(Written when I was in Cambodia month 7 at Crossing Cambodia)
When you spend 10 hours a day with 10 kids between the ages of 2 and 10, you have to get creative and have a huge amount of patience. These kids live on the street with their families. They do not have structure or discipline in their lives.
It is our job this month to supervise and keep them occupied throughout the day.
The kids run around everywhere! They are constantly moving. They will be coloring inside one minute, and playing outside with the skateboard the next.
One day one of the older kids came up to me with a stack of colorful playing cards with numbers on them. There is a game to play with these specific cards but I didn’t have time to learn and then teach it to kids who have a short attention span and who don’t speak the same language as me. I resorted to a game I knew and taught them how to play “War.” If you don’t know how to play, each person has a stack of cards. You flip the top card over at the same time and whoever has the highest card gets those cards. When the same cards are flipped you battle for it by placing 3 cards down on top and then flipping over the 4th card. At that time whoever has the highest card gets all of the cards during that round. This was an easy game to teach because I taught it to them by playing it with them and showing them. They caught on quickly and soon enough they were playing the game over and over and over again. I don’t think I have played so much “War” in my life. They will run up to me with the cards and I know exactly what they want to do.
While I was playing this card game over and over again with these kids I was thinking. I was thinking about these children and their lives. I was thinking about how not many, if any, adults actually sit down to play something with them. They want attention. They want love. They want to have fun. They are children in desperate need of a better life. I have the opportunity this month to come alongside the amazing staff here at Crossing Cambodia and give these kids what they need. The staff loves these kids and it shows with how they interact with the children and how hard they work to clean them, feed them, discipline them, and spend time with them. We have been able to help them it whatever way possible.
The staff has blessed me. They have shown me what it means to be patient and to love even when it’s hard. To love even when kids are hitting each other, being mischievous, and throwing tantrums. Jesus loves us through it. He loves us no matter what. He loves us when we are frustrated, mad, upset, throwing our own tantrums… He has much patience with us. And he wants to spend time with us. He wants us to take time out of our day to spend with him.
When you stop, listen, and take time to spend with Jesus he will speak to you and reveal things to you!
I pray you are spending time with Jesus. I pray you are loving with patience and grace even when it’s hard. These are prayers I have for myself.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
