Te Amo

God is really showing me how much he loves me.  It is incredible to me that I get to live here and be loved on by so many children day in and day out.  Crossroads Church (my home church) sent a short term mission team this past week, so I got to share all of this love with my friends and family for Concord. 

While they were here we went to Peru and visited a village on the river bank.  In this village many of the residents come to the bank to greet visitors with their “pets”.  These pets vary from Turtles, monkeys, sloths, birds, snakes, and a “tiger”.  The “tiger” is actually an ocelot.  It has grown a lot from last year.  Its growl does sound a quite intimidating.  Its owner comforted it by allowing it to suck on her fingers.  So somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought “How cool, I wanna try that!”  It was very cool, but I later had the thought…”He could have taken my hand off.”  Oh well Thank God he didn’t. 

I am continually impressed with how gracious the people are here.  I have not encountered anyone unfriendly.  Even when they are laughing at me regarding my lack of language skills, I just join them and we all have a good laugh together.

God is using these children to show me so much of Himself. Yesterday one child, we will call her “Bea”, wanted my attention every minute of the day.  She is 5 years old and was very upset when I was typing and trying to finish up some emails and work.  She continued to bang her hands on the keyboard.  I would stop her and redirect her, and after just a few minutes, she was back at it again.  Finally after going back and forth for a couple of hours, I lightly popped her hand.  Well you would have thought I had cut the hand off by her reaction.  She stomped off and pouted in the corner glaring at me.

After about 10 minutes, I went over to her and picked her up.  She began fighting me and hitting me.  I hung onto her and would not let her go.   I just kept saying “te amo”, (I love you) over and over again.  She finally stopped kicking, hitting, and screaming and laid comfortably in my arms.  I sat down and prayed over her.  She didn’t move.  It was a sweet moment when God shared with me that I act like that sometimes, and he just wants me to sit and rest in Him so he can love on me.

Please pray for the children of La Aljaba.  Pray that they will not only know the love of the Father, but that they are His and they can trust in Him because of His love for them.

Thank you to all of you for supporting me and allowing me this great adventure.