I woke up to a phone call in South Africa. It was Rick. He said, “You and Matt are always up for an adventure.” Then we got cut off. I called back and he didn’t get any further before we got cut off again. Finally he called Matt, who came to my room and shouted through the bars for me to get up. “Mdu’s son is missing.” “Mdu has a son?” And so began one of the most memorable and heartbreaking few months of my life. (FYI, when Rick phrased it that way, he wasn’t being flippant. He really figured the kid was just running around the neighborhood somewhere. He was as deeply impacted as I was by this event.)
I think 2014 was possibly the hardest year of my life. 2012 and 2013 were hard too. But in 2014 I had just gone back to South Africa and was dealing with the aftermath of a hard situation in the US. That was on top of the fellowship stuff that was still giving me nightmares. I remember feeling so detached from reality when I came back to the US in the summer. I had been so absorbed by the search for Ndumiso that I had a hard time detaching and just living “normal” life. At OCBC that summer one of the speakers talked about child sacrifices, and I had a mini panic attack (I don’t think it was a full panic attack, but it certainly felt scary) in class. That was also the week I had my car wreck.
I still talk to Mdu regularly. He has coped amazingly well. He is using his sadness to fuel his efforts to do good things for his community. I wish I could be there to help.
I pray all the time for closure for Ndumiso’s family. Frankly, by the time we knew he was missing he was probably already dead. But there were just enough clues – though the police never followed any of them, and we nearly got ourselves killed several times trying – that I think all of us closely involved will always have hope. Hope that some old gogo (South African word for granny or any old woman) found him and was raising him off the grid somewhere a few neighborhoods over. That’s how I like to picture him. I know when Jesus comes back we’ll finally know what happened to that little boy who I never met but who impacted my life so greatly.
Next Comes Africa 