It all started with a rock. A completely normal, rocky, rock.
But what wasn’t normal was the kid who gave me the rock. His name is Romeo and he is just one of the kids that have become a part of my heart as I’ve journeyed across the world and through all sorts of craziness.
Imagine a movie or a description of an African village, and then make it a little dirtier and you have the village where I met Romeo. It was the first village where my team and I would be acting out bible stories and teaching about Jesus.
But before the stories we would play games! Whether it be duck duck goose or Simon says the kids all loved to play. Well, most of them anyways. I made it my job to find the kids who were too scared or disinterested to play and to play with them instead.
There were so many shy kids. At a lot of the villages we went to, the kids had never seen a white person before. So every now and then we would get kids who were not only shy, but they were terrified! They would see us and just start screaming. Everyone else thought that this was hilarious, including us.
They didn’t speak english and I don’t speak Chichewa so I came up with a game that anyone could play. All I would do was hide a rock in one of my hands and let the kids try to guess which hand it was in. It isn’t exactly the funnest game, but they all loved it! They couldn’t get enough of it.
I just wanted to earn their trust and make them feel loved, that was really it. If they trusted us then they would be a lot more likely to listen to our message and to receive the truth:
That God loves them.
After the first day Romeo kept coming up to me and we would play the rock game. Over and over, but it never got old. Every single time he would laugh and smile and just remind me why I was there in the first place. I was there to bring kids like him hope, that no matter where they were raised or how they were treated, that they are loved and that they matter.
Even when you don’t speak the same language, there is something that goes without having to be said. I know that love is one of those things. Just being there with him and playing with him showed him I cared. And there was a look in his eyes that reflected that as well.
It might sound dramatic, and it is. Preaching the gospel in remote villages IS dramatic. It creates change and it changed me too.
On the last day we were in the village I got my friend to translate for me.
I said, “I’ll never forget you and I hope you never forget me…but if you remember anything, remember what we’ve taught you! Never forget that God loves you.”
He said that he would remember me, and then he reached down and gave me a rock. A rock that I still have to this day and means much more to me than I ever thought a rock could.
I hold it before ministry and pray for the kids we are going to minister to that day.
I use it when I play the rock game with all the shy kids.
I look at it and think of God’s amazing love for us.
