Holding hands

On my last day in South Africa, we went to a place called Nkosis's Heaven. It's an HIV/AIDS home. The children living there have: an HIV/AIDS status, lost their parents or both. The women who live there have an HIV/AIDS status, children who do, or both, they also lost their husband or their husband pushed them out the house because of their status.
About a month or two before leaving for South Africa, the book club from church read a book titled Go and Do. Jay spent about chapter talking about presence and the importance of just going to third world countries and visiting with the people, not really having agenda to do anything. On Saturday night, it our celebration with Urban Saints, one the pastor said that in South Africa, when one is sick or sad or hurting, you don't send a card or make a phone call, you go and visit them.
As we start our walking tour around Nkosis's a little boy was walking along with a stick. As we walked by him, he grabbed my back pocket. I took his had from my back pocket and held his hand. He walked around with me. He would has ask what things were and that's about it. Most of the time we just walked around hand and hand. We later walked into the office and the lady sitting at the desk called him Sean. She talked with Sean and I didn't see him again.
Sometimes we forget how important it is to just go and not have an agenda. I do. Sean didn't need house or the gospel preached to him. He just needed to someone to visit with him. He just needed someone to walk around and hold his hand.