The difference love makes

 Second day in a row he was waiting for me. It was free time, our bible study time had just finished and he was at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me. “What do you want to do Jello” he asked. I turned the question back to him, he thought but came up with nothing. We ended up outside where I challenged him to chalk out his own city, with a school, church, homes and grocery store. We spend the rest of the afternoon with him slowly instructing me what to draw one side while he worked on the other.

Now this isn't a super exciting story I realize. It sounds like any average day and in some ways it is. Moments like these are common, kids wanting to hang out specifically with a leaders, having the task of thinking of things for them to do or challenging  task to keep them busy and then doing it  are all normal parts of an  average day, only this child is not an average child. His name is Will and he is 11, when I met him just over a year ago he was not such a nice kid. He was never allowed to stay at camp very long due to his behavior and when he joined our program full time last September my days were filled with determining the difference between truth and lies in his stories. He promoted himself as a bad kid and found his identity in how many times he had been suspended or the number of kids who did not want to be his friend. Only he is not that kid anymore, he is now who he really is, he is sweet, excited, smart, creative, intelligent, focused and fun. Yesterday was my first day back from being in Camden for the past week and it had been 11 days since I had seen these kids. As Will arrived after camp he surprised me but running in excitement and giving me a hug. We spend free time yesterday sitting on the grass (which is a big deal in itself since the grass is on the ground and the ground is gross) and talking. We talked about gifts, the best gift we had ever received and the worst gift. We talked about how we responded to receiving these gifts and how we left about them. Then we talked about God and we talked about the gift that He has extended to us, we talked about how we can get prideful and we don’t want this gift because we don’t want a hand out, we somehow think that in and of ourselves that we should be able to somehow achieve salvation. We talked about how hard it is to humble realize how stupid we can be and about how amazing it is that God has extended this gift to us.

As the day ended while I was walking him home and stopped with the other kids and chilled on the basketball court for a while, only he didn't play. He stood beside me and we talked, I asked him if he thought he had changed since September and he began listing the ways, “I didn't like camp I do now, sometimes I am bored but the leaders are nice and fun. I don’t tell as many lies, actually I can’t remember the last time I lied to you Jello”, and the list continued. Will is special, he is special to me but he is so much more special to God. Please pray for Will that He would truly understand this gift that God extends to him and pray that the Holy Spirit would move in his heart and that he would accept Christ. Pray that as he comes camping with us over the weekend that these kind of conversations would continue and that God would use us to speak words of truth, love and life into his life.