Dear Friends and Family:
The weather has turned cool and it rained for hours this morning leaving us feeling damp and slightly moldy. The wind is rustling in the trees and, feeling domestic, I’m making a pot of soup and a pan of brownies. Sort of a ‘welcome autumn’ celebration and, I must say, our kitchen smells good.
Just the other day we returned from camp with the kids and a great time with them. The weather was perfect, the kids were amazing, and God’s Spirit moved among us. I have no other summer camp to compare it to, but others on staff say that the kids were open and responded to Bible studies, to one another, and to us like never before. Upon returning home I saw a change in the kids in the way they interacted with us at the drop-in center. It was as if they knew they were loved because they’d been loved on all the week before. What a gift to see this. Thank you for your prayers for us during that time and please continue to pray that the good work He has begun would continue until THAT day.
Also, please continue to pray for us as we seek to begin a play therapy counseling program at the drop-in center. A day after we’d returned from camp, one little boy was playing in what we call ‘the day room.’ He’d found a Mr. Potato Head and an old Little People Barn set and was heavy into imaginary play. This little boy always makes us laugh because he’s so in his own world and says and does the funniest things. All the other children had gone home, but he was lingering and we were letting him. One of our staff (Magda) was playing with him and she kept saying: it’s time to go home and he kept putting her off. Finally she said: why don’t you want to go home and he responded: the man my mom lives with drinks.
I thought this was such a perfect picture of how we can get to the deeper heart stuff of the kids with whom we work through play therapy. Maybe he wouldn’t have shared this information if Magda hadn’t been willing to enter his world through play. So, please pray for us. I’m excited about the possibilities.
Many of you know that I really enjoy the author Wendell Berry. If you haven’t read any of his books, essays, or poems, I highly recommend them and would start with the novel Hannah Coulter. While at camp I was reading Berry’s short novel titled Remembering and found this:
“That had been a long time ago, when Henry was about 14 and Elton not yet 30. Probably neither of them any longer knew whether Elton had known about the bees or not. But they played out their old game of accusation and denial once more, both enjoying it, both grateful to be in the same story.”
The next day I was with a little boy during reading time at camp. We were lying in the grass in the warm sun and he was reading aloud to me. Actually, we were taking turns reading and he was helping me with my Romanian. Anyway, I began to get sleepy there in that warm sun under a blue sky spotted with fluffy clouds, landscaped in shades of green, and he took advantage of the moment, stretched out onto his back, put the book over his face, and proceeded to tell me a story. I didn’t understand the whole telling, but many of our staff were characters, including myself. He came to a point in the story where he and I were in church and as I came in and saw him I said: Daniel! Ce faci? (How are you or what are you doing? But he said it in a ‘wassup!’ tone of voice). And Daniel said to me (in the story): Bine! (Good! spoken in the same tone). Then, in the story, we high fived.
I lay in the warm, glistening sun and listened to this little boy tell me a story and my heart ached. In fact, my heart still aches because I am so grateful to be in the same story as he.
Even though you don’t know him, I hope you know that you, too, because of your prayers and support, are in the same story as Daniel. And I hope one day you can meet him. Please pray for him. His story is typical of many of our kids. Not long ago his mother left him and his brother with their alcoholic dad who had just been released from prison and moved to another part of the city, so he rarely sees her. Daniel is smart and talented and funny and sometimes I want to huddle him and his brother in my arms and protect them so that the lives they were created to live can be lived, the story written for them can be told.
But I guess I’m telling a bit of that story now. I hope you take what you know and pray for us. I hope, with myself, you take this story and find yourself grateful to be a part of it.
My love,
April
O.P. 6 C.P. 256
Galati, Romania
800.760
april.folkertsma@wordmadeflesh.com
aprilfolkertsma.blogspot.com