"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being "care full," you find yourselves cared for." (MSG) Matthew 5: 3,4,7
This has been my first week of interning at Agape, an orphanage for kids with HIV/AIDS. I taught English classes on Thursday, and taught some music classes today. (More about that later.) This orphanage was started not too long ago by an Australian woman who was working in the government orphanages in Thailand. She saw one little girl who wasn't being cared for and when she asked the orphanage workers why, she was told that the little girl had AIDS and was going to die, so there was no point in investing in her and using their resources to help her. After a long process, she adopted the little girl, Nikki, and founded a home for orphans with AIDS in Northern Thailand. The facilites are amazing - trampolines, dormitories, toys, and a staff of nannies (most of whom also have AIDS). It really is a place of hope - it's not a depressing hospital where the kids are just waiting to die. Avis (the founder) has really created a place where kids are shown how to live with the disease, not die from it.
So on Saturdays all of the interns are given the opportunity to teach a "class" for the kids - mostly an opportunity for the kids to have something to do. Today we had some cooking classes, a computer class, an art class, and my music class. I had no idea what to expect and what I would really do. I ended up having about 3 or 4 kids in each class, and they ranged from age 7 to 16. I planned on teaching them Solfeg (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do) but really thought it was going to be a bust. To my surprise, one of the girls in my first group had seen "The Sound of Music" and proceeded to sing me the entire " Do a deer" song. It was great! There was another girl in my first class, a girl about 15 years old, who I was told could play guitar. I tried for the first 15 minutes to speak to her in Thai (very poorly) when one of the workers came up to me and told me that the girl was fluent in English and her name was Nikki (a.k.a. the girl that is the reason why Agape exists today). Wow - I felt like an idiot.
In my second class I decided to teach them some songs full of eternal significance such as "The Hippo Song" and "The Beaver Song." They loved those for sure, but after that we got the guitar out and started playing songs that we knew. One of the girls in my class is a 15 year old and plays the guitar really well! I asked her what her favorite song was, and she opened up her notebook and pointed to a page with the lyrics and chords to "Here I Am To Worship" scribbled down. It was at that moment when I almost cried - that song was written by Tim Hughes, who was the worship leader at my church in London and who I have been keeping updated about my internship. Her face lit up when I told her that I knew the man who wrote it and that I would tell him that it was her favorite song.
That happened today and I haven't been able to think about anything else since then. I think it was such a big deal to me because it gave me hope: Since being at Agape I've realized that I will never be able to fully understand these kids' lives or relate to them. But we worship the same God, and our love and worship of this God supersedes all barriers that we might have between us.
I've found it to be true time and time again that when you go out to help someone, you end up feeling like you've been blessed by the person you were trying to bless. I love the way The Message puts it: "You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being "care full," you find yourselves cared for."
2008-02-02 @ 20:39