Today I am grateful for God’s Spirit and influence in my life. A few days ago, my squad leader and I collided while playing soccer. This left me with a weak foot throughout the first few weeks of my trip. Because of that, he offered me a chance to share a devotional with some boys who I would normally be playing soccer with. I flipped through the Bible a little and opted to hand the option over to my teammate Jeff.
Jeff had seemed to be in a somber mood for the last few days, but he took the opportunity up without hesitation. He told me later that it was incredible because the words that he was sharing with these boys ended up being just the words he needed to hear himself.
While they were playing soccer, I came inside to work with the younger children. A little girl had been crying in the kitchen alone earlier in the day. As I came into the room, she was sitting at a chair set aside to herself… still crying. I began to walk to different tables and interact with the children as best I could. After a short while, I noticed she was now sitting at an activity table within the room by herself.
She was still crying.
I sat down on the floor next to her little table. She had a paper where the children were instructed to draw p’s. I said hola and her sobbing slowed just a little. I asked her if she liked to write. She shook her head. I asked her if she could write. She said no. I repeated this dialogue for a few minutes, then noticed the other papers.
One was a picture of a potato. I asked her if she liked to draw. She said yes. I pulled the potato drawing out and put it on top. I asked her if she wanted to draw. She said yes and her sobbing stopped. She began to color the potato. I told her she drew well. She smiled. When she finished, she pulled the next paper out. It was an outlined p. She began to color that also. I told her she colored well. She smiled again.
When these were finished, she held them up with pride. I told her to give them to her teacher. She ran up to the teacher with a smile. She came back and asked me to write her name on the pictures. I asked her if she could. She said no. I asked her name and she told me. I asked her to spell it out and she could not. I wrote her name on her papers.
We pulled out the writing paper with the p’s on it. I asked her if she could write it. She said no. I asked her if I could help her. She said yes. I began to write p’s on a few lines of her paper. I told her she could do it. She shook her head no. I slowly demonstrated the process of starting at the bottom, making a line up, and then making the circle. I put the pencil in her hand and she attempted to write a p. It looked more like a D. I told her good job!
Another little girl joined the table and demonstrated the p a few times while saying, “Tu puedes.” I encouraged the new girl (Maria) to help the first girl (Angeles). Maria put the pencil in Angeles’s hand and then explained the process in far better Spanish than I spoke!
Angeles wrote her first p and looked up with excited anticipation. “Muy bien,” I exclaimed. “Y un otro,” I encouraged. She wrote another one and looked up with that same excited anticipation. “Tu escribes p’s,” I told her. She wrote another four more p’s, looking up with excitement each time.
At this time, the class was being put away. I thanked Maria for helping instruct Angeles and directed Angeles to take the paper to her teacher. She ran with excitement to show what she had done.
When I saw her leave that day, she was jumping and playing. She was the last little girl to leave and she waved goodbye as she rode off in the back of her parents’ truck. For as far as my view stayed with her, she never stopped smiling.
