Friday, April 20, 2012

Honduras Part 3 (At the Orphanage)


It was only my second day working at the orphanage. The sun was already high in the sky and it was hot. We had all the kids outside, attempting to keep them on the side walk, while they colored and put stickers on paper. It was a struggle to say the least. 

There was this one girl in particular, her name was Anna and she was probably the most misbehaved girl there. She was either five or six years old, ( I was never able to get it straight) so she was the second oldest girl there. She was loud and screamed and ran away. She wouldn't listen at all and she hit the other children and took their toys away whenever she wanted to. Since I didn't speak her language it was hard to communicate with her which let her get away with lots more than we all would have liked. 

Once she decided that she was done with her crayons she jumped up and took off to the unfinished building site. I jumped up and called out to her. She obviously didn't understand the words that were coming out but I knew that she understood the meaning and my hand motioning. She coked her head, with an evil gleam in her eye and pranced away. 
That was it, I took off after her at high speed. She started running too. I didn't want her over there because there were loose nails on the ground and sharp things everywhere and she was barefoot. I got to the building site and tried to keep up. Since she was way smaller and shorter she easily slid under things that I had to clumsily climb over because I was to tall to go under. 
Finally, I realized it was useless. I stopped. She stopped and turned to look back. She cocked her head to one side as a question as to why I had stopped chasing her. What could I do? I couldn't' catch her. Then I remembered a camera I had hanging around my head. It was a simple point and shoot camera but all the kids loved to hold it and try taking pictures. So I took the camera off and held it out to her. "Would you like it? come here." Once again, the meaning was clear even through the language barrier. She slowly inched her way over, eyes switching from the camera in my hand to me as if calculating my moves. You better believe I was calculating too. I wanted to wait until she was close enough to grab, but I didn't want to wait too long because I didn't want her to lose interest and start running again. The seconds that ticked by seemed like hours and she slowly inched over. I prayed that I could hold a straight face. Her hand reached out to take the camera and BAM. I grabbed it. I think it was an answer to prayer that I calculated right, because I'm usually not good at that sort of thing. She screamed and wiggled and fought and I hung on for dear life. I felt bad because I knew I must be hurting her wrist by grabbing so tight but at that point I couldn't hold with any less pressure because she would have started to hit me. We struggled all the way back to the orphanage house. It took a while to get back and by that time I was throughly frustrated. While all the other kids picked up their things and went back inside to have a watermelon piece to cool off. I told her a firm, "No, you are staying put with me for a while!" I sat down and leaned my back against the unfinished brick wall and pulled the still struggling child down on my lap. She was hot and sweaty and so was I and she continued to put up a fight as I firmly held her on my lap. Then she slowly settled down and sat still. Very still. Then she leaned back and rested her head on my shoulder and we stayed like that for a long time. 
I realized something. She just wanted to be held. Maybe thats why she was constantly mis-behaving, she wanted love and attention. Maybe thats why she was alwasy hitting people's back and legs, because she wanted them to pick her up. 

Well, I decided right then and there that I would hold her all she wanted!!! We sat there, in the hot honduras sun for a long time before I took her back in. The whole rest of the day she was my little helper and behaved beautifully. (I can't say the same for the next days) but it taught me a lot about how people hunger for love. Show love to to the people who are mis-behaving, because the mis-behaving is probably just a sign that they need your love. Thats what Jesus would do. 

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