15 kids and counting

May 26, 2003 by

When you have children in your full time care, you have to get used to:

1.) misplaced everything. Prescription glasses, keys, cellphone, batteries, everything you need will be missing. EVERYTHING. They play with everything. They see you touch something, they want to touch it. You tell them not to touch something, they want to touch it. I’m still trying to trick them into using the vacuum.

2.) everything is covered in slime. Children produce a natural disgusting slime (okay okay not really) and they cover everything in this slime. My clothes, my car, my keyboard, monitor, you name it. I go to church with spit up on my shirts and pants, boogers cover all my possessions. There are boogers on my eyeglasses right now.

3.) being tired all the time, yet having adrenaline enough to do anything you need to do.

4.) having no available cash left over because they need something (or they broke something or lost something and you have to buy a new one).

5.) privacy no longer exists. There is a child hiding under a table, in a cupboard, under a bed, in a closet. There is a teen sitting so quietly in the corner you don’t even know they are there. They hear every fart and every prayer.

6.) birthdays, Christmas, etc involves me giving out money so presents can be purchased for me.

I love it. 15 kids so far, yes fifteen. Not bad asif. Now to get a wife and start making some biological ones :)

Nadine is 6 years old, she loves to collect frogs in a jar and bring them in the house, I told her to stop doing both of those things. Did Nadine fill a jar with 100 baby frogs (she counted) and then bring them into the house and accidentally drop the jar, spilling live frogs all over the floor? Yes!

While yelling at her about this, I accidentally call her Renee, she points to a 5 year old on the sofa “Asif I’m Nadine, that’s Renee.”

I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up with an armpit filled with ketchup. What I’ve learned is, don’t try to fight it, just enjoy it while you can.

On another note, N and I was driving down Steeles Ave and we saw these 2 small children, maybe ages 5-6 trying to flag down drivers. So we stopped to see what was going on, it was actually a young father and his 2 children, the father had walked away for a second. They had come here for camping in the Etobicoke area (near that campground around Wild Water Kingdom) and had somehow ended up far away while running errands. They reminded me of those “end of the world survivor” type families. I know a few. Anyway, we drove them back to the campground since we were actually headed that way. Made sure everything was okay and then left.

Filed Under: children, Friends, ministry Tagged With: ,

More than 100 children and 20 call me dad

April 26, 2003 by

Okay, so here’s a fun twist to my life. My friends approached me asking if I wanted to go garbage picking, and I laughed and laughed. They were serious though, so I went with them to see what was going on, you know if I should check them into the local loony bin or what.

We drove to Oakville, this super gorgeous city with beautiful women jogging on the sidewalk (in Malton, you don’t see this, you usually see people running for their life). Anyway in Oakville, once a year they do this cool thing where people can put their used items on the curb, for other people to come and take. Not garbage, but actually useful items like furniture, electronics and nic nacs. The reason this is great for us is that we know people who need things for their home, and we can’t afford to pay for all of that stuff out of our own pockets but we can spend time looking through items on hundreds of curbs and pick out the items.

We found some great treasures including working computers, tvs, and of course furniture.

We found a beautiful solid wood office desk, that was way too heavy but so nice we didn’t want to leave it. We knew who we would be giving it to and were excited to get it there. Nathan and I had to take this thing in the elevator up 3 floors and then down a long hallway, and then up a narrow flight of stairs and we were wondering how we would do that last part, this desk might have been several hundred pounds with no real place to hold it while taking it up the stairs. When we got to the location a young black teen was standing around outside in the dark and to my amazement asked if we needed help.

This surprised me, at first I figured he was one of my former kids who was now a teen but I couldn’t recognize him at all. I didn’t want to say anything though because if he was one of my kids and I couldn’t remember, then he would be hurt and I would feel terrible. It’s fair to say that I’ve worked closely with over 100 children and teens at this point, and I can’t remember them all. Sometimes I’ll be walking in the mall and they’ll walk up and hug me, most are way taller than me now. Even some of the girls. There’s a young man who comes over for dinner 2-3 nights a week, he’s a tall, muscular super dark skinned black youth. He doesn’t knock, he just finds his way in somehow. I’ll be watching tv, and turn around and there he is. I know he’s from one of the churches, and he’s a good kid. Always listens to me, never causes me any problems.

It took a long time for the 3 of us to get that desk up the stairs, it was really brutal. I was so impressed with this young man that I offered to buy him a whole pizza, and he wasn’t even surprised at all, as if he hung out with me before. We drove him over to 241 and got him a media pizza and some soda, then drove him home. I still have no idea if he’s one of my kids I worked with in the past but anyway, God bless him for being such a help.

Now in Guyana, and other parts of the world, this is how we got most of our possessions: picking through the dump. I remember my first tricycle, right out of the dumpster, and my uncle made 2 solid wooden rear wheels for it that weren’t held on by bolts, so they would wobble as I rode, I loved that bike so much and you know what, it’s still being used today. I have a photo of me riding it in my underwear and it’s one of my favorite memories.

