Learning to Love.

We have just arrived home from a very eye opening 12 day orphan camp. It was an interesting experience though because I was submerged into two different cultures. First being the Latvian culture, which was brought in not only by the kids but by the other Latvian leaders who spoke no English and were not too happy about working with young Americans. The other culture shock was the orphan culture. Jaycee and Susan talked about it in our intern training, and experiencing it was more intense than I had imagined. We had to break up at least 25 fights, and I mean punching in the face and pulling hair our fights. They have a learned behavior that craves love and attention in every way. Loving these kids was physically and emotionally draining.
I had two nine-year-old boys in my room, Janis and Denis. They loved when I did the little things like take their shoes off before bed and they always fought over who got the first/last hug after we said goodnight. I found myself doing things that a mom would do for them, I cleaned up after them, made sure they got enough to eat, smelled their feet and made them shower if they were too "fooey" for me to handle. They spoke no English, besides numbers 1-10 and I taught them a few other words like bed and sleep. Communication was definitely a struggle. I had to grab Endija, Jaycee, or Susan to translate when they didn't understand ..or just weren't listening to me (which unfortunately happened often).
In the two weeks I was at the camp I saw the difference I made in the lives of the kids I got close to. I saw that what they need most I can give them, love. My hope is that they saw where my loves stems from. I'm praying that through the way I loved these kids at camp, they were given a glimpse of the gospel.