When I worked at camp(it´s still weird to say that in the past tense), on the last night I´d always tell my girls how much I loved them and how much more Jesus loves them. I´d tell them how important they were to me and how I didn´t want them to forget everything they learned once they went home.
All my favorite cabins had ten girls. And this month I´ve been working with a group of ten girls. Of course God would have me start the Race with something familiar. 🙂
These girls don´t speak English. I don´t speak Spanish.
In a way I don´t feel like I´ve helped them at all.
And I have less than a week before I say goodbye to them.
I want them to know that I love them even though I´ve only known them for three weeks. I want them to know how precious they are to God, that he cares about them, that he isn´t leaving even though we are.
But I can´t even ask them what´s for lunch, much less give them a goodbye speech. (I´m mentally kicking my 9th grade self for not studying harder.)
This month has been hard. Teenage girls are my favorite kind of people in the world, but being with them here makes me wish I was at camp. I know exactly what Í´d be doing there. And I feel like I´d be so much more useful there than here.
I asked God last night why I had to come now. Why wouldn´t he let me leave in September? I didn´t want to not go, I just wanted to also work one more summer at camp.
And he told me to look at John 3:30.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
Here, there´s more of God and less of me. I´m not relying on what I can do, because I can´t do anything. All I can do is sit back and watch him do all the work.
I may never know what God did in these girls´hearts because of our being here this month. But that doesn´t mean it was all for nothing.
Monday morning we leave for Peru! Pray for a good last week of ministry in El Alto, for all of us to stay present here instead of dreaming about the 70 degree weather we´re headed toward, and for God to somehow bust through the language barrier and let these girls know how much we´ve loved them over these few weeks.
