Journey mercies

I find it interesting that in the one year plus I've been in the UK, kids have dominated a lot of my time and energy.

I live with two of them, every Tuesday I'll play with my church elder's kids during homegroups (sometimes the mom tells me to settle down and if I want to play, to go outside the kitchen), every Thursday is with the kids in the youth work, Saturdays used to be spent with the kids in the park not so since I returned after my trip in Malaysia, and Sundays it'll be all other kids.

This afternoon, when I was walking back to the flat, I saw a few kids playing outside the church. As kids here can be a little more destructive than kids in Malaysia, I started talking to them and asked what they were doing.

After awhile, I found out that they have been attending the Saturday football games at the park and they were killing time until it started so I told them they could come in with me and hang out in the flat instead. I very quickly found out that all three had not had their lunch (it was 1.30pm) and were planning to play football without anything in their tummies.

I've come to accept not to question what kids around my neighbourhood backgrounds are and what kind of family life they have, so I proceeded to knock something up to fill their tummy. Shortly after that I joined them for a short while in the park and another one of the girls who is familiar with me asked for chocolate biscuits.

I was reminded again why I should be grateful the doorbell to the flat isn't working.

These kids can be really encouraging and you think we've got great hope for the future they bring. Sometimes they are just plain pests. But really, whenever I look at them, I just wonder at the kind of future we're influencing. Hopefully, some of them could look back on these days and acknowledge we did make some sort of difference, even if we would never know if we did or not.