Monday morning was a change of pace. Instead of our normal routine of evangelizing, we set out towards a local public school to hand out school supplies. We visited each of the classrooms and out of the hundreds of kids we saw, one little girl stood out to me. There was something special about her, but I couldn’t quite figure it out.
We split up and stopped in classrooms to explain the importance of coming to school everyday. This was a tough task for my group because our class didn’t have a teacher. These students come to school each day waiting for a teacher to come, but so far day after day no one has shown. One of our translators was asking the class who likes to come to school and who does not. Personally, I don’t blame these kids for not wanting to come to school when all they do is sit around wondering if there teacher will ever come, but I was still curious to hear what the students had to say. The girl who had caught me eye when I first walked in quickly raised her hand and explained that she doesn’t like coming to school because she gets made fun of and teased. My heart immediately dropped, I know bullying happens, but I wanted this school to be different.
Sweet Susanna is a shy little eight year old who was involved in an accident earlier this summer. A few weeks prior the little girl explained to us that she was cutting cassava and the knife slipped from her hand. This event lost Susanna her finger and changed how she was viewed by others. Susanna was now made fun of by her classmates and seen as an animal. A girl who had dreams and aspirations now no longer wanted to come to school.
Before I knew it, some of my teammates took the little girl out of class and began to pray over her and the rest of my group decided that this was a good opportunity to have a hard conversation with the class about bullying.
My friend Kwabena ended his talk by saying that Susanna’s four fingers make her unique and beautiful. We then turned to her classmates and asked for volunteers to stand up in front of Susanna and tell her that she is beautiful and no different than any of them.
We continued singing songs and dancing with the class, but something was just not right with Susanna. After singing songs and handing out school supplies, I pulled Susanna out of class and began to take pictures of her as we talked to each other. In this moment, I found the true reason that God brought us to this school. The books and pens could have been handed out by the members of the organization we were with, but the lessons learned today in that classroom may not have happened so easily.
Susanna explained that she dreams of studying hard and being a nurse, but she is not sure she can do it. I knew immediately we needed to start building confidence in this little girl, because her attending school was the first step in her achieving her dreams.
I began to show Susanna the photos of her and explained that this is what true beauty looks like. As she saw her face flash on the screen she exploded with joy. I flashed the pictures back and forth between her smiling face and a picture of her hand and explained that both of these are beautiful. As we scrolled, I had Susanna point to each picture and tell her self this is beautiful. Unfortunately, in many girls lives they never once hear that they are beautiful, but today that all changed for Susanna.
Susanna is a special little girl. She may only have four fingers, but God loves her just the same. My prayer is for Susanna to soften the hearts of her classmates and changes how people see deformities. Susanna is not an animal, she is a beautiful little girl who loves the Lord and has dreams for her future. My prayer is that she encourages others as she goes through life fighting for her dreams.
If nothing else, I pray that this little girl can wake up every morning and point to her self and say, “I am beautiful.”
