October 22, 2008 4:00m
Wow what a humbling experience this has been so far and we aren’t even to the halfway point in our trip. The last 2 day I had the opportunity to lead VBS with some Thai children. School is out right now so it looks nothing like we thought it would but is amazing nonetheless. There is a conference for the staff of Mercy and their children are the ones that I have gotten to share my time with. None of them speak English so I have a translator with me. Yesterday was wonderful. After I was finished with the story and we made a craft they asked me to teach them a song. I taught them J-E-S-U-S and they loved it. The end was a little difficult since they are not great English speakers but they loved dancing and singing the song with me. They then sang me a song in Thai, which I have no idea what it said, but it was wonderful. After VBS there was about 15 minutes left in the conference so the woman in charge of watching them put on a movie. As we sat there and watched it some of the girls came up and were sitting next to me with several in my lap. They simply long for attention and love just like our children at home. One little girl’s story broke my heart. She is about 6 years old and last year her dad died. Her mom teaches at the school but the translator told me she misses her dad a great deal. It was an unexpected passing as he came back from a trip and became ill and not too long later passed away.
Today I had the opportunity to spend some time in the orphanage teaching them a Bible story and running something very similar to a day at VBS. I also had the chance to take some of the toys we had brought for them from the children at our VBS to them. They loved them and it was amazing getting to watch them play with the toys and interact with each other. Weepah, whose name I am sure I have spelt wrong, told me some of their stories and it broke my heart. Many of them have lost both parents, or the only parent they had, while others parents simply did not want them. They are so precious and simply loved having someone new there to love them and give them attention. I got to teach them to play some of the games that we brought to give them and to sit one on one and interact. That was a blessing and the fact that we couldn’t speak to each other didn’t seem to matter. It was simply being there and giving them attention that mattered. They told me to tell the children at Hope thank you for the toys they sent, they loved them.
It continues to amaze and bless me the ways that God can use someone like me. I think they are teaching me more that I could ever teach them.
–Shannon
