I could hardly breathe. Like at all. I wasn’t even sure if my lungs knew how.
All I was certain of was the sweat pouring down my face.
And that the kids were relentless.
These are typical thoughts running through my mind here at the school in Ayapan. Whether you are running around playing with either a soccer ball or frisbee, being a human jungle gym, or just sitting and letting some girls braid your hair, you can guarantee you won’t ever be bored. Kids are running around everywhere with only one goal in mind, to obtain your attention.
Love isn’t something a lot of these kids probably receive on a daily basis, along with food, water and shelter. After the age of 13, school may also fall into that category. 13 is the oldest age that a child in the village of Ayapan that can attend school. After 13, they either have to go to another town if there parents can afford it, or no longer continue their education.
Without knowing this information, you probably wouldn’t have even guessed that this was their reality. Smiles stretching from ear to ear make up each of their faces and nothing comes out of their mouths except for laughter. The only thing they pay more attention too than soccer is English class. A hunger for English fills all of their minds and they soak up anything I would teach them. Body parts, colors, numbers, phrases, animals, my 11 and 12 year olds knew it all.
Even though these kids may not receive love a lot, they know how to give it. Every day my kids would run up to me screaming, “Hola Morgan!” and wrap me up in a big hug. My students knew how to make me laugh and brighten my day. I may have been teaching them english, but they were teaching me a lot more about compassion, love, adoration, and spanish.
I will never forget my last day at Ayapan. One of my students, possibly the cutest little Guatemalan boy ever, came and sat down next to me. “Will you be back tomorrow?” He asked me. Pain filled my heart when I responded, “No.” Not fully understanding he continued to ask me, “Monday? Tuesday? Wednesday?” In broken spanish I then explained to him that we weren’t coming back anymore. It was the last day of school in Guatemala and we were prepping for a new ministry. I looked down at him and said, “Muy triste,” telling him how said I was. He then looked up at me, frowned, and said, “Me too.”
Driving away from Ayapan that day, all I could feel was the absence of the piece of my heart that I left with all my kiddos in Ayapan. I’m going to miss the hours spent teaching English and playing outside with the brightest, cutest, and most hilarious kids I’ve ever met. Even though I don’t get to see the men and women these kids grow up to be, I am thankful for this small time God allowed me in there life. I hope I left at least a fraction of the impact these kids left on my heart. I’ll never forget then.
Learning the importance of presence is a hard lesson to learn on the race. Life changes every second, and ministry changes everyday. Some days are packed full, ministry taking up nearly the whole day, and other days have only a couple hours of ministry leaving the rest of the day wide open to imagination. It’s as if the only consistency that the race has to offer is the lack of consistency.
So take every memory and moment for what they are because you can’t guarantee what happens next. And when you teach English class in a small remote village to the cutest Guatemalan kids that steal your heart and a little boy asks, “Will you be back tomorrow?” You just smile and love him in this moment.
Because ministry isn’t guaranteed to look the same tomorrow. And life isn’t guaranteed tomorrow. Then I begin to realize that this lesson isn’t a world race one, it’s a life one.
