let's get back to business. My life the past few days has consisted of church, work and sleep. I can't remember when I've felt this sick. But I am on the mend, so, allow me to talk about the darling people who probably gave me swine flu.
The photo above represents a typical day in Tataresti after bible school. All the children are leaving, some with parents or older siblings, some alone. Shortly after this we would put all the chairs back out and sit down for a palate-pleasing meal of peanut butter and jelly or honey sandwiches. Every day. During lunch we would all talk about who was attentive and who we thought really got the message.
I will always remember thinking of these kids and wondering what was going through their minds while we taught them about Jesus, tried to tell them how a fisherman named Peter met this Man and learned to believe Him, trust Him, and follow Him, and how they all needed Him more than they needed anything else. At the time it seemed almost silly to try and convince these poor, under-privileged people that they could find joy in their lives even without clothes or food or any ceature comforts.
But they felt joy. They felt love. They felt it enough to come back four more days, some walking who knows how far just to spend two hours playing, making a simple necklace, and listening to us sing and talk. Something brought them back.
I assure you it wasn't a game, a skit, a song with animated hand motions, or a bible story in a language they had probably never heard. It most certainly wasn't any one of us that drew them back to that little church at the bend of the road.
That's what ran through my mind each day as they left. I hated to see them go but I knew they would be back. They would be back because it didn't matter how many of them "got it." They would come back because they had felt something that many of them had never felt before. They had heard the message, the message that we sometimes take for granted as old news, routine, or those stories we heard in our childhood.
Some of them may never hear it again. But that's okay. They heard it for one short week. And sometimes, once is all it takes.
Revelation 3:20 says, "...I stand at the door and knock." We can only pray that the message these Romanians and Hungarians were given finds a way to pry open the door. We have completed the task that we were given and now we leave them in the hands of the Holy Spirit, knowing that He desires their acceptance more than anything.
I'm really grateful to God for the opportunity I had to go there and share Him with them. Continue to pray for the children of Tataresti.
