One week of ministry has passed so quickly, two weeks since I left home. It still hasn’t hit me yet that I’m in Albania. I may be in for a rude awakening when we end up in Romania instead of going home, or whenever it is that I realize I am in this for the long haul!
I was trying to think of how to summarize the impact our teams being at this camp had, and then last night during a worship session, it hit me. How do we minister to kids when we can’t tell them Bible stories or even speak the same language?
Love and laughs.
We show love in so many different ways (hence the five love languages), but what I have seen shining the brightest this week are the smiles. I got a note from someone in my church family right before leaving that reminded me of the power of smiles, and so many times this week I thought the phrase “A smile is worth a thousand words.” Because literally, we had about 10 words to share, but dozens upon dozens of smiles for all our kids.
Our laughs were our other natural way of communicating. Whether it was over simple games, or failed communication, or kids being goofy, we did a lot of laughing this week. I think I laughed the most playing those hand-clapping games that we used to play on the elementary school playground, usually accompanied by a silly rhyme. The girls (and some of the boys) are really good and REALLY fast at going back and forth – clap right clap left clap both clap right clap left clap both – and on and on it goes until, invariably, someone misses and we laugh and begin again.
This week was not the easiest. It was hot, I got tired or hungry (the food is incredible but, one day in particular, the portions were better suited for the kids that us), and I questioned if I was even making a difference. But yesterday, the girls in my group who clung to the sides of the pool on Monday were splashing around and practicing swimming. Kids who I had never met were giving me smiles and goodbye hugs. That, to me, more than makes up for any difficult moments.
