So… I don’t like kids that much, I’ve learned. I can just feel all of my aunts and grandmothers cringing, because they are just so precious and you just want to take them all home right? I’m sorry. I am learning that it’s just not my ministry. God has a place for me… a good place… it’s just not there. Having said that… I wanted to talk a little bit about a day in school ministry that I did this last week.
This month has been pretty weird. You’ve hopefully read about my travel day and know that it took a lot to get here. After all of that we stayed in a place called Chenchu a middle of nowhere town around Surkhet, Nepal. Two weeks there flew by, and we have now moved all of our lives to another place… further away from civilization… further into the Himalayas… further than a next to nothing at all town that I can’t remember the name of.
Before we left our last home to find a new one, we got to minister at a school for two days. The first day I was having stomach issues, so I stayed back, but I was better the second day and decided to go and teach. I was sort of excited maybe because I volunteered to speak to the teachers instead of students… my team was glad and so was I. I’m going to be very vulnerable and say that I don’t always want to… especially at this point in the race. I am tired… sometimes too tired. I feel like I’ve emotionally and maybe physically aged 20 years and the thrill of saving the world is long gone most days.
We got to the school, and while I was under the impression that I would be ministering to the teachers (praise the Lord), I was walked down a hall with the rest of my team and pushed into a classroom of about thirty 10-14 year old students. Standing in front of rowdy kids alone with no other team members, a teacher or a translator is intimidating. Oh, what to do with them for an hour and a half…
As soon as I crossed the threshold, they all said in unison “Good morning Miss, how are you today?” in heavily accented English, to which I responded, “Fine and you?” … off to a good start. I told them my name and that I was from America and that I was 24 years old (I promise I heard one kid gasp). To be completely honest, I was not excited about this to begin with, but like a lot of other things on the race, it’s like exercise. You never want to start, but once you do, it feels good and you always are more happy that you did it.
Amidst the songs and my story about Samuel, I told them that there was one thing that I wanted them to remember after I left. I made them shout “God loves me!!” over and over until they could remember on their own. I loved those kids that day… I felt like they were mine for an hour or so. It felt so great to scream about the love of their Father and to just hope they grasped the truth. I may have adored them for a short bit… they were kind of precious after all.
