Comfort & Love

Wednesday, Feb.29, 2012

Team #2 - Visited Gertrude's and The Home for the Sick and Dying

Today was a very emotional day for all of us while we stepped out in Faith! Our whole team was able to interact with many many children. At Gertrude's we hung out with disabled/handicapped kids from very young to kids as old as early teen age. For me it took a few minutes to adjust to their environment. Coming from America you can only imagine their conditions compared to ours. We were greeted right away from one of the older boys named Mickey. He was just chillin' on his bicycle. Mickey was very helpful, because he knew all the kids names. We were all greeted with smiles. Kids wanted us to just pick them up and hold them. There were swings to push the children on and coloring books to color. It was just amazing to see the kids light up. You can tell some of kids really just needed that special touch. So holding the children at Gertrude's was so what they needed! I held Jonathan, a younger boy who came up to me with his hands held high. I then was drawn to a beautiful girl named Gabriele. She had down syndrome and she just lite up and wanted to be pushed on the swings. It is so amazing to see their spirits lifted high just with a smile or a touch. I think I can learn from this that God created all of us to be relational.

At The Home for the Sick and Dying we embraced younger children who's parents are not able to care for them. So many little ones. I was very touched to be in their presence. God truly is at work in their lives. You can see it in their eyes. We were able to feed some of the children baby food and that was so precious. The little girl that was placed in my care to feed was so sweet. Her name was Ketia. She was about a year old and was hungry, but had a hard time opening up to me. After a few minutes of prompting she did open up and ended up eating. Afterwards, Ketia just melted in my arms as I held her for another 20 minutes.

Weather today started out hot and in the 90's, but later in the afternoon we experienced a rain storm. Our team had fun walking back to the house in the rain. Just like when I was a child.

Dinner was yummy pizza from a local restaurant. Delicious!

We ended our day with a fun night of learning how to dance the Cha Cha back at the house.

All in all an amazing day of bonding and growing in Christ!

Posted by Nathan Opatz