Bittersweet Moments

Sitting under a tree. The sounds of the kids teaching the team the finer points of how soccer is played fill the air. Needless to say the kids are running circles around the team.


This morning we had a devotional ( Luke 2:52), then we tried to get the boys to do their school worksheets. I say tried, do you know any boys that want to study during the summer? Typical complaints were, it's too hard. Give me the answer.


After a break we used one of the Vacation Bible School programs that our church used.


In the discussion afterwards, we were talking about hope and prayer. One of Syrian refuge children spoke up and said he had prayed during a hard time in his life but did not want to talk about it. One has to wonder what he has gone thru in his young 10 years.
Most of the boys here have some family. During holidays and one weekend a month during the school year the staff try to have the kids return to their families to maintain contact.

Not all the boys are so lucky though. One of the Syrian refugee boys has no family.

A teacher took him home to stay with her family for the week between school being out and our team arriving.
He was referred to Dar el Awlad after being found living on a bus. He does not know how old he is (the dentist thinks he is 6.) He and his family escaped from Syria and then his parents disappeared. He was being "cared for" by a "grandfather" who forced him to beg, beating him if he did not bring "home" enough money.
He tired of the beatings and ran away to live on a bus.

The more you find out about other boys you discover each has their own story.  Your heart breaks. You want to do something to fix the situation, to lift the heartache. But what can we do who only fly in for a week and then go back to our lives of comfort and ease?  We feel helpless. All we can do is love them while we are here and pray for them and their caregivers.  It's sound so inadequate.  But then again, is it so little to love them for a week and have them know that we will be back to love them again next year?  To have them realize people they don't know, in a church in Waco,Texas, love them and are lifting them up to the Lord in prayer.
Lifting them up, and keeping on lifting up.

Tim