Filed Under: children, Friends, ministry, Workout Tagged With: , , ,

I lied to peel children aid and so did everyone else

March 26, 2003 by

There’s a bad man we all know and put up with, and he beats his wife and children. Everyone knows it. They don’t know it because someone told them, they know it because they aren’t morons. His wife used to show up with black eyes and bruises, saying she ran into a door (do all women use this excuse?) and his children would sometimes let it slip that their dad beats them. To be clear, this was all in 2001, during very difficult times when much was going on all at once.

Back in 2001 before I moved to Ottawa I was asked in haste, after a long day of work to give a reference for this person, to save his life really, more so begged to give him a good reference. He promised he was a changed man, so I gave a quick “he’s not so bad, this whole thing has been blown out of proportion” type reference. This saved his sorry ass, and later I would find out that he was 10x worst than I thought.

Growing up, I myself fell through the cracks as did many of my friends. Daily punches, cuts on bruises all over. Bloody noses, bumps on my head were normal. Peel police would get to know me by name, and I would get to know some of them by name, since they were at my house so often.

Good teachers would often ask about cuts and bruises and I would make up excuses, and my friends who were in the same situation would trade war stories.

Girls always had it 100 times worst though, and their war stories were the worst. Being abused by their moms boyfriends while being videotaped or prostituted out by their crack head moms to strangers. It made me and my guy friends think that things weren’t really so bad for us after all. We got used to seeing social services and hearing and saying lies upon lies. You’d visit a friends house and social services would show up, or you’d visit my house and the police would show up. I wouldn’t even invite someone to my house until I knew what their home life was. If they had a good home life, they wouldn’t be invited to mine because they wouldn’t understand. Same with them, I couldn’t be invited to some peoples house until they knew what mine was like.

White people, black people, brown people, everyone had it rough in one way or another. In grade 7 I kept a photo of a picture perfect home in my pocket, looking at it to make me happy. One time in grade 7 I was planning on teaching this one bully a lesson as I was known to do, and my super duper awesome teacher Mrs. Prates told us all that we should be nice to him, a young thug, because his dad beats him, and we hazed her because we were all being beaten but he was the only wimp that let the teachers know. Mrs. Prates is one of my favorite teachers to this day, but this was all way over her head.

When I was 7 I slept with a heavy metal flashlight, by the time I was 11 I slept with a trusty switchblade. By the time I was 13 I had several weapons. One time my boss at Pickwicks Potatoes drove me home from Dr. Fleas Flea Market and there were 4 police cruisers at my house. It shocked the crap out of him, a middle aged Jew, but me, a 13 year old Muslim had a list of about 75 great excuses as to why they were there and I said my lie with a smile and went back to work the next weekend as if nothing happened. It was the only way to survive at the time.

About 2 years later I stopped smiling. My list of great excuses began to anger me, I was getting older and growing, but things were very much the same at home. One very early morning I woke up hearing the angry screamings of my mom and her boyfriend, and I figured I would save the police another trip to our house by taking care of the situation myself. I grabbed my trusty Louisville slugger, and kicked down her door swinging the bat at both of them, and I clearly threatened to kill them both. My exact words were something along the lines of “I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to kill you, if you don’t stop this crap and grow the f up.” Now for those of you who know me, you know I don’t use that kind of language under normal circumstance. There’s just something about family that brings out the crazy in everyone.

There’s a sort of freedom you gain when you threaten to kill someone and really mean it. And I’m not joking, I would have actually killed them both that warm summer morning, and lived happily ever after knowing I made the world a better place. To be fair, I now know that her life was much harder than mine.

Fast forward to today, we’ve all given our life to Jesus, my moms home is the place ALL my friends like to hang out. There’s peace, joy, food, laughter, fun stories (ask her about the time I ate my own poo) and just general goodwill. Shes known as the super cool mom and I’m known as the lucky son. She takes in everyone, all the teens in town and there’s always fun stories and joy to be had. Just a few nights ago she called me asking if I can help her out, she took out several teen girls and boys bowling or something like that, and there was some project they wanted to do that would really help them out but cost too much. The teens were super excited and I was really happy to be a part of it all. Only Jesus can spark these kinds of changes.

I heard in the news that churches are in decline in Canada because people no longer believe in God. This is a lie. This is a complete lie made up by liberal media and the liberal government. Churches are in decline in Canada because people do believe in God, and they are scared out of their mind that if they or their children go to church, people will find out what’s going on in their homes. An atheists worst nightmare is when they will one day face the God they’ve been pretending to not believe in. But we’re all going to have to face Him one day.

