Hello from Penang Island, Malaysia.
It’s now November and my last month in Asia!
I am living in St. Joseph’s Children’s Home for children ages 4-17. It’s a Catholic home and they welcome in not only orphans but children from difficult family lives and of all different religions. Though they practice Catholicism, many are Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian. They are so hungry to learn and to understand. One of the first things that one of the older boys asked me was “Sister, have you ever experienced God? Let’s talk about the Bible. What’s your life story?” It stunned me a little bit because I don’t think I’ve ever experienced children so young asking such questions. But their lives are so centered around religion and rituals that aren’t even of their own faith, so they think about it more often than most I imagine. They are in very unique situations. We sat and talked about life and our stories one evening. I was honest with them, telling them that I didn’t have all the answers but I would tell them what I know. They listened intently as I told them about my life and my struggles and about how God changed my life around. They shared their stories as well. I feel privileged to get to know these kids over the course of the next month. I pray that God takes us all deeper, better able to reach the hard places. That these kids keep asking questions and that God leads me in how to answer.
Each morning at around 6:30, we get up and walk the kids to school. We tutor them after they return home and just come alongside them in their day. We play and learn and eat dinner together. I kind of laugh as I write this because I should have prefaced this by telling you that I was always the person that wasn’t really interested in hanging out with rambunctious children. I never wanted to babysit – it just wasn’t my thing. So when I’m put in a place where there is 50 crazy children running around, screaming my name and hanging all over me..I would say it slightly overwhelmed me. But each day my love for these kids grows more and more.
The first day of tutoring, I was with a beautiful little girl with big brown eyes. I was struggling trying to figure out how to teach her. She wouldn’t hold still, wouldn’t listen, and instead of sitting in her own seat was insisting on sitting on top of me. I felt like I was getting a glimpse of what the rest of my month was going to look like and it exhausted me. What’s really beautiful and kind of funny is that she is the one that has become my special little friend. I find myself seeking her out in the crowd. The more time I spend with her, the more I understand. So many kids in these kind of environments really lack the one-on-one attention that they need. The crave to be held and listened to and seen which just normally isn’t available to them with such low staff. We were sitting in the TV room the other day and as she was holding my hand tightly and sitting as close to me as she possibly could, I got really sad. Though it made my heart sing when she fell asleep with her head in my lap as I played with her hair, I also got really sad because I couldn’t help wondering about how things would be in a couple weeks after my team left again. I thought about her life here and about her life back at home and wondered what it was like. I know it’s silly, but sometimes I worry that the people I take care of (as a caregiver back home and a previous orphanage staff worker), that they won’t be loved well after I leave. I know this is silly because I don’t always love as well as I could and I’m sure there are better people for the job than me.. but this is an honest worry of mine..but with or without me, I hope and earnestly pray they find the love they so desperately need and that God ultimately takes care of each one of them. My girl will be okay, I know she will.
In this setting where I’m traveling all the time.. making relationships is so beautiful and bittersweet. It’s really hard. Learning to really love people and then having to leave. It’s something that I don’t know if I will ever get used to. But it’s made me realize what I believe about the future. I don’t want to be someone who flits from thing to thing and person to person all the time. If I am passionate about something, I want to stay and see it through – investing my whole heart and my time into it. That’s what I believe in and hope to follow through with on my own long after this journey comes to an end.
Just my thoughts as of today.
Pray that God would continue to fill me up so that I can pour into the children around me.
