It is Wednesday and we were all excited as well as anxious to travel to the fishing village called Kapafu and spend time with the people there. Well, we didn’t get there. God brought us rain. He brought us HARD rain for what seemed like a long time through the night. Somewhere around 4 am or 5 am, the wind really whipped up and it rained more. HARD. With screened windows in our bunkhouse, those on the wind side got soaked. All of Del’s clothing and lots of Lugi’s clothing got wet.
On the walk to the dining area in the morning, we found the men pulling all of their stuff out of their tents. They found themselves surrounded by water that had gathered throughout the night, and they too, with all of their stuff, were soaked. The angry, gray clouds lingered and by breakfast the decision had been made that there would be no Kapafu trip for us. God’s will be done.
With an unplanned day ahead, we spent some quality time with the kids from the orphanage. What is on my mind as I write this is the beauty both given and received through the gift of touch. We can smile at kids, we can play games with them, we can dance with them, and we can color with them. But it felt to me this week that we were being most Christ-like when we shared touch. Today it was holding the kids. Several of us experienced kids wanting to be picked up and held. They held on and soaked in the love. I think back to spa day and just the intimacy of washing the feet of the women and men who came. I pray that all felt the closeness that I did as well as love.
This afternoon we took a variety of balls and headed for the square in town. It was interesting to see the kids just appear from all directions. We probably had 50-60 of them in total. It was also interesting to me that not one female showed up. We pulled together a soccer game, some basketball and various other pickup games. Lugi, Lelia, and I all took a run at doing basketball with a few of the littler kids; that was interesting. We were not good, but none of the kids cared. They were having a good time.
So my takeaway for today is that love is most important thing for us to share here. We can’t change their situation. But we can love them. We can show them that we love them. We can hug them. We can’t be afraid of that touch, even though we are immediately hesitant to do so. We need to push through that apprehension and trust that God will make it ok. We need to make sure that they feel Christ’s love through us.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
