"Auntie L"

I love being called "Auntie L", it makes my heart so joyful and brings back such pleasant memories. That, among others, is one of the reasons why I love the refugees.

They're such a funny bunch. No matter what you do with the kids they always say, "it's BORING" (I've always despised that word). Yet, when you bring them back home, they can do nothing but talk about how much fun they had. Go figure!

They're also a rowdy group. Last week I lost it and definitely yelled at them. This week as one of the older girls was getting on the bus, she found me and said,
"Auntie L, you’re the one who yelled at us that first day at camp, right?” (camp is what they call West Dallas).
“Yes, I am." I replied, feeling remorseful for my actions, yet at the same time, knowing they behaved much better the rest of the day. "Do you think I was wrong to yell at you?” I asked?
“No, we was being bad...you probably shoulda’ yelled at us sooner”
Such blatant honesty! I loved it and that comment most definitely brought a smile to my face.

Unfortunately, that smile was quickly wiped away as some older boys try to get on the bus. That was an interesting experience. It was a moment I wish there was a man around because I felt very small and un-intimidating. Nothing dramatic happened I could just tell the three of them were debating how serious I was when I told them they weren't coming. The flirtatious teenage girls didn’t help my situation. The boys looked from them to me and replied, "What if I got on the bus anyway?" I hate 'what are you going to do about it' challenges like that, especially when I have no idea how to respond. I tried something basic, "it's not going to come to that, cause you're going to turn around and walk away" surprised my response came with much more calmness than I felt. They looked at me, looked back at the bus, back and me, then walked away. I said a quiet thank you to God and let out a HUGE sigh of relief. Here’s hoping they don’t come back.

There are times with the refugees when I feel at a completely loss of what to say or what to do, but I'm beginning to see a change in them. They still push the boundaries (just like all kids do) and drive me crazy at times, but I love them.

We haven't made much progress as far as getting them to interact with the West Dallas kids, but we still have 3 more days :-)

Through the West Dallas camp we've had 20+ kids (West Dallas and Refugee) accept Christ as their Savior. Praise God for that!!

More stories to come...

Prejudice

Lately, I've had the opportunity to be involved in the lives of some refugee children and I've learned so much through those experiences. I've re-learned that my heart is pulled towards Africans, I can't help it, I just LOVE them so much! I've learned that I get much more feisty when I hang out with African teens (and I talk differently). I've also learned alot about prejudices.

On Monday nights I'm involved in a program called Celebration. It's an outreach to refugees in a certain apartment complex. The entire complex is government housing and I believe most of the families are refugees. Anyhow we go around to several different apartments where refugee families live to pick up their kids and drive them to Celebration where we have a snack, play games and have a Bible story. So, I'm hanging out with some kids desperately trying to play this game I learned in Kenya where you pull and push rocks in and out of a circle all while you toss and catch a rock in your hand. The kids make it look SO easy and either I'm really bad at it or it's not as easy as it looks (I'm hoping for the later). As the girls laugh at me when I again fail to properly complete my turn, I get asked to lead one of the Bible study groups. I gathered my 7 little girls and we walked to find a spot to sit down. I asked them to sit in a circle and that's when it happened...

See, one of the little girls in my group was Burundi, while the other girls were Somali and what I didn't know is that the Burundi kids and the Somali kids don't get along very well. "I'm not sitting next to her, I don't like her!" to which the other girls replied in some African dialect (I've also learned that when the kids talk in their mother tongue, it's because they don't want me to know what they're saying because they know they shouldn't be saying it in the first place). I looked at my sister Kristen and we had a brief conversation with our eyes, both knowing we had to stop this before it erupted yet not knowing how to. Then, Kristen picked up one of the little girls, sat inbetween them and that simple action made it all better. The Bible story that night was about the birth of Jesus and the main point was the Jesus came to save his people from their sins.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I've been privledged to take the refugee kids to a camp called West Dallas. This is what happened the first day:

I'm trying to organize 43 kids to get them their name tags, make sure everyone stays out of the parking lot, and makes it into the gym when 6 of my kids come running up to me, "Auntie L, we're not going in there!"
"Why not?" I asked, slightly confused
"Have you seen who's in there and how many of them there are?"
I stopped and turned around at that point beyond confused but not liking the way my kids just said them. "What are you talking about?"
"Them! (pointing to the African American kids from the west Dallas community) We don't like them!"
I just stared at them, searching for the right words. "You don't even know them!"
"We know what they're like."

