3 Special Stories

There are 3 memories that stand out from my time spent at the orphanage during my 3 week break at school. I thought they deserved to be written about independently from the blog I posted yesterday about some other reflections/highlights from the week. I hope you'll enjoy these stories.

NICOLE'S STORY
Nicole is probably my favorite, or nearly my favorite, girl at the orphanage. She's about 13 yrs old, very friendly, good student, and always eager to lend a hand. Her spirit is so sweet. If you look closely, you may notice that her hair kind of resembles that of an African American girl. I recently learned that HIS has been resistant to assigning her a sponsor because they fear Nicole's mom will once again come and take her back, then give her up again. Nicole doesn't know this reasoning and feels abandoned,unloved, and not worthy of being sponsored. However, she keeps smiling and keeps her chin up. She feels that because she's "black" (according to her)that nobody wants to be her sponsor...after all nearly all the other girls her age have sponsors. Likewise, she says she's teased because of her race by other kids at the orphanage- like all kids will do universally at this age. And of course she also has the normal adolescent struggles with self image, etc.
On the day before I left to return to school, a team member (Donna)from Louisiana approached me. She and I had become friends during their 1.5wk week. She made curtains for my apartment, and earlier in the week she shared that she may be interested in sponsoring Nicole, even though her own family was in turmoil and her son had just been imprisoned that week...leaving her a grandchild to raise when she returned to Louisiana. Anyhow, on this particular Sat morning, Donna told me that she wanted to sponsor Nicole and asked if I would translate as she shared this news with Nicole. Wow...me, translate? I guess I did OK, because immediately upon receiving the news, Nicole's face showed utter disbelief and she said "is this really true?", and I told her yes. Her face went into one the biggest brightest smiles I've ever seen and she about knocked me down as she suddenly sprung towards me with a huge hug. Then she turned and hugged Donna so hard that Donna said she thought she's was having the life squeezed out of her. For the rest of the day, Nicole had a smile that was brighter than the sun...and you could see that it penetrated her whole being. What a privilege! I don't think I'll ever forget this.

VISITOR DAY
The orphanage has a routine schedule of days where visitors are allowed. One of those days happened while I there. It was a weekday, and I noticed what appeared to be 2 dads waiting with the rest of the group for their kid(s)to be bought to them. Later, I saw one of those "dads" pick up his little girl, and kiss and hug on her. Each of the family units had bought food to have an informal picnic together. It seemed that some family units bought other kids with them, and/or had multiple orphanage kids in their unit. (Some are siblings, others are cousins I learned. We have one set of 5 kids that are siblings!) Some sat aways off to have some precious privacy. It was very touching. All I could think was, "what must it have taken to give up your child? And how hard it must be for all parties involved now." I went to bed that night with more questions than answers.

AN IDEA PUT INTO MOTION
My first Sunday back at the orphanage, I sat behind a row of young teenage girls in our orphanage church service. It was obvious that even the usual "good girls" were being influenced by the few "bad girls" sitting beside them. They weren't paying attention, goofing off, being disruptive, and putting up a huge attitude when asked to stand when the rest of the congregation stood, etc. I think you've got the picture. To be honest, the orphanage has a higher % of teenagers now than they've ever had, and they're really struggling with how to deal with this. Then, during the service, I was reminded of a friend who has talked about a "prayer walk" that her ministry does around their city...which led to the the next thought...why can't I start doing something similar for these girls? The next morning after the kids went to school, I went to the dorm style room of bunk beds where all these girls (about 12-14 in total) live. I bought with me a copy of wallet size pictures of all the kids that I obtained from the website. I told the house mother that I'd like to go from bed to bed, praying over each one- specifically for that girl. I asked the house mom to point out the picture that matched each bed, and I put a number beside the picture to correspond (in my mind) with the order of the beds. That way I could have a face to match each bed as I came to it. Additionally I asked the house mom to tell me which girls were having the most problems, so I could pray specifically for them. My house mom (Angelica- how appropriate) was obviously more than willing to help me do this, and she joined me in prayer. It was so neat...I put my hand on a bunk and prayed out loud (softly) in English, and Angelica would do likewise in Spanish, then we'd move to the next one and the next until we'd prayed over each girl in the room. It was beautiful in my ears to hear us praying simultaneous in different languages, yet still in tandem. I believe God's ears liked it too. We did this, sometimes separately, most every day afterwards. We're believing that God is going to do great things on this campus, and He's going to use these girls to do it.