In a Sun-Scorched Land

At a school robotics fair, Matthew Parker proudly presents his invention, Abby, the "Automated Breakfast Baking Engineer," a robot designed to cook eggs. But the demonstration for the judges goes horribly wrong. A lever sticks, the robot's arm breaks off, and Abby ends up dropping eggs all over the floor. The judges send Matthew off to find something to clean up the mess before anyone slips.

Hurrying down the hallway, Matthew slips on a freshly mopped floor and slides headfirst into a wall. The janitor, a kind man named Joseph Calhoun, helps him to a bench and listens as Matthew pours out his terrible day. Matthew has worked on his robot for months, and he wanted to win the competition for his grandmother, who was diagnosed with cancer just days ago and is having surgery next week. Nana told him he would make her proud, and he had dreamed of bringing a trophy to her hospital room. Now everything feels hopeless, and he can't stop wondering whether this might be the last competition she is around to see. Joseph gently tells him that is a lot of pressure to put on himself. Then he offers to fetch some ice for Matthew's head, clean up the eggs, and share a story about a time he himself felt hopeless.

Joseph grew up in Quanzala, a small village of a few dozen people in Eastern Africa, where he lived in a hut with his mother and his little sister, Palita. Every Sunday the family walked an hour and a half to church in another village, sat through a three- or four-hour service, and walked all the way home again. One Sunday, Joseph says, that long walk saved his life.

On the way home that day, young Joseph is moody. Chattering little Palita teases him about his grumpy face before their mother sends her running ahead to help start dinner. Alone with his mother, Joseph admits he has been brooding over the pastor's sermon about God watching over His people like a shepherd. He doesn't believe it. "The shepherds I know eat their sheep," he grumbles. A monsoon has ruined the family's banana crop, and all they have left is one scraggly, one-eared goat. His mother insists that their hope is in Christ, not in bananas or goats. Suddenly, terrifying sounds erupt from the direction of the village. Rebels are attacking. Joseph's mother orders him to run into the bush and keep running while she goes back for Palita.

Fleeing through the bush, Joseph meets a man named Malid, who says he knows Joseph's village but that it is too late for unarmed men to help. Malid explains that a powerful man is destroying villages to build a militia against the government, and he offers to take Joseph in. He drives the boy to a fenced, guarded camp belonging to a group that calls itself the United Army, whose badge, a blue circle with a mark of strength, is supposed to signal safety. More than thirty boys from destroyed villages live there. Joseph is welcomed with a hot dinner by another boy, Omer, whose entire village of Deniku was burned.

But at that dinner, Joseph notices something chilling: the goat roasting on the spit is one-eared, with one white leg, exactly like the goat from his own village. How could it have wandered so far? Unable to sleep, Joseph drags Omer out into the night to find answers, and the two boys overhear Malid talking with his men. The boys are desperate and frightened, Malid says, and they will believe anything; with training and anger they can be turned into soldiers, because nothing creates a passionate warrior like revenge. Then comes the horrifying truth: "They'll never guess that we're the ones who attacked them." Malid's men are not heroes at all. They are the very raiders who destroyed the boys' villages, and they plan to turn their victims into child soldiers.

The boys know they must escape at once. When the guards discover two boys are missing, shouts ring out, and Joseph and Omer race for the fence with soldiers close behind. They scramble over and run for a full day and night through the bush, tracked by trucks and headlights, their bare feet torn by the jungle and their throats burning with thirst, until their pursuers finally give up.

Lost in the wilderness without food or water, the two boys respond very differently. Omer piles up rocks to build an altar, a reminder of how God provides, and compares their escape to the Israelites fleeing Egypt through the Red Sea. Joseph scoffs that they saved themselves by climbing a fence, but Omer insists God was with them, and that like the Israelites they will journey through the wilderness until they find their promised land. Joseph wearily tells his friend to lead the way.

For days they trudge on, finding a watering hole but no food, with Omer forever promising that berries might be around the next bend. Then, through the trees, they spot a camp, and their hearts sink: a Jeep there bears the same symbol as Malid's men. Creeping around the edge, the starving boys find livestock pens and slip into a shed, where they discover a knife and some seeds. Suddenly they hear footsteps approaching, and there is nowhere to hide. Omer whispers the words of Moses: "The Lord your God will fight for you. You need only to be still." As the footsteps come closer, the boys cry out, "Dear God, help us!" and the story breaks off, leaving Joseph and Omer's fate hanging until next time.