Blessed Beyond Words
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010This is part of a series of posts containing stories from the NCC team returning from their trip to Bolivia where they worked with the Life Center, an orphanage for boys.
So, here I am, a few days after being home from Bolivia and I am still trying to figure out what just happened.
My trip started out weeks before we actually left the U.S. In my heart I had already decided that there was little I would be able to contribute as I am not very good with kids and my Spanish is more than rusty. I was frustrated that less than a week before we left I still had no idea what exactly we would be doing once we got there. There was no packing list and no final meeting. I was looking more forward to the drive down to Miami than the actual trip to Bolivia. And the last thing I ever contemplated doing was praying or seeking God’s help in calming my spirit. To say that my heart was in the wrong place, that is putting it mildly.
After a 36 hour drive from Philadelphia to Miami, I was exhausted and just hoping the week in Bolivia would go by fast enough for me to forget that I was missing out on “the best New Years party ever” back in D.C.
God had different plans.
The moment I stepped of the bus at the Centro de Vida Boliviana and saw the 73 curious faces, I knew I was in trouble. I wouldn’t find out how much, until we left. As the days went on and I spent more and more time with the boys I realized that they are normal kids, just like I was at their age. They do the same things—listen to music, make jokes, play sports, break the rules , pray, go to youth group, dig holes, play in the mud, you get the idea. The only difference between these boys and me was that I grew up in the U.S. with parents that cared for me and sacrificed to make sure I had more opportunities than they had.
As more time went on I began to feel God ministering to these boys, through me. He was telling them that he loved them, that they were worthy and valuable, that no matter how poorly they had been treated in the past, they were His children now and He would be watching over them. It is powerful to play a role in showing God’s love to someone else. Orphans in Bolivia are often referred to as “disponible” or disposable–as if they were nothing and no one cared. All of them have been physically and mentally abused and most of them have been sexually abused as well. Violations that many of us would not be able to cope with if given hours of psycho therapy and millions of dollars in medicine. These kids have been abandoned and forced to live on the streets of Hell where love never showed its face.
God changed that reality.
Healing takes time. I am not claiming that after spending one week with me and the rest of our team that these boys are now 100% better and will no longer struggle with past issues. The reality is that they will likely struggle with these issues for the rest of their lives–certain life experiences and milestones will trigger reminders and that is inevitable. But healing is happening. God is on the move and His power cannot be stopped. He came to heal the broken hearted and that is what happened this week in Bolivia. We did not build a wall or dig a ditch or paint a classroom but we played with kids. We hugged them, squeezed them, tickled them and loved them as much as was humanly possible. And once we reached the human limit, God came and used us as His tools to show love, healing, forgiveness and grace to the ones He values most–the outcasts, the lost lamb, the ones society deems to be “disposible.” Those are our boys.
They will always have a piece of my heart. I cried my eyes out during the entire trip home to D.C.–on the bus, on the plane, on the second plane, in the hotel room, in the airport, on the third plane and in the car. Tears flowed from my eyes like I have never felt them flow before. God turned my hardened heart from that of stone to that of flesh.
The reality is that my heart hurts. It hurts to be separated from my new family, my boys. It hurts that the orphanage where they live is constantly under attack by the government and at risk. It hurts that the boys have already experienced so much pain in their short little lives. It hurts that many of them do not have any family and those that do have been abandoned by them. And yet, I cherish the pain. I cherish it because I know that what I feel is only one small minuscule drop in the bucket as to what God feels for his children. However much I love them, He loves them so much more and His heart grieves for them so much more deeply than mine.
I am thankful for my grieving heart. Part of me hopes that the pain will subside sometime soon and yet the other part does not want the pain to ever go away. I never want to be back in the place I was before when my heart was hardened to what God is doing in the lives of the most vulnerable. As Christians we are called to care for those who cannot care for themselves. Our team did that this week in Bolivia and I am blessed beyond words. Thank you God that you used little old me to minister to your children.
Tags: bolivia, Life Center | Add a Comment
