No, really. I'm starting to hear stories about where they come from and where they've been. Honestly, it's making my head hurt trying to get my head around this.
I don't know why this didn't dawn on me before, but this is the place that keeps turning up in ANM newsletters when they're talking about the Village of Hope. The newsletters and articles talk about the young men that are recovering drug addicts, coming from the streets of Mumbai. They talk about the girls that were formerly in brothels that are now safe and have hope again.
These are those kids.
These amazing real-life heroes are those kids. When I go home and look at the newsletters, I'll probably see some very familiar faces. These girls were in brothels. These guys were drug addicts on the streets. Casey has given us a wonderful gift in that she has been asking the kids for their stories. While I'm teaching these guys how to swing dance in the dining hall and having my hair braided 3 times a day by the girls, Casey is sitting them down and asking for their stories. She has the benefit of already knowing these kids because she was here with the first team. I'm just forming relationships while she's continuing to build hers. And what she hears is nothing short of astounding. These kids lived through the hell I saw . . . the hell I ran through . . . in Mumbai. You hear about how the girls were sold into this awful life. You hear about how these boys were addicted to drugs before they were teenagers.
And who they are now . . . you would never know.
These kids have a faith and a strength I know nothing about. They know the restoring power of God in a way that I will probably never understand. There is a sincerity to their worship and their times of devotion and Bible study that runs much deeper. God has restored them. All that love I keep giving out and all the goofy little things I do with these kids seems to pale in significance to anything they could want or need. It seems too small somehow. What could I possibly add to their life? But they never hesitate to tell us that they are so thankful that we're here. They seek us out and want to be around us all the time, even if we're just sitting at the table. They're loving us more than we're loving them.
Melvin is playing his guitar in every spare moment to teach these kids some new songs, and I know that he's going to lose his voice by the end of the week. Jill has a following of younger boys that just love being around her. Marla is hanging out with the Aunties a lot. Casey has her group of girls and guys, and they have some very strong friendships with her. I'm finding that I'm settling into friendships with some of these guys pretty well. It's surprising to me, because I thought I'd be hanging out with only the girls. That's what I usually do. But for whatever reason, it hasn't happened that way.
Today we went to a neighboring city to buy t-shirts and gifts for the Jubilee girls. We are planning a day of games and fun for them on Saturday. We went to a pretty good sized mall in a fairly good sized city, but I felt like I was at the zoo. Apparently, they don't see as many foreigners here than they do in Mumbai. People really just stared at us when we drove by. I had the benefit of sitting in the back of the jeep again, so I could watch the heads turn when they noticed the girls sitting ahead of me in the jeep. When we went to get ice cream at McDonalds, one of the employees sat down next to us and asked if she could take her picture with our team. Then she wanted one with me. I had to laugh. Jill took one with her camera too, for good measure.
In my music class, I tried to teach a few more chords and scales. She's got around 6 now that she's working on. When I'm not working with her, I can hear her practicing. It's pretty cool that I was able to teach her something.
We went back to Jubilee 1&2 today, and played some games with them. We discovered: Do not play the telephone game when you do not speak the language. Results WILL vary. We also played this goofy little game: you stand in a circle, and the person in the middle has to walk up to someone and say, "I love you, will you please smile?" The person has to say, "I love you, but I just can't smile" back with a completely straight face. I am terrible at this game. The kids just have to walk up to me and I'm already laughing. I ended up in the middle a lot.
At dinner, somebody started teaching Alok Spanish. This kid claims he already speaks 7 languages or something like that, so when he heard that a lot of us took Spanish in high school he was all over it. Before long, he was standing directly across from me at the table, yelling "TE AMO, ERIN!" I jokingly told him to knock it off . . . so of course he kept doing it to the point where the other guys around were laughing at me and how I kept trying to get him to stop.
Alok is kind of a spaz and is prone to saying or doing whatever pops into his head without much consideration. This often leads to some awesome times of laughter and some times when I want to smack him upside the head. I love this kid a lot. I can see his heart through all his crazy antics.
Santosh sat down next to me at one point during dinner and picked up the arm that has the bracelet I got from Kartik tied on it. He tied a second one on: two different shades of green and pink. He made me promise never to take it off. I don't think I ever will. I now have 4 bracelets from different kids. I wear them all the time, and they will serve as great reminders of these awesome kids.
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