GOD’S STEPPING STONES IN KARA’S HEART

Guatemala abandoned children’s orphanage.

Bryan’s House, Dallas, TX

Agape Clinic, Dallas, TX

Legacy House, Dallas, TX

Regis University, Denver, CO

Denver Health, Denver, CO

(written by Chris)

Anyone who has met Kara has sensed her heart … it’s impossible not to. God made her aware of others in a way that is a gift.

I remember when we traveled through Jordan and Israel together. A dream for an Old Testament major. Really, any bible student. And for a bonus, we were traveling with a world renowned Old Testament scholar, Dr. Eugene Merrill, and his wife.

I distinctly remember walking through the church built over the site of site Bethlehem for the birth of Christ. Kara and I walked through the big rooms towards the underground holy spot. She was agitated.

While I looked at the beautiful windows and arches, and history all around me, Kara’s heart was breaking for the people. Jordan and Israel for me had been academic. An intellectual treat where I learned in a new way all the bible I had been studying. But Kara saw people.

People lost and without the savior, whose birth place we were about to see.

I’m ashamed to remember how frustrated I was with her, wanting her to lighten up and enjoy the experience. But that’s not how she works … not how God made her to work.

Compassion ministry isn’t a choice of ideals for Kara, it’s the union of her design, the chemistry of her soul. To be with those who are on the margin and who go unnoticed. God touches them through Kara, like a hand through a glove, a glove made for that exact kind of work.

“He has shown you, Oh man, what is good and what the Lord really wants from you: He wants you to promote justice, to be faithful, and to live obediently before your God. (Micah 6:8 NET)”

It is an unequal world. Most of us have recognized this fact and have checked it off as something that will probably not change in our lifetime. I know this was my natural response before I met Kara.

When we were on our honeymoon in Guatemala, we visited a Catholic church in Antigua – the name is long forgotten to me – but it was the church in the community where deformed and unwanted babies were taken. Kara had spent some time there on a previous trip.

At twenty-five, I had never really been around many babies, in general. But the idea of helping at the church sounded like what a Christian person might do. At least, that was probably how I rationalized it at the time.
We wandered through the town square, past all the vending stands and up half a dozen cobble stone streets. Some of the architecture of the city of Antigua, could be traced back to the Spanish conquistadors. The beautiful facades and stone work were easy for me to appreciate.

We found the church and pushed open the heavy wooden door to a hallway. Two things greeted us in that moment that I’ll remember for the rest of my life – the smells and the screaming.

As we walked down an empty stone hallway, dark and old, a courtyard with sunlight was some distance ahead and wailing echoed like a stadium on the walls. I began to freak out.

I had worked with street addicts on Hollywood Blvd, witnessed to wharf workers in Venezuela, swam deep into the copper ocean off the coast of Guyana, climbed mountains, raced trucks … the list went on an on, but I felt all the courage draining out of me as we walked that hallway.

I remember thinking, “Oh Jesus, I’m scared. Really scared.”

But as I felt myself shrinking in the face of this human misery waiting at the end of the hall, I saw Kara ahead of me speed up. It was like she was growing in stature, as I was shrinking. She was coming into her place in the world, as I felt like I was leaving mine.

For hours, we held babies with cleft-pallets and dirty cloths, held hands with mentally handicapped older children who had found a home in this church, and played with the few healthy children who had likely been abandoned because the pregnancy happened out of wedlock.

I learned something about Kara that day. She possesses a vast dimension within her heart for those lost on the margins. God showed me the great lack of this compassion in my own soul that day, but also gave me a glimpse of what his heart is for these people through watching Kara.

I believe, as a result of watching Kara over the years, that she possesses a special place in God’s heart. Few people in the world pick up the burdens of poor and forgotten with greater gladness and joy as Kara does.

South Africa, and the two countries within it’s geographic boarders Lesotho and Swaziland, lead the world in HIV infection and death per population percentage, according to CIA World Fact Book.

• Number 4 in the world for infection of HIV/AIDS among adults
• Number 1 in the world for adults living with HIV/AIDS (twice that of Nigeria which ranks number 2 in the world and has a population of around three times that of South Africa.)
• Number 1 in the world for HIV/AIDS deaths

Kara’s burden and passion for community health nursing and education matches exactly the needs of South Africa.

Early in seminary she volunteered at Bryan’s House in Dallas which houses and cares for children with HIV. Then later as she obtained her Certified Nursing Assistants certificate, she worked at the Legacy Home in south Dallas which provided end of life care for AIDS patients.

Then during her first trip to Africa serving in Rwanda, she discovered the huge need for community education about HIV AIDS. Because of the lack of education about HIV, families would cut off members that got infected, no longer hugging them or touching them for fear of infection. With some accurate information these families could be reunited by understanding how the disease is passed from person to person and the many, many ways that it is not.

Although during the first few years of service we expect Kara to contribute much of her time to our young boys, we know that as the boys begin school that she will be able to contribute more of her time to both Beautiful Gate and possibly other community medical programs.

Sometimes resources like medicine or vaccines are available through government programs, but the people who need them either don’t know they are available or can’t navigate the system to get them.

Kara found this to be true in Mozambique on a discovery trip in 2006 where she and another nurse did the ground work for launching a clinic connected to a Mozambiquan seminary. The government had resources to give out, but by their own admittance had a difficult time getting the information out into the villages.

Both connecting available national resources and foreign resources is an area of interest Kara expects to develop, even though we have no specific group connected to this effort.