While visiting team Bold in Panajachel I was able to join them in some of their ministries, one of them being visitations to a local orphanage. For two mornings we were able to love on the kids… holding them, playing with them, feeding them, changing their diapers. While we were there we gave it our all and the kids seemed to truly enjoy our presence. But, in reality it was just two mornings, just two three hour chunks of time. How much of an impact can that really have? In a few weeks will they remember us at all? Will they remember our names? Or our faces? Or even the fun games we played?
Thinking about those questions almost brought me to tears. What if our time there really didn’t make any difference at all. But then I started to think about and recall memories from my own childhood… I can clearly remember the blanket that I slept under when we visited Claire’s house in Munich and to this day it’s still the fluffiest and most comfortable comforter I have ever slept under. I can also remember riding a horse at the redheaded girls house in Alabama and how nice and kind she was to me. I can vividly remember Rachel and Bree in Amsterdam and how much I wanted to be like them and copy their style. Each of these things, events, and people took up a very small amount of time in the grand scale of my life. I might not remember every detail or name, but years later I still remember those times fondly.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t that outrageous to think some of the kids at the orphanage will remember something about our visits. Maybe it will be our names, maybe just our faces, maybe my funny hair or the way I colored pictures with them, maybe the way we played jump rope, maybe the way we held them tight and told them that we loved them. I don’t know exactly what they’ll remember, but I have faith that we did make a difference. Faith that at least one child will look back weeks from now, maybe even years from now, and that they will remember how we took the time to love them with every fiber of our being. And that is enough for me.
