Mission Trip 3: The Experiences

These are a few of the experiences that remain in my mind, whether funny, sad, or painful.

• One day we (Matt, Rebecca, myself, one staff member, Charlie and Anthony) were walking from one of the stations (arts and crafts) to another (spiritual development) and Anthony (who is rather prone to doing so) decided to run away. Connie (the staff member) was walking with Charlie, so she said to Matt, 'Here, hold him,' and ran after Anthony. We were standing there watching, and all of a sudden Charlie's pants fell down. Poor Matt had nothing to do but pull them up, and I just had to laugh. It all happened so fast, it was like something out of the movies. Then Connie came back (after depositing Anthony somewhere) and took Charlie to go get a belt. Matt, Rebecca and I went to spiritual development by ourselves.
• We were in another of the stations, life skills, playing with play dough, and I was helping Trish but also sitting by Alicia. She kept grabbing my arm and either putting it on her head, so I could stroke her hair, or slamming it on the table. It occurred to me that she probably realizes hitting the table repeatedly begins to hurt, and was glad for an opportunity to get someone else to do it for her. By the time we were done I had saliva all over my arm, and believe me, it does smell funny. I also received a nice cut on my knuckle from Alicia's fingernail after she flailed her arms around and two others inside my elbow where she grabbed me. Interestingly, I was less afraid of her after she hurt me.
• I spent a lot of time bonding with Mia, especially in the later part of the week, and one day we were in arts and crafts sitting on a sofa sticking little foam shapes on a pile of glue, when Mia started randomly cussing me out. She said F-you over and over with me telling her 'No Mia, you can't say that, that's ugly.' I finally said, 'Okay Mia, if you keep doing that, I'm leaving.' So I got up and walked across the room until she came and dragged me back and we glued a bit longer until she started saying it again. This continued until it was time to go. The funny thing is, Mia grinned the whole time. I didn't see her any happier than when she was cussing at me. Mia also decked Kiki in the face part way through the week, and after that Kiki stayed far away from her.
• We were in the chapel doing spiritual development one day, which, sadly, consisted of watching movies, and there were several other groups in there at the same time. One little boy named Weldon sang along with the VeggieTales song and waved his arms around quite hilariously. It was very cute. Most of the other groups were much higher functioning than ours, which was a bit frustrating, because they all made connections and had conversations, and our kids didn't even know our names.
• One of the girls in my youth group, Erin, was also grabbed, by a big boy in her group, and she ended up with four perfect fingernail marks on her upper arm, surrounded by bruises. It was very cool looking.
• There was a girl in yet another group, named Winter, whose parents had dropped her off recently because they couldn't deal with her any longer. I think her retardation was very limited, but she had an attitude problem. One day we passed her and her group coming out of arts and crafts and she had written on the crown that she had made, 'I want to go home with my mom now.' It almost made me cry.
• Anthony also was new to the home, and he would often scream for his mommy during his tantrums. That was pretty heart-wrenching too.