Crumpled papers

If you haven't read the blog long enough to know about Nak Suu, where I teach English in Saturdays, this will give you a bit of background. Today at Nak Suu I was reminded about how/why love never gives up, because some days it would be really easy to give up.

Some weeks the lesson I teach goes well, and I feel like the kids get something out of it, and some weeks I feel like I am talking to myself the whole time. There's a group of boys who come who live in a boys home.  They have it rough. They are the kind of kids that Nak Suu is designed for, but I admit that sometimes on the weeks they can't come I breath a sigh of relief.  Some of them are great, but collectively they are a whole lot of work, and at times a whole lot of naughty. And yet we love them, because God loves them. We love them because they are in many ways, just products of their environment and upbringing and since they don't see a hope and a future we have to see it for them.

Recently in my lessons I have been trying to incorporate literacy and just expose the kids to more language, using picture books to help them understand it. So this week we made little books for them to read and practice at home.  As it, I put them together and the kids colored them. Being a bit dense, I didn't start putting the books together until Friday night, so some friends helped me finish since it was going to take me hours.  The entire time I was working on them, in the back of my mind I knew, they were just going to end up on the ground or in the trash, but I wanted to believe that maybe this time would be different. Maybe this time we would make something and they would actually take it with them. And I do think that maybe a few kids did take them home, but I sure picked up a lot of them at the end of the day. When I handed them back to the kids at the end of the morning, before they left, a few laughed and gave them back, telling me they didn't want them.

How often we do that to God. How often does he prepare something for us, something that will benefit us, and we crumple it on the ground? But he keeps giving, keeps loving, keeps hoping on our behalf for the day when we will see that it is good, and see that it has value, and see it as a gift.

And so it is at Nak Suu. We prepare crafts and projects and lessons. We cut fruit and run drills and serve lunch. And we pray that one day it will start to stick in their minds and hearts, even if we never see it.