a curse. Others in the community persecuted her as well when they saw a dark black woman nursing a very white baby. The mother just couldn’t take it, so she brought the baby to her mother to escape the line of fire.
Now when Bilay heard this he immediately built an apartment in his basement for the mother and the child and invited them to come to live with he and his wife. They moved in but the boy did not want to sleep with his mother downstairs, he wanted to sleep near “Father Bilay”, upstairs. Within days he became like a son to both Bilay and Johnny. He calls both of them “Father”. The boy is extremely bright and get top marks in his class. He is also, at 8 years old, very committed to Christ. He started coming home and telling his new Sikh family about Jesus Christ. At dinner he started praying in the Name of Jesus and in his personal prayers he talked to Jesus as if he was very real to him. Bilay has been so affected by this that he has place a big picture of Jesus right in the middle of the Hindu gods in the middle of the little shrine he has in his prayer room. He is now a confused man, but he and Johnny both are in the middle of a process. Bilay has never once tried to persuade little Fanni to give up his relationship with Jesus and both he and Johnny believe that their lives have been blessed by God since the boy became part of their family. A short time after he moved in there was a big fire in the valley that burned up the cane fields of all of their immediate neighbors, but the fire literally stopped at the boundaries of their fields and they lost nothing.
From my view this little boy and his committed Christian mother are becoming instruments of God to bring these two Sikh men to the Lord.
I was very touched by this story so I thought I would pass it on to you! God works in mysterious ways!