She was so shy when she came to say hello. She giggled every single
time she talked to me. She said I reminded her of a previous world
racer named Stephanie. She didn’t say much but seemed to like just
sitting with me. She ran and got some books and I read her a book.
The
next day she gives me a letter. She handed it to me in a red envelope
sealed with gum. In the letter she told me that I was her best
friend. I melted. Then she told me that now I must write her a
letter. haha.
I sat with her for hours. Sometimes we
talked, sometimes we didn’t. She wants to be a teacher. She told me
that living at the Remar center was really good for her. She said it
was much better than being at home. I know that often children will
run away from orphanages because they want to go back to their
families. She told me that she had watched her mother kill her
father. She said it with absolutely no emotion. She just stated
fact. The leaders had no idea if this was true or not because none of
them had ever sat down and talked to her. No wonder this child thinks
that I’m her best friend.
She
would approach me with her face buried in someone else or in her arms
to hand me a letter. She wrote me a few of them. They are now stuck
in the pages of my journal. In them she told me how much she loved me
and how much she missed me when I was gone. She wrote bible verses for
me. She told me I was her best friend.
I knew something was up one day when she walked up to me in a very shy
way. She was holding a black plastic bag sealed with a sticker.
Another girl grabbed it from her and threw it towards me.
Nontsetselelo nearly died of embarrassment. She doubled over and
buried her face in her hands. She refused to look at me. I opened the
bag and in it was a skirt, a letter, a broken purple hair tie, and
three hair clips. The skirt was hers but didn’t fit her so she gave it
to me. I later gave it back to someone in charge, but that was
seriously the sweetest moment.
It struck me that this little girl probably hadn’t had someone come and
love on her at all lately. The leaders had no clue what was going on
in her life. I wondered who she talked to when she felt lonely. I
wondered who she talked to about anything. The girls didn’t view
themselves as sisters, but as competition. There aren’t enough
adults. Often she would just sit with me. I didn’t know what to talk
to her about so I would tell her Bible stories.
We were just sitting together one day and I looked down at her and
said, “You are beautiful, you know that?”. She looked at me like I was
crazy. I repeated it. She laughed and buried her face in her hands.
It occurred to me that she might have never heard that before.
Sometimes I feel like when I go to do ministry, I’m not sure what I am
doing. I am not sure that I am accomplishing anything. What I realize
is that accomplishing something is not always checking something off
the list. It isn’t always finishing a task. Sometimes it is just
sitting with a 10 year old and perhaps being the first person to ever
tell her that she is beautiful. I don’t know if I finished what I was
supposed to do that day, but I know I loved. Isn’t that the point of
it all?
