Joy and the Hardships

It's Monday and we leave on Friday. It's crazy that it in the beginning of the trip I had felt like I had been here for so long, and now I am wondering where the time has gone.

We have had quite a few adventures here and the past few weeks have been spent working with various projects that we have been given.

Everyday a group goes out to Ratna Park to hang out/play soccer with street children with a few translators. Tuesdays and Thursdays, there is also a group that goes out at night to spend time with street children as well with a group from an organization.
Our nights are also filled with visiting children's homes and our days are usually filled with miscellanous tasks. We also go to dance bars every week or so. We are plenty busy.

Something that has hit us hard as we have been involved in these ministries is how hard they are. The other night, a group of us went to a dance bar for the 3rd time. The first two times we really got to interact with the girls but this time around they seemed to be warned of us and they didn't talk to us. When we visited the last two times, we asked to meet with them the next day. They never showed. This time, the girls had lied to us and said they were there when they weren't. That stung.

There was also an instance with a street boy. When the boy was with Angela, he said that he was new on the street and that he wanted to leave. After, when we were getting a Tiny Hands person to go and talk to him, he seemed completely different and closed off. They asked to meet him the next day, he didn't show. Later we found out, he had been on the Thamel streets for a year or so.

There has been many heartaches over these people. It seems that work here in Nepal is slow, and we have been introduced to that in our short six week trip. The kind of work we are doing takes years. Someone we had talked to in the beginning of the trip said it had taken 5 years for her to see any change, and we are learning that lesson now.

Yet though we have seen these hardships there is still so much joy. We have found such joy in the relationships we have with the people we have met. Whether it be the people of the organizations we have worked with, a girl at a dance bar, or a few of the boys on the streets. These people have touched us and just by being with them, we find joy.

A great triumph that we got to experience of hope and joy was the soccer camp that we got to put on. Kyle and Callee orchestrated the whole event and each one of us got to be in charge of a different station. Kyle and Lizzee taught passing, Angela and Chris played steal the bacon, Justin and Callee taught shooting, Taylor and Eddy taught headers and Corinne and I taught dribbling. It was so much fun. All the kids that we have gotten to interact with the past five weeks were there and we got to spend hours with them playing and laughing. It takes these kinds of events to realize how much we will miss these children and how much they have impacted our hearts. It will be a time I will never forget.

Please pray, along with us, that in these last days God may prepare us to leave but that we would be fully present and fully listening to God.

Love,
Stephen