DAY FOUR- My favorite part is doing some teaching myself

Helping children with their emotional needs
Originally uploaded by Heart 4 Orphans

We've been struggling all week with how to talk to the children about their deep emotional needs, as most of them are missing one or both parents and are struggling to stay in school and find their next meal. The problem is that when the children cry the small group leaders don't know what to do with the children to comfort them so it almost seems worse to open their wounds and not care for them than to open them at all. This is our quandry.

So…I came up with two lessons this morning to share. I shared them today and wish I could read their minds to know if it was helpful or not.
One was for the small group leaders to teach them using a teddy bear what they can do to help a crying child, most especially give them a big hug or back rub.
Then with the children I did a teaching comparing the 3 parts of us: 1) our physical side that can be wounded and leave scars and we drew that on paper, 2) then our emotional level where we also have pain but it can't be seen, and we made holes in the paper on that level to represent our emotional wounds where we need to draw close to friend and people, 3) and then the 3rd level being our spirit where we have the opportunity to be joined with God and walk with him.
At each level I shared with them some of my own life struggles, like my Dad's death, and so afterwards I told them they could come up and whisper their troubles or secrets to my teddy bear or they could tell me and my teddy bear and every time I held my teddy bear then I would be hugging them and remembering and praying for them. There wasn't enough time unfortunately to talk to everyone but the stories I heard made me cry and pray. Oh the pain those little souls carry around in their few short years.

I was told by others that it went well and as I had a translator I'm praying they received something from it. I didn't end up getting many notes typed up which was the goal for the week but it was good for me to see the workshop and meet the children and get ideas for how to lead the workshop better and then now today to even do some teaching. What a week.