Monday. Monday was incredible. The Lord did so much in my heart and in the hearts of the children the Lord allowed us to love on. We woke up very early excited about our first day of ministry. We got to spend the whole day at CIPI, the orphanage for babies, toddlers, special needs children, older girls, and pregnant teenage moms. For the first part of the morning, we just got to love on these kids. I spent most of the morning playing with the toddlers out on the playground and then feeding lunch to the special needs children. It was so amazing to see how much they lit up when you would just simply call their name to ask them to come and join in a game. There were two kids from that morning that I just fell in love with. One was a little four year old girl named Ete' and the other was a special needs boy named Antonio who was eight. Ete' was shy but extremely sweet and just dying for attention. She came up to me and just wanted me to touch her. At first she was too shy to even tell me her name. She wouldn't let me take any pictures of her and when I would snap one anyways, she wouldn't smile. When the kids wanted to go out to the play ground, she grabbed my hand and led me to her favorite swing. She stayed on that swing for nearly the entire time that the kids were allowed to be out on the playground. She kept asking me to take pictures of the other kids and then show her and then she would laugh as I tickled her. I FINALLY got one good picture of her showing me this little half smile and it is so precious.
She showed me how much just a little love can transform someone if we would just take the time to give it.Antonio, now that little boy, he melted me from the inside out. He was just so cute!! I got to take a ball and toss it back and forth with him and see him light up when he got to play the guitar we brought with us. Even though he didn't talk much, his smile told me how much he loved what he experienced that day.
I thought that I had experienced all the universal languages before lunch time!! What an incredible beginning to an awesome day!! but there were a few more things I had to learn about. After lunch we had the privilege of spending time with the older girls who ranged in age from about 11-17. We first did some crafts together and taught them a few songs, but then our translator got the greatest opportunity we had had yet! She got to share the gospel with them!! She spoke about how many of their families had left them, abused them, and done things to hurt them; especially their fathers. At this point many of the girls were already crying at the painful memories of what had brought them to live at CIPI in the first place. As our translator continued to speak she told them about a Father who could give them hope, and peace when they were going through the many hard things they all had to go through. She told them of how much He loved them and wished that they would let Him be their Father so that He could hold their broken heart in His hands and begin to put it back together piece by piece. Monday, six girls accepted Jesus, and a seed was planted in the hearts of many more!!! As they cried, I cried with them. I cried for all the hurt they had experienced in their lives. Most of the girls were younger than me, and yet they had known more horrible things than I could imagine. At no point in that day could I see more clearly how much God loves each of His children and desires to heal them through love than I did in that moment. I didn't have to speak Spanish to communicate or understand the tears that were shed there that day.
After such an amazing and yet very intense few minutes of crying and praying together with the girls, we got to play a game with them. The language barrier was once again broken by the laughter that we shared as we tried to untwist our huge human knot. We spent 25 minutes attempting to not fall on each other as we stepped through arms, over heads, and under everybody laughing the whole time. The memories of my first Monday in El Salvador will never leave me. At the end of the day as I reflected on all the awesome things God had done in my heart and in the hearts of the kids we got to spend time with, I realized that He had shown me one of the most important things I would need to know in future ministry times; I didn't need a translator to communicate the most important things in life. Love, laughter, and tears, are a language that can be understood by all, and God's love transcends every barrier we could ever come across.
