I wish candy and ice cream solved world peace…but some days on the race they at least make challenging days more bearable. Today we had helped feed some kiddos at a soup kitchen and I was feeling really lame missionarish taking pictures and wiping down tables. Really God, THIS is what you want me to do? I feel soooo NOT helpful right now. Ha. Little did I know…
After feeding the 5,000 just kidding…I think there was maybe 250ish to 300 kids at the center. Our two teams went to hang with the kids. More soccer, balloons, flipping kids upside down…the usual kid ministry type stuff. This one boy named B.J came up to me in typical “subtle” but not so classy kid style and said…Candy. He was convinced my purse was just FILLED with candy for some reason…I have no idea why. I said no and he just kept persistently checking out my purse and tried to sneakily walk around me and see if there was a way in…relentless I tell you…geesh! Also noted was my hand sanitizer, bracelet, ring, and watch… what a hustler! He kept asking and eventually I said and pointed to him…You candy…essentially asking HIM for candy…so we began to joke around, tried to ask him questions, and just do typical kid things. I asked him if he wanted to play soccer and he wasn’t having it. So I kind of just “mom’d” him…he leaned against me and I held him with my arm around his chest watching the kids around us…totally shocked that a 10 year old boy was ok with just standing still. After talking for awhile he said HOUSE and motioned to some shacks on the other end of the field…so I took that for a sign that he wanted to show me his house. I grabbed my Squad Leader Nate and we headed in the general direction that B.J pointed.
I’m just going to keep reminding you all that I’m introverted so you can find the humor in this whole morning of events. I have a tough time talking to humans that speak English fluently at times and I’m still getting comfortable with physical touch (HUGS) so “house visits” are always stretching for me without a translator. Luckily Nate is a super extroverted so I knew we were in good hands…no crickets chirping in the background or anything like that. The next few hours involved making faces at a cute baby, drinking weak coffee (it was soooo good!), listening to a cow “Go” right behind us, bandaging B.J’s mama’s foot up and convincing her she couldn’t have my only hiking boots I was wearing at the time (must run in the family…she too was persistent), and just hanging out with the rest of B.J’s fam. B.J showed us his dance skills to that obnoxious Gangman Style song with his trusty assistant Nate (the guy I had dragged into this adventure), drew a pen tattoo on Nate and cartoon characters in the dirt, sported his new hat, and made faces…like inviting complete strangers 10-20+ years older than your self was totally the norm…it was AWESOME! I just kept thinking what on earth would my folks have done back in the day if I had brought some random much older strangers over unannounced…for that matter… if any of these house visits in India or Nepal took place in the U.S…how would most Americans react??? People show up…chai, soda, or coffee and cookies are typically produced or people run to the store to get stuff and people just hang out…what a concept? So…Un-American if you ask me…but delightful.
We left B.J’s house to head to lunch and he just kind of tagged along until we caught our bus. He wanted to know if we were coming back tomorrow. That’s probably been the toughest part of ministry these last few months…rarely do we get to see these families or kids again on this side of eternity.
