Hey everybody! So we just wrapped up month 4 about a week ago. Last month I was working at an orphanage in Honduras. The orphanage was undergoing some renovations at the time, which had basically provided the perfect habitat for mice and bats to live. And man were they BOLD! I always thought that mice try to be super stealthy so nobody kills them, but these mice didn’t care. They were everywhere! They would run all over the floor in the living room, crawl across the shelves in the kitchen and even run across my bed while I was asleep! Yea, just take a moment to let THAT sink in. I thought that the top bunk was a safe zone but apparently I was wrong. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the demonic bats that would half fly / half crawl across the floor like the girl coming out of the well in The Grudge. But I survived and now I have super funny stories to tell.
Ok, well back to our ministry. If I’m going to be honest, I was less than excited when I heard that an orphanage would be our ministry for the month. While I can appreciate that kids are awesome, outside of my niece and nephew, I don’t exactly crave hours of coloring books or tag. But the Lord knew what He was doing.
A typical day would start with one of our teammates leading the kids in devotion before they started their classes for the day. Then, depending on the day, we would either have a work project to do around the property or we would end up being enlisted to teach one of the classes. School would end around 1:00 and then we would have the afternoon off. But it was within this “off time” that God taught me a valuable lesson. Your story is what you make it. Now technically, nobody was there to force me to spend time with the kids. But did I want to look back at the end of this year and see a story where I only did the things that I wanted to do, or did I want a story where I dove head first into things that were outside my comfort zone? The choice was mine. So I chose a story where, after lunch, I hung out with kids who were smelly, dirty, didn’t speak my language and usually had lice. But God totally blessed that. I fell in love with some pretty cool kids. And I was able to love on and encourage kids that were usually forgotten by others.
And that was basically our month. It did end on an unexpected note, however, when one of my teammates came down with appendicitis during our last week. I ended up staying with her in the hospital for a few days while she recovered from surgery. That whole experience could be a blog within itself. Not only was I blessed with the opportunity to scrub in on my friend’s surgery, but God taught me a lot about what it means to love somebody during those few days. I learned that even though my squad-mates were strangers a few months ago, right now we’re family and we’re all each other has this year.
Haha I know that this blog just seems like a random stream of events, but that’s my life right now. A series of random experiences, life lessons and God moments. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
