Passing On What Matters

In case you're tuning in to things just now, I'll let you know that the focus for this particular trip has been English learning.  (Check previous posts for a low down on our Team and some of the expertise we have on board this time around.)

To that end, all our children have been assessed and grouped in similar English competency levels, four or five to a group.  Lukmee is the keen one in my little group, arriving early, finishing each task carefully, and ready quite well at our level. 

Recently we 'informally' added Reena to our group.  She is the daughter of a newly arrived staff couple.  Everything is a bit new and overwhelming for her here at Hot Springs, but joining us at the table really seems to have helped her get to know a few of her new friends a little better.  Not knowing Reena's English reading level, and since the others hadn't arrived yet, I asked Lukmee to read her one of the books we've have more or less mastered at this point, called "Fluffy is Little" (Pat Harrison, Blueberry Hill Books).

Lukmee was eager to do it, moved over closer to Reena, and kindly showed her how to point her finger under each word.  She had to check with me for just a few of the key words, but then went back to her teaching role with a gentle confidence.  At the end of the reading, even though she was the one who had done all the 'work,' she congratulated Reena and told her she'd done a good job!

Is it just me, or is it exponentially endearing when one kid wants to help another kid?   And isn't it even more so when that one kid has herself been through sad and awful things, and yet is able to turn around and offer grace and welcome and a sense of belonging to someone else.  

Sitting in that moment I believed I was watching a small and simple kind of moving love that just keeps getting passed along.  And really, isn't that what we hope to be doing in this wholly wonderful adventure that is New Family Foundation?  Welcoming children to change the story and rewrite something desperate into something full of hope.  And isn't that what we hope all our kids have the chance to pass along to others around them, perhaps their own children one day, making the changes that just might ripple through an entire region on into the future.

We can forget sometimes, how much the small things matter.

They do.

They matter jing jing (true true).