PTL for Foosball and "gay" rap music

It’s amazing how God works. Just last night I was frustrated, and feeling like I wasn’t really doing much around here. I know I’m doing a lot. I mean, we clean bathrooms, we vacuum, we work gym shifts, we clean and organize things, we work the food program. It’s not necessarily that we aren’t doing anything. I was more worried about doing anything of lasting worth. The carpets will always get dirty again, the pantry will be full and unorganized within a month or two. The toilets will get stinky again in 2 days. I’m more concerned about how people are changed by us being here.
I guess it’s almost selfish of me to expect people’s lives to be changed just by us being here, but isn’t that the point of being a missionary? Somebody asked me two weeks ago how we could call ourselves missionaries if we weren’t preaching. After all.. the missionaries in the Bible preached everywhere we went. Yet what are we doing? We are mostly cleaning toilets.
Needless to say, I’ve been a little frustrated and confused. I haven’t really known what to think about the whole thing….

But all of that changed when I started my gym shift today. I knew that there was some people downstairs, but didn’t know who. A few minutes later, Jacob, Gabriel, Richard, and Wesley, 4 of my youth boys, came upstairs from playing racquetball. These 4 are some of the ones I have the most trouble with, and the one’s I really have wanted to get through to. Well… I think I might actually be getting somewhere. I was minding my own business, working at the desk, when the boys came and begged me to play foosball with them. Technically, since Marlee was working somewhere else for the afternoon, I’m supposed to stay at the desk.. But honestly, I didn’t really care. I put my stuff away and went and played a few games with the boys. Jacob, Richard, and I killed Gab and Wesley, but then Jacob left and they beat us. Obviously my skills were not the reason we were winning before. Haha. It was great though.

Afterwards they showed me the creature-ish thing they had built out of the duplex blocks before I had gotten there.. then they were playing with some other stuff we had, while Wesley tried to refresh my memory on how to play Spades, and critized me for my “gay” rap music. Lol. I reminded him I was a white girl, and definitely not from the ghetto.. baha! By the time 3 rolled around and they were supposed to leave to meet somebody they were dragging their feet and wasting time. :)

God is good. That is all I can say. I know it wasn’t really much, but it meant the world to me. It was God’s own way of showing me that I really am in the right place, doing the right thing!

I know they put on a front because they are “too cool” to admit they have fun or are listening whenever they come to our events.. but I guess we are finally getting somewhere with them. Praise God. I hate that my time here is so short. I wish I could be here to set up a more permanent program for these youth. They need it so bad.

Marlee is looking to come back as a semester missionary starting this fall. She will be here till at least December, but I have a feeling she will stay longer than that. I pray that she will be able to continue the Youth on Fillmore program in some form or another whenever she comes back. I know that she will definitely try, so I feel a little better. It still breaks my heart to think that I am here, doing what my heart yearns for during the school year, doing what God has called me to do.. and I have to walk away from it all in 5 short weeks.

I know it is all in God’s plan, and I have to go back and finish what I started back in the Burg.. but I long to be able to do this “for real”.. to not just do it for a few weeks before going back to “real life”… I’m so ready for THIS to be real life. Sigh…