Perhaps faith has really been my biggest Aquiles heel, though I have witnessed miracle after miracle, I have doubted God's personal love for me. I spent two years teaching others this!
I just didn't believe I was a part of that conversation. I have always wanted that feeling of closeness like others do, and I found it among a group of very small people in a place very far away.
In Nepal they say "Namaste" to greet you, which means, "The God in me acknowledges the God in you." I was volunteering at an organization called Raksha Nepal working with 30 minors who had been sexually trafficked, abused, and assaulted. Most were victims of rape and sexual assault, some from sex trafficking, others lost their family in the quake, and some were abandon and found on the road. When they enter Raksha, they recieve a new name. This is for safety, but also for them to start a new life. They are baptized in the love and care of the Raksha family. These children take care of each other. As new kids arrive still in shock from the horrors that just shook lives, the Raksha children take them in as their brothers and sisters. New kids will suffer from many problems that make them aggressive at times. As they lash out, the Raksha children treat them with the mercy, patience, acceptance, forgiveness, and love as God does to all of us. Slowly these new kids change and adapt and acquire the same amount of charity as the children who took them in.
If I can paint a picture for you of a
special moment: On my last night with the kids I began to cry, one girl came up
to me and said, “Brother don't cry, the good energy will leave you through your
tears.” She embraced me and with her hands wiped my tears away. She, this
wounded girl, with pains I will never understand, held me and comforted me as I
stood in need of comfort. I was like the child and she was the guardian hushing
my tears. She was God.
My time at Raksha was sacred as I played with
them, gave them medicine when they were sick, carried them to bed, removed lice
out of their hair.
They would say that God is in the
animals so don’t harm them, and that God is in the food so don’t waste it, and
that God is in all people so treat them with love. They were living in the
Kingdom of God and all the world around them was his sweet benevolent
blessings, his hand wiping their tears, feeding them, comforting them,
protecting them, and teaching them. Even though they have seen the ugliest this
life can bring upon a person, though they have seen hell, God was there in
their pain.
You see I found Christ in these children. He taught me what it is to love, to care. It was during this time with these kids I felt closest to him. I place my testimony to that of the Savior, the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a Child.