Racism runs deeper that skin color. Some part of me always knew that, but I'd never experienced to this degree. I was shocked. Here I was surrounded by African kids who were prejudice towards the African American children. I finally got the Somali kids inside the building where they segregated themselves from the other children and complained about how unfriendly "they" were.

"Look, they're just staring at us. See this is why we don't like them."
I'd about had it with their attitudes at this point. A few of the west Dallas kids had walked over to say hi and my kids had gone off in some African dialect. "Well, what did you expect? You walk in here, take one look at them and decide to sit in a circle away from them."
"They called us ill!"
"Well, with your attitude, I'd call you ill too!" I stood up after that, not wanting to encourage this segregation anymore.
"No, you wouldn't. You love us."
"Yes, I do. But right now, I really don't like your attitude so I'm going to talk to my other friends."

Their jaws dropped as I walked over to talk with the West Dallas kids who wanted to know why my friends weren't sitting with them. I suggested they go and introduce themselves and see if that helps. Within minutes they were all friends and apart from some of their clothing, you couldn't tell who was who.

I've gone through this process in one form or another everyday this week. It's the same kids everyday, and it still takes about the same amount of time to get them to see the world around them in a new light. You'd think the blonde, white girl is the one they'd have an attitude towards, but no, it's each with each other.

The encouraging part is that once they move past what they think they know, all the kids can be friends. We have another week with these kids, my prayer is that after spending two weeks with each other they'll stop letting themselves be brainwashed with what other people say and form their own opinions.

On another high note, the refugee children who come to West Dallas get to hear the gospel everyday and everyday I see more of them paying attention and asking more questions. It's not all cake and ice cream though. The other day as we were getting ready to leave, an uncle of one of the children came onto the bus and basically dragged his niece off. It was so unnerving to not know enough of the situation to be able to intervene. The lady who has been working daily with the refugees did all she could, but my heart still broke. Fear rippled through the bus as kids started questioning if they were going to get in trouble with any of their relatives for going. I was reminded in that moment that Satan will do anything he can to scare us away from God's truth.

Life is Rarely Boring

This past week has been full of some adventures for my family...

On Wednesday my mom walked into our chicken pen to feed her chickens and saw this:

Yeah, not the sight most women enjoy seeing. She came into the house and informed us there was a snake in the chicken pen, of course we all had to go out and see (all of us being my dad, kristen and myself). The snake was VERY tangled in the netting. How he managed to get his head through and then get that stuck, I'll never know.

So, like all good Texas home school families, I went inside to get our snake book to figure out what kind of snake it was because I'd never seen one with his coloring before. Yes, I have seen many snakes on our property before, most of them have been found in our chicken pen.

After finding out it was non-venomous, we cut it out of the netting and my dad transported him to some location away from our home.

Last night, Dad treated his girls (my mom, Kristen and myself) to a Rangers baseball game. As we took our seats and announcement came on that the game would be delayed at least 30 minutes due to storms that were coming our way. We stayed, hoping the game would go on...this was the result of the storms:

Needless to say, the game was canceled. Though we did sit there waiting for a good 2 hours for them to call the game so we could get rain checks for tickets.

The rain persisted into through the night. The storms, just kept developing and dumping rain on us. They also kept us awake with incredibly loud booms of thunder and bright streaks of lightening.

Now, at my house, when it rains that consistently our back patio tends to collect water. When the water gets high enough, it leaks through our foundation and into our living room, soaking our carpet. In order to prevent that catastrophe, we have to sweep the water away from the door.

Dad and Stephen took different approaches to this task. Dad gets dressed for Niagra Falls. while Stephen thinks it best to take off his shirt to show off his muscles.

When it rains 9 inches in 13 hours, the water also collects in our front yard. The property around our house was structured so that the water flows from our neighbors property, into ours, then under the culvert on our street and to the creek a quarter mile away. However, leaves, sticks (and in our case this morning peaches) get stuck in the fence between our home and our neighbors preventing the water from flowing properly.

When that happens, we have to swim through the water and pull out the junk in the fence to let the water flow. The water was pretty high this morning, Stephen was up to his waist. The downfall to this task, all the fire ants and spiders are floating in the water and latch onto to anything solid they can find then bite. Stephen came away itching, and I was so glad it was him and not me!

Once all our tasks were complete and everyone's houses were safe, Stephen, Jonathan and I made boats and had races in the water :-).

It reminded me, life's rarely boring.