"Pick up your cross and follow me"

     So one of the things the little kids (and some of the not so little kids) really liked was having the male team members put them up on our shoulders. This turned into quite the experience throughout the week with a lot of highs and lows to it.

We obviously enjoyed serving the kids. Putting them up on our shoulders was a fun way to interact with them and let them have some fun. All the kids were asking us to do it. We were often happy to comply because it brought so much joy to the kids.

     As the week went on they learned the English way to ask us was to say, “sit down please.” I later learned that they didn’t even know that “please” was just the proper manners, but thought it was part of the request. Anyway all through the week the guys couldn’t go more than a few minutes outside without a small Russian hand tapping us and hearing, “sit down please.”

     This soon became more than a fun activity for the kids. While the kids were enjoying rides, the team gained new crosses to bear. First, after a day or two of carrying kids around on our shoulders, we were all a little sore. It was really hard to say no to the kids, and they were really persistent, but our shoulders got tired. Secondly, as the boys realized the shoulder rides were going to come to an end as soon as camp was over, they began to fight over our shoulders. Usually this was no big deal, but occasionally they boys would start pushing and shoving over a simple shoulder ride. Boys will be boys, right?

     These challenges actually gave us a new perspective on things. The fact that the boys were so persistent in their asking and were fighting over us shows how much of an influence we could have on them. It also shows, unfortunately, how few of them have a strong male presence in their lives. Sister Stella pointed out that where we were was a poorer neighborhood with a lot of one bedroom apartments (the female team members can share on that later) and very broken or difficult family situations. We understood that the kids really craved our attention not only because we were Americans, but because we were going to give them lots of attention.

     As for the shoulder pain, both Brian and I mentioned the same thing one night at our debriefing: it was the cross that we had been asked to take up. Jesus had to carry His literal cross on His shoulders for quite a ways with no energy, food, or sleep. The pain in his shoulders must have been excruciating.  Not to say that the children themselves were burdens to us, but we certainly felt the weight in our shoulders. Though not as heavy as Jesus’s cross, the kids on our shoulders brought us a little bit closer to Christ’s Passion as we felt the strain on our muscles. This mirroring of the Passion gave the men of the team strength to carry one more kid. Though thinking of our Lord carrying His cross did not relieve the pain in our backs and shoulders, it did give us the mental drive to say, “Yea, I’ll do it for the kids.”

     Carrying the kids was a defining point of everyday for the male team members. We now all have stronger muscles, yet we have also grown spiritually from the experience. And at the end of the day, seeing the joy on the kids’ faces as we agreed to pick them up onto our shoulders