And then there are those kind of days...

I know you know it's not all peaches and cream.  This morning we had one of those moments.  A few hours after it transpired I received a wonderfully encouraging e-mail from a special prayer partner with just the words I need to hear.  To let her know how timely her prayers were, I wrote her the following account, which I've decided to copy and paste here. 

We had a rough morning with a couple of boys who are at our center more than any other of the village kids.  Their home life situations are not great -- their parents pretty much let them roam all day and they only come home to sleep at night.  I'm not sure they get much to eat either.

Today in kids' club they got up in the middle of the Bible lesson and walked out of the room in a very disruptive manner.  Nathan saw out the window that they were just sitting on the steps of the center so he went out and told them they could come back in, or they had to leave the yard altogether -- they could not be inside our gate, but outside of the building, unsupervised.  They chose to leave so we locked the gate so they couldn't come back in and we could finish kids club without continually chasing them out.

After the Bible lesson I remembered that we had a pan of brownies left over from church last night so during games I went upstairs to our apartment kitchen to cut them up and put them in cupcake liners for handing out (my economical alternative to plastic disposable plates).  I came back down with a tray in my hands and re-entered the center.  The layout of the building is such that the stairs to our apartment is on the outside of the building so the boys outside the gate saw me carrying the tray of food inside.

In anger that they were missing out on a special treat, they used some items on the corner missed by the trash men that included a not-quite empty jug of motor oil and a chalky stone used for making white paint -- it doesn't come off with water.  They wrote some obscene words directed at us with the chalk and sloshed a big splash of oil down the wall.  They also took stones to chip away at the cement on the wall corner -- the wall which we just had neatly plastered last spring.

When Nathan was locking up the grounds at the conclusion of post-kids club free play he saw their vandalism and came inside to tell me about it.  

Our first response was anger and frustration (we strongly suspected that one of these two boys had already started 'decorating' the wall on Wednesday and we had employed a group of boys with brooms, buckets, and bleach to clean it up, albeit unsuccessfully). 

I looked out the window and saw the boys in the street so I went outside to confront them, not sure what I was going to say.  I knew they would expect an angry response, so I tried my best to refrain. 

Initially, they didn't want to come to me (a sure sign of their guilt), but they could see I wasn't going to let them walk away. I told them that I thought we were friends.  I told them that we were really sad at what they did.  I reminded them that it was their choice to come to the program or to leave, but that they shouldn't be angry at us for the choice they made. I told them that what they did would cost money to fix and that would mean that we would not have money for other things.  That coming to our center to play every day is a privilege and that they would not be able to come and play for one week.  One of the two boys got tears in his eyes, the other one just left (no surprise).

I have no idea what impression it made on their hearts.  One of the two culprits shows up an hour early every day, he's so anxious to come (or bored, not sure which).  I'm sure the penalty will only serve to make them more angry each day as they face the consequences of their actions.  The last time we imposed this consequence, one of them took it on himself to throw rocks at the gate to make sure we knew of his anger.  I feared, though, that he would break out a headlight on our van or crack the windshield.

We have also have a dilemma about dealing with their vandalism -- is it good for them to see a reminder of their impulsiveness, or we should spend the money and paint over the offensive words, only to create a blank slate for future vandalism?  

Sigh.  Keep praying! ;-)