big kid.

I’m sure when the Boys & Girls Club in Waianae decided to let me join as a volunteer three days a week they didn’t realize they were trusting a six foot tall, 280 pound, 21 year old child to be a responsible adult and affectively, with respect and authority, control the large group of rambunctious children who come kicking and screaming through their doors each day to finish homework, socialize, and impatiently wait for their parents to come save the day and pick them up. From day one having kids hanging on to each one of my limbs as I desperately tried to get all twenty of them to listen silently as I read to them in the Harry Potter room; the whole responsible adult who commands respect and authority was long gone.
Every Friday we fill out a weekly reflection paper where we take the time to write about our week and what we plan on accomplishing in weeks future. There is a section titled community service where we are supposed to reflect on praises and problems and how we are affectively being a witness at our designated service sites. Every week I feel like there is not much more to my responses than that I pretended to be ten years old and had the time of my life reading third grade books, having coloring contests, and making friends half my age for six hours a week. I mean the original intention of our volunteering in the community was to build relationships with hurting, broken people with the hope of bringing them close or closer to Jesus. And to be honest having coloring contests with bright eyed, joyful children all day didn’t feel like sharing the gospel to the hurting or broken.
It wasn’t until last Thursday when we went out to pass out some free meal tickets for the annual Thanksgiving dinner at the Blaisdell that I was convinced I was sharing the gospel in the most affective and maybe the only way that was possible at the Boys & Girls Club. While passing out the tickets at one of the beachside homeless communities in Waianae called sewers we ran into a soft-spoken eleven year old girl named Maya who happened to be one of my new friends at the Boys & Girls Club. When it all sunk in that this was her home where she lived with her mother, uncle, cousins, and three dogs I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming feeling of compassion for the whole situation. Seeing Maya’s situation really put the past month of volunteering in perspective. Not all the kids, as happy as they may seem playing foosball, making paper airplanes, and testing my patience, go home to that same ecstatic happiness when they see mom or dad, auntie or uncle, walk through the double glass doors of the Boys & Girls Club to take them home. Maybe, just maybe those six hours a week, two hours a day acting like a child being the best friend I can be is exactly what these kids need the most. I can imagine Jesus, even being in his early thirties, acting like a child when he saw the smiles on the faces of children running just to touch him with their innocent hands and joyful laughs. I would imagine Jesus never had to act like the strict adult who told the children repent or else. Maybe this is what Paul meant when he claimed to be all things to all men that by all means he could save some. It would make perfect sense to drop all your big, bad, tough rules as an adult and act like a child around children to by all means, if they are anything like Maya, save some. Seeing Maya out there homeless for all reasons makes every smile, every laugh, every hug so precious knowing that sharing the gospel of Jesus at the Boys & Girls club has little to do with preaching and a whole lot to do with just being a big kid.