I have re-written this blog 4 times thus far. Let's see how this one works out.
It's so hard to describe God's wonder during this week. You'd think a week would be quite simple to sum up. False.
God sent some specific girls to me that I never dreamed I would be close to. He gave me a class that I had fun with. He let me witness my teammates relationships with other students. I would love to tell you about these in person. They are beautiful stories but I have to stick with one for now.
One specific girl comes to mind when I think about Prague Camp.
She is
beautiful.
Free-spirited.
Opinionated and
not afraid to be.
One out of the seven discussion group nights we have is about love. Ryan and J challenged us in the discussions to talk about concept of the
prodigal son. One of the big questions was
is unconditional love possible?
This girl had an amazing, yes unusual response. "Love is only something I experience from romance. Not from my parents or friends, so I don't really know if unconditional loving is possible."
Of course, that automatically sets me up to want to love her as much as I am able to for the rest of the time I am with her.
So that was my goal.
Through the week we totally connected. It wasn't hard to do so in our similarities. Every week at camp we have one hike day and on this particular hike day, she and I connected with flying colors. It was really, really great. We laughed a lot, talked about her pets, my pets, Harry Potter, picked blueberries, & hung out with two other guys that are on just about the same goofy level as we are.
For our last night at camp our english class got together to talk one more time about the week and everything that we had discussed (which was.... a lot). Keep in mind that my class, even though they were the most advanced, couldn't help themselves in speaking Czech for the majority of these discussions. I was okay with it because it's hard enough to talk about deep things in your own language, much less in another language that doesn't know how to speak your heart.
I was patiently waiting to ask a new question when this girl said "Hey, Emilko" Out of nowhere.
"Yessssss...?"
"I just wanted to tell you that Tuesday, during the hike, I had a really great time with you. I really liked listening to my headphones with you. Even though we weren't saying anything to eachother, it was really nice."
I then proceeded to ask her if she still believed that love only came from romance, and if anything had changed to make her believe it could come from elsewhere.
"Yeah, I think it can."
Then I said, " If you don't mind me asking in front of everybody... do you think that this week, you could safely say that you felt loved by me?"
With a huge smile on her face, she tilted back and said
"Yeah, I do."
My heart melts for this girl. This may not seem like a big deal. Sometimes the desired response from people witnessing happenings on the missions field sidelines is much greater than this. But what really is greater? God was able to use us to make her feel love. To open her heart to a possibility of a greater love than she believed in once before. And, since God is a greater love, I pray that one day she recognizes the greater love that
only He offers.
