Week One

As you can tell just by watching this video, the first official week of Street Reach's 2011 summer program was AWESOME.
Pastor Tim challenged us to pray that God would let us what HE sees. It's amazing. These are the most beautiful children. It breaks my heart to go pick them up and never see a father figure, to see them wearing the same clothes days in a row, and to realize that they have not been taught basic manners or habits. But they are so smart! I am teaching them things, and they're teaching me. I'm really learning how to handle these kids. I can't wait for our relationships to grow over this summer. Tomorrow they will realize that the mission team from last week is gone and that they'll meet new ones every week, but that I am here for them. I feel so attached to them! I'm going to just share a few stories as I think of them:

• We are supposed to stop letting kids over 12 years old come to club. Jason, my boss, decided that it can be our call, but that we have to trust them completely! The older kids can cause more problems at site. So, we decided to cut two brothers, Ralph and Alfonso (13 and 15), who had been coming all week. On Friday, they actually walked to club before we picked them up! So Kacie told them about the decision, and I ran into them coming home while I was picking up kids. They were bummed out, but they understood. I'm still really upset that we cut them, because they're great boys. But God is still doing really cool things in their lives! For instance, we kept encouraging them to go to MAM. I even told their mom about it! The other day I went over to open gym and the boys were there! They were having a really good time. After club on Friday, one of the men on our teams and I went back to their house because he had promised Ralph a Bible. At first I thought it was just really sweet of this man, Joe, to make sure it happened. But what was AWESOME was Ralph's reaction! He was genuinely excited to get his Bible.
• I've been asking kids if they're reading their Bibles and praying, and they really are! Even some of the youngest ones. Even when I think Bible Club isn't doing enough, I realize that those kids are truly affected by it, and they take it home with them. We have a family of five kids whose mom was saved through Bible Club.
• Finally, speaking of that family, it was pretty sad when we took them home on Friday. It's not hard for me, but the teams get really attached. They loved these particular kids, and it's no surprise why! They're a Hispanic family, and these kids are probably the sweetest I have literally EVER met. They never cause trouble and they're always kind, even the oldest two. We took a long time to drop them off because we were giving them hugs and whatnot. The kids had finally gone inside and we were walking away when Jessie, a five year old boy, opened up the door again and yelled, "I love you!". I choked on my tears, and I wasn't even leaving!
  

I am SO pumped to take on this next week! I wasn't exactly nervous last week, but I didn't know my kids. Now I do and I have a week of experience. I'm ready to help out the mission teams and influence the kids at club even more than I did last week.

Sorry if some of this is worded in a way that makes no sense, I'm pretty tired right now. I think I'm going to take a nap! We're just having some down time until teams arrive.