Filed Under: children, Friends, girls, memories, ministry, school Tagged With: , , ,

You wouldn’t believe me anyway

December 31, 2002 by

Due to a computer failure, I’ve lost over 50 good journal entries. To complicate the situation, the website that I used to post my entries on has gone bankrupt and shut down. These entries told of my many, many great adventures like being stabbed at, almost blown up by a fire bomb, plus fun things like camping and visiting Lake Huron and eating dinner by a campfire. I also lost a lot of photos that I took with a digital camera. :( which means a lot of these things will become distant memories later on.

The internet is really growing, and technology is advancing a lot but I kind of miss some of the good old ways which were more secure.

I’m ending 2002 the right way, with prayer and fasting. And boy do I need the fasting! If not that, then bigger pants. Ha-ha, okay seriously, I watched Lord of the Rings part 2, gave away a ton of cool Christmas presents again, had 7 children under my care, petted a bunny rabbit, fed a candy cane to a bunny rabbit, went golfing, failed at building a go cart, failed at adding a motor to my mountain bike, and so much more.

2002 has been a good year, full of wonderful family and friends time, trips to New York and great lakes. Swimming and laughing and eating, what more can a person ask for? Oh – and there’s a redhead at church that my friends and I are all trying to talk to, I talked to her last week while my friends distracted her family for me, things are in motion!

Filed Under: children, fasting, Friends, ministry, Poetry, travel Tagged With: , , , ,

Mission 3:16

September 20, 2002 by

My rant: When it comes to business I’m old fashioned. Develop a good product or service, and sell sell sell. I don’t like these magic vitamin companies or multi level marketing schemes or businesses that simply make money by recruiting people and have no real product or service. I can’t believe that smart people join up with these things, and I can’t believe they think I’m so stupid that I’ll join up with them. No, I don’t want to sell your magic vitamins. No, I don’t want to recruit for your multi level marketing business. No, I don’t want to pay $500 to sign up for your business venture. LOL. People fail and they want to drag others down with them.

I spent the day with some friends at a gigantic antique shop, which was out in the middle of nowhere. I mean it. There was a large mall sized antique / flea market style shop with over 100 vendors, and beside it a small bakery, and then nothing else for miles. I know this because I purchased a treat from the bakery, then walked a far way in both directions hoping to find something else. So I really had no choice but to spend the day antiquing, since…well they drove me here. There was some really neat stuff though. I was looking for an antique umbrella but couldn’t find one and I bought some nic nacs that I’ll give away the first chance I get.

Last year June – December I didn’t get to do as much missions work as I wanted and that wore heavy on my heart. Don’t get me wrong I always do as much as I can, but this year so far has been the opposite, I’ve clearly made up for all the missions opportunities I missed out on last year.

So far:
I sent a soon to be police officer on a life changing mission trip to South America
Helped a small orphanage do some much needed repairs
Participated in the digging of several fresh water wells
Helped a new church

My friends and I live in Malton, and a lot of people here have guns or easy access to guns. Unfortunately this includes teens. Well one day we went to play baseball after work and noticed a bunch of young black teens hanging around watching us, so I invited them to play with us, which they gladly did.

I can understand people carrying around handguns, but some teens carry around sawed off shotguns, and I met one young man who had a grenade. I didn’t bother asking if it was real, because I learned that curiosity killed the cat. Interestingly enough it’s not just males that are armed, females as well! Anyway you know me, each person got an invitation to church – and I’ve witnessed weapons surrendered to local authorities because of a new life surrendered to Christ. Although I can’t share details on everything, (partially because I can’t remember all the details anymore) just last year I participated in a youth event that saw more than 30 firearms handed over to the police.

Filed Under: children, ministry, work Tagged With: , , ,

I hate summer

July 19, 2002 by

If you’re reading this and you know me, then you know that I’m a workaholic. I’ve been battling this for years. As soon as the sun rises, I like to be up and working. As soon as the sun sets, I finish up for the day. In the summer the days are long, and so I work as long as it’s bright outside. This leads to burnout, and so I’ve begun to hate summer. I’ve actually ruined relationships simply because I’ve been too busy to care about anything else. When I was younger this problem was worst, I would actually skip occasional nights of sleep – I mean entire nights, just so I could work more and get ahead. I don’t have that kind of energy anymore so I do sleep a full night for the most part.

Over the last few years I’ve gotten really involved in digging fresh water wells in third world countries and the costs are so variable. In one place a well can cost $2,500 because you don’t have to dig very deep, in other places $300,000 or more depending on the engineering and machinery involved. I used to have a goal of like 10,000 fresh water wells but when I realized how impossible that number was I lowered it to like 1,000 and I think I’ll just lower this to like 100 or less because it’s such an uphill struggle. If it was the only thing in my life I could put more energy into it, but as I’m typing this, I’m also holding a baby and tonight we are going to help someone move.

I really hate summer.

Filed Under: ministry, school, work Tagged With: , , ,
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