Rescuing children in Darfur
By Ruth Schenk | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
What drives a successful businesswoman to quit her job and begin a ministry to orphans in the most dangerous places in the world?
Rescuing children brutalized by the sex trade was nowhere in Kimberly Smith’s life plan as she juggled family and career. Though she had reached the
top tier of the corporate ladder, success suddenly seemed empty as Smith realized that her game plan didn’t line up with God’s dream for her.
In an “aha” moment, she visualized her own funeral. Co-workers would attend, but they’d already be vying for her office. Her husband, Milton, and her six
children would be devastated, but they would find the strength to go on. Smith longed to invest time and energy into something of eternal value.
“I had a good life, but it wasn’t enough. Something essential was missing,” she said. “I longed to be part of something bigger than myself.”
Smith told her story at the Adoption Summit at Southeast in May, describing her dangerous journey to violent hotbeds of the world to rescue women and
children who are caught in the sex trade.
“I tell my hard story because I want people to see how God’s heart is breaking for all believers so busy pursuing the American dream that we forget to
look at what God is dreaming,” she said.
In 2002, Smith quit her corporate job, and she and her family moved to Spain, where her husband’s ministry focused on reaching international students.
Smith was engaged but restless until she heard about a couple running a home for African immigrant children across the border in Portugal.
In a shanty with dank rooms and bowling-ball sized holes in the plywood roof, they found 19 children living with “Uncle Buster” and his wife. The
temperature inside the shanty was below freezing. All the children had horrible coughs. “Uncle Buster” asked for funds to feed and clothe the children.
So the Smiths bought food, medicine, clothes and building supplies to repair the home, but when the children asked Smith for some medicine to soothe
some sores, she realized that “Uncle Buster” was selling them as sex slaves.
Kimberly had found her mission.
For the next two years, as the Smiths worked with the Portuguese government to rescue the children from their captors, they educated themselves about
human trafficking. Their classroom was the streets, sewers, desert and jungles in Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as books and government reports.
But they learned even more by spending time with victims of trafficking.
In 2003, the Smiths founded Make Way Partners, a nonprofit organization that reaches out to victims of human trafficking, those forced into prostitution
and other forms of modern-day slavery. They go to the most dangerous places where no other help is available because it is considered too dangerous,
too expensive or too remote.
As they prayed about where to go in 2004, life for children in Darfur, Sudan, worsened as thousands were murdered by soldiers, and rape and sexual
slavery happened everywhere every day.
Since Milton battles diabetes, Kimberly went to Darfur alone. There, she connected with tribal women, orphaned children, those who were starving and
those who had nowhere to stay. Deeper in Darfur, she saw mile after mile of refugees who were stringing up any pieceof cloth they could find to make a
scrap of shelter from the scorching sun. Most were sick and starving.
Kimberly Smith met Mary Achai, who was taken captive with her six children. Achai fled when she learned that her 10-year-old daughter was to be sold as
a sex slave, but her captor found her and her children hiding under a bush and set it on fire. Achai survived alone, though she was horribly burned.
One night, as Smith prayed and walked through a bush area in Darfur, a woman handed her a small wad of bloody rags. She pulled them back to find a
filthy, sick, newborn baby. Kimberly learned that the baby’s mother had been attacked by a rabid dog and died giving birth. According to folklore in this part
of Sudan, anyone who helps the newborn of a dead mother received a witch’s curse, so no one cared for the baby, which was left to die. She slowly
nursed the newborn back to health and named him Elijah after the Old Testament prophet.
Smith never was the same. She began raising funds to help the Marys and Elijahs she met in Sudan, Congo, Romania and Uganda. Whenever
possible, she began partnering with indigenous organizations already working in their own countries.
Now, Make Way Partners cares for 550 children in Darfur where the organization has built a home, a clinic, a school, a church and a restoration ministry.
Make Way also is building an orphan care network throughout the country. Last year, they broke ground for a new orphanage near the border of Uganda
for orphans at high risk.
Smith asks believers to consider God’s heart for orphans, widows and vulnerable children.
“We must be willing to look at what is breaking God’s heart,” she said. “Then all of the other big questions in life will be clear.”
Smith has written a book, “Passport Through Darkness,” which tells her true story “of danger and second chances.”