Musings from Graceland

ORPHANS...NO LONGER JUST A WORD

While Anna is with Adventures in Missions in Thailand, my daughter Betsie's best friend is serving with them in Nicaragua. Candace wrote a blog post this week about an experience at a children's home and how God used it to impact her heart. This blog post was very special for me because firstly, I adore Candace. She's just fabulous, pure and simple, straight and true, fabulous. And secondly, I have had a special spot in my heart for orphans since I was a child. God just planted a special love for them there, both true orphans and those children that are emotional orphans due to parental rejection or neglect.

God plants that special love in the hearts of His people because God has a special love for orphans. After all, He tells us that pure religion is to care for orphans and widows. I'm blessed to see how Candace is putting that pure religion into action, and at only 16 years of age.

This past Friday my team and I went to a Orphanage just for girls. Earlier in the week someone explained to us that most if not all the girls in the orphanage are not really orphans. There parents are most probably still alive, but their parents did not want them, so they brought them to the orphanage. After hearing this it made me want to go even more.

So Friday we set off to go. After about a 10 minute walk we were there. After a Teacher unlocked the front gate so we could come in. The teacher told us we had one hour to spend with the girls.

As we walked through a few girls meet us with big hugs. The girls grabbed our hands and brought us to where we would be for the remainder of the hour. As we were setting our water bottles and the rest of our things on a table, more girls came flowing in. As soon as we had set our things down we started singing and play with the girls. It did not take long to realize the girls are starving for people to love on them. And we are just the right people to do so.

As I walked back over to the table where I had set my water bottle I notice a little girl sitting by herself, a walked over to her to ask her if she wanted to join in all the playing and singing. When I asked her and just shock her head no, I then sat down and started talking to her in a little to no Spanish. After I had said everything I knew in Spanish, I just sat there for a few minutes. Thinking that the the 6 year old girl really did not want me there I started to stand up, once she realized what I was doing she grabbed my hand and told me no in a much louder voice than she had been using. I sat right back down knowing that this girl just wanted someone to love and spend to with her. I was completely out of things to say, but me just being there was enough for her.

I only spent about 20 to 30 minutes with her, but it was one of my favorite things so far that I have done in Nicaragua. This girl was probably brought to the orphanage by her parents because they did not want her, and she probably knows that. She might go to bed at night every night thinking about the family that left her. But God does not look at this little 6 year old girl as orphan or a unwanted child. God sees her as a child of his, a child that he will never leave.

I wanted to tell her all this and more, but my lack of Spanish would not let me tell her all this. The only thing I could do for this little child was to pray in silence as she colored. And all the time I heard God say was the world might see her as a orphan or a unwanted kid, but to me she will never to a orphan.

That night when we can back to the place we http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifare staying I put my earphones in and listen to Orphans of God. And for the first time when they sang There are No Orphans of God I saw the face of the little girl. Not just the word Orphans.

To read more about how God is working in and through TEAM NICARAGUA, check out their blog: http://nicaragua-hs.adventures.org/