South Asia – April 13 || Atalie

This is the week of uncertainty. I knew it would be before I came. I knew what to expect for the first weeks at the orphanage and boarding school where we had been last year. A refugee camp, however, was foreign.But I was excited! God had provided for us to go in miraculous ways and then provided over $1000 more the final week before we left to be used for the needs of the refugees. Don’t tell me God doesn’t answer prayer. So I was anticipating this week of uncertainty.Little did I know how uncertain it would be. Last week threw this week into confusion and we didn’t know until after the plane touched down what we would actually be doing here.Today I found myself at a church, not a refugee camp. I could have been disappointed, but excitement simmered as we drove in instead. And it grew throughout the day. It turns out the kids that came are from more than one refugee camp, so we are teaching good news that will spread from here to multiple places rather than just one. And the leaders here are excited to have us. We are the first North American team to ever have come this far and invest in their outreach. We were expecting 60 teens to teach and have 150 instead. And that extra money that was to be used for supplies? Some of it was used to bring a wagon full of mothers and kids from a committed group of Buddhists in the north that have been hard to reach for Christ.And on that wagon was a boy. He stood out immediately among the sea of bronze skin because he was white and blond. An albino. Sensitive skin and eyes caused him to squint in the light of the noon sun, contorting his face, leaving the tiniest of slits through which to see.I wish I could have been there when he put on the glasses. I heard his face lit up and relaxed into a smile for the first time that day. The glasses were Raybands, owned by one of our team members, but by the end of the day, they were his. Polarized, $180 sunglasses given to a dirty little white boy, son of a poor jade miner in South Asia. And they made him smile. They helped him see.May God penetrate the hearts and minds of the kids here this week so that they all can see and smile at the enormity of God’s love for them. The kind of love that changed a North American team’s plans so that one little boy could see. Don’t tell me God doesn’t answer prayer.Atalie