Monday, July 04, 2005

Yay, it's a good day! - Part 2

Ok, continuing from where I left off about yesterday, which was my good day.... In the afternoon, after my taekwondo class, I zipped back home, hosed myself down in the bathroom and was on my way out again for yet another one of my visits to the WAO child care centre in PJ with my church buddies. I don't think I've blogged much about these little visits of ours, so I guess I'll go with a little background first. What started out as well-meaning visits at the beginning of this year by a bunch of blur youths from my church to a child care centre (caring for children of abused women, usually abused by their husbands) has slowly been turning into a big project in which we've been trying to get our whole church involved. We've even named our team Project Elijah, which of course, has some reference to some Bible scripture... won't go into the details of that lest this entry gets too boringly draggy. Anyway, our team has been having some big dreams for Project Elijah, thinking of ways of getting the church to help us out by asking for volunteers to go visit, or asking them to 'adopt' a kid, which is not literal adoption but just praying for a kid and occasionally buying them gifts....and of course, offerings in the form of money money money to fund our activities with the kids. We've even been brainstorming ways to increase our funds as well as awareness of Project Elijah by making bookmarks, cards, whatever that will have the name Project Elijah all over it..... which feels a bit weird-ish to me coz' it's almost like we're starting a business...hehe. But it's for a good cause, and we're hoping in the future we'll be able to rope in enough people to start another group that can visit other places like orphanages or whatever. I never thought it would end up this big, but I think it's great coz' at least we church people are getting off our lazy bums and doing something to help and love others instead of just talking about it all the time on Sundays. Putting our faith into action...that's what Christians should be doing but more of than not, we don't. I'm glad we're doing something to change that. Woo hoo!
Anyway, back in the present, yesterday the bunch of us hauled our bums over to the CCC. Sadly, quite recently a few of the kids we had become so fond of had to leave the home, and we didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to them. But yesterday, there were a couple of new kids...the only two Chinese there and they'd been there for definitely less than a week coz' we visited the place the week before and they were not there yet. Anyway, these two new kids are siblings - a 3 year old girl and a 2 year old boy, whose names I shall not reveal because the details of this place and the children are supposed to be hush-hush, just so to protect the kids from their nutty fathers. But anyway, these two super cute kids were also super shy at first, and wouldn't say a peep to us. Didn't really help that they could only speak Mandarin, and most of us there couldn't speak Mandarin except for a couple of the guys, who had to serve as translators for the rest of us. I thought they'd be that quiet throughout our whole stay, but boy, was I ever wrong! The two warmed up to us really quick, and after a while they were both going nuts, joining in our games and running around. The girl especially took a liking to me, even though half the time I couldn't understand what we was saying to me, and she would bug me to carry her and swing her around. And when I was too tired to do so, and started running away from her, she would chase after me on and on like the energiser bunny! Very good exercise, that was....
Later on, our fun took on a more serious note, when the girl finally stopped running arond long enough to open up to us and tell us her story. She was talking in Mandarin, of course, but one of the guys, William, was there to tell the rest of us what she was saying. She said that she hadn't opened up to anyone since she came to the child care centre. She told us that once she saw her father beating her mother so bad until she was lying on the floor and the girl thought her mum was dead (but fortunately, she wasn't). And she also that she wished her father would love her mother, her mother would love her father, her father to love her, her father to love her brother, and so on and so forth. And she also said a lot of other incoherent stuff in between that William couldn't get. The amazing thing was to see such a young girl express herself so well at that age, and knowing the things she's had to witness within her own family. She wasn't crying or showing any sadness at the time she told us her story, but I couldn't help myself. It brought a tear to my eye. But at the same time, I'm happy that she opened up to us. I mean, here we are, a bunch of perfect strangers she'd known for only a couple of hours, and she was pouring out her heart to us. To our whole team, one of the things we'd been hoping for is that we would be able to give these kids some happy memories and let them slowly trust us enough to open up to us and tell us their problems. I mean, we can't erase their bad memories, or give them a drastically better life, or protect them from their fathers.... but we also know that holding onto their pain will affect them for the rest of their lives, and we've been really praying that we can have that chance to help them heal from their pain and maybe even forgive their fathers. And to have this girl to exactly that on the very first day we met her, well, it's a joy to me. In fact, this little girl has even motivated me to start picking up more Mandarin, just so I can communicate with her better next time and understand her feelings. Hehe, I always thought the only thing that would ever make me pick up Mandarin would be if I needed to be able to speak it for my work. I left the child care centre yesterday feeling happy that the new kids took to us superbly well, and we got to understand their problems a little better.
To add to the joy of yesterday's experience, today at church I was playing guitar on the worship team, and the worship went smashingly well too (I'll attribute the use of the word 'smashingly' this time to fatigue due to taekwondo training just now. :P). Just one of many times when the practices doesn't seem quite right, but once we get to the actual thing, the musicians all played perfectly and everything just flowed like clockwork. Just love it when that happens! And after that, our good ol' Pastor Mal was asking if anyone wanted to give testimonies, and I felt a little something in me bugging me to go and share about yesterday's experience with that little girl and hopefully it would interest more people to pray for these kids. Of course, I was kinda shy shy lah, so I only went after a couple of people did their testimonies. And considering I think it was the first time I'd ever stood up there in front of church sharing something like that with the church, I think I did a pretty good job tugging at the heartstrings. Haha! :P I told them about that little girl's story, how she'd opened up to us, and how I hoped everyone would take it upon themselves to keep on praying for the kids for healing in their lives. A tad bit corny, but I shared from the heart. And I'm proud of myself too, coz' usually I want to share stuff like this on front of church people but I'm usually to nervous to just open my freakin' yapper and just say it.
So yeah, it's been a good couple of days. :)

1 comment:

Dissociated Mind said...

I can see Project Elijah is making an impact both sides.. I'm really happy that our youth finally did something like this!