Being Thankful For The Little Things

Last week was a good week. There are some really amazing people here and little by little I’m getting to know them better. I’m finally starting to feel more confident with my driving skills and only had a few times where I had a quick realization that I was on the “American” side of the road. I’ve been able to do ministry with some of the teams that I drive 3 days a week. One day we did some house visits and played with a lot of gorgeous children. There is nothing like having your hair done (or pulled) and climbed on like a jungle gym. Another day I went with a group to a daycare to help take care of the kids for a few hours and visit with the staff. It was a very small building with about 15 kids and 3 workers. There was also apparently a friendly rat that resides there, but I was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. When we walked in everyone went to play with the babies, but I decided to sit and talk with a high school girl that was sitting on the floor watching the kids. I sat with her and started talking to her. At first she was shy and didn’t seem like she wanted to talk. I persisted and before the end of the day she was talking the whole time and just opening up about her life. I got to talk to her about her family situation and her church. It was apparently a lot she hadn’t shared before so it was exciting for everyone to get to know more about her and how to minister to her in the future.

There is one ministry that I have seen so far that has really impacted me. I can’t seem to get it out of my mind. It is called Algoa, and it is a facility that houses people with cerebral palsy. It is situated out away from civilization. The only other thing that is next to it is a camp where people with incurable strings of Tuberculosis go to live. I had no idea what I was about to see. I have always had a hard time working with people with disabilities because my heart just breaks for them, and I never know what I can do to help. So, when they told me this was the ministry for the day I didn’t even know what to think. I didn’t know how I was going to react or what I was going to do. The group said a lot of people didn’t go in with them because it was just too hard, but I knew I couldn’t just sit in the car. I knew I had to go in and trust that God would somehow give me strength. As we walked in I soon realized that everyone here does not just have cerebral palsy, but they also have many other mental and physical disorders. When we entered the room the smell was almost unbearable. The people here can’t control their bodily functions so they are all wearing diapers and the nurses are not quick to change them when they have accidents. We went to the girls ward first. Many of the girls are very physical because they can’t control their body movements. One girl kept grabbing on my arm trying to pull me harshly to the ground. Many of them can’t walk so they will drag themselves across the ground with their arms. Some can’t even get out of bed because their bodies are so mangled. I have never seen anything like it. I was scared to touch some of them at first because I didn’t want to hurt them. But I tried to go up and talk to most of them, rub their arms and just let them know that someone cares. It was really hard for me at first. Seeing their hurting bodies just broke me and many times I had to hold back the tears. We took the girls outside to play which helped them settle down a lot.