As March began and we arrived to our new location I will be honest, I wasn’t convinced this was going to be a very good month. Maybe it’s the fact that during our travel days I was barely able to keep anything down, but my first week here in Bolivia wasn’t a bed of roses.
As our first week inched by at a snail’s pace. I was convinced that this month was going to drag by. Being surrounded by kids at an orphanage is what I was looking forward to, but the reality of how many older kids were here was a bit intimidating frankly. I was ready to hold babies and play with toddlers and it wouldn’t matter which language I spoke. Having school age kids talking to you at a rapid speed in a different language or the high schoolers rolling their eyes at you because you can’t clearly communicate with them. The house moms not being welcoming to you coming into their houses. The third month in a row of cold showers and sleeping on the floor. Only having five other English speakers around you for an entire month and being confined to the top of a mountain. I felt discouraged and honestly, I just wanted to get this month over with before it had even started.
Although my heart wasn’t even over my last hard goodbye to our ministry hosts in the Dominican Republic, or even Puerto Rico. I forced myself to pray a prayer that I was fearful God was going to answer.
“Lord, please help when the time comes at the end of this month, it to be hard for me to say goodbye”
When I signed up for the world race I was excited for all the traveling and new experiences and of course seeing God work in all these places, but I had never considered it would also entail eleven hard goodbyes. A month in one location goes by fast, but is just long enough to meet and develop relationships with wonderful followers of Christ in each country.
So it was hard saying this prayer and asking for another difficult goodbye. But I knew that when the time came for me to get on the bus and leave at the end of the month. If I wasn’t sad to leave my mission field for this month, I had not invested enough time, effort and love here. That to me would be worse to live with than the bitter sweet distance between new friends.
For the first time I began each day with praying. Before I rolled off my sleeping pad I would pray that I would have a good attitude toward my day, that I would be filled with excitement and joy, I would invest as much love as I can in every life I got the chance to, that I would look for ways to love like Christ and the different things He wanted to teach me and show me in that day. It took a girl who has been a Christian all her life working at a Spanish speaking orphanage in the mountains of Bolivia to experience the divine power and effectiveness of starting every day with prayer.
God likes to answer our prayers. He answered mine for sure. I was hit with the sobering reality this week that I am going to miss these sweet little faces that I see every day and know by name.
I am going to miss giving and getting hugs from all of them. The way they help teach me their language and giggle at me when I pronounce a word terribly wrong, but also tell me how good I’m doing when I speak a full sentence to them without hesitation.
I am going to miss the breath taking scenery and all of the adventures God brought into our paths by hospitable strangers who turned into our Bolivian family.
I am going to miss goofing around and playing soccer with the high school age kids. Hearing them practice the English words I thought them and being quizzed on my Spanish homework. Receiving beautiful handmade gifts from a seventeen year old, that I never thought I could truly show love to without knowing her language, which says, ‘I thank God for you and all your love and time, please don’t ever forget me, I will never forget you’. The selflessness when I complement one of the girl’s earrings and the next day she gives them to me as gift that she refused to take back.
I will miss at lunch time hearing the kids from my house yell to me to come sit with them and not with my team. Their persistence with teaching me new Spanish words every day and patience when it takes me a few days of quizzing to remember them. Hearing them yell our names and running to us every time we get back from going to town for the day like we were gone for a week.
I will miss pouring Christ’s love into their lives like they have never felt before because many of them come from terrible backgrounds that can haunt them for the rest of their lives. Like little Lolina (bottom) who is four and cannot walk yet because her parents abandoned her to her grandfather who tied her up in a cage so she couldn’t get away because he was too elderly to keep up with her. Or baby Sabina (top) who was left abandoned on the ground all night and by the time she was found ants had completely eaten up the side of her face. These kids don’t know what real love is from their parents. But they know how to give it and they give it freely.
I will miss learning from them.
Although it is going to be insanely hard to board that bus to Peru on Saturday, I am thankful for God’s answer to my prayer even though it is painful. Sometimes painful answers to prayers are the most effective answers to prayers. They are the ones that stick with you. Don’t be afraid to request something even if you know the answer will involve an unpleasant season.
I could have closed off my heart and checked out this month. I could have decided the language barrier was too much to handle or the all too real risk of contracting lice was not worth hugging and holding anyone who needs is. If I had, I wouldn’t have learned and seen all the things that God had in store for me this month from my little orphaned teachers and I would have robbed them of someone additional in their life to love them.
God didn’t use anyone else to answer my prayer besides me. He used my desperateness in crying out to him every morning from my sleeping pad because I knew without starting my day like that this month, I could have easily slipped into just getting by until I could move on, to motivate me to be my own answer to my prayer. I had to invest myself in these kids in order for my prayer to be answered, no one could do that for me.
Don’t be afraid to be your own answer to your prayers. If you have been praying for something, God may have the exact answer to that request, you. But if you aren’t willing to do some of the work, no matter how unpleasant or how much hard work it might me, you may never get your answer.
I will miss a lot,
but I’m grateful I have something to miss
because when you miss a lot,
that is when you know you love a lot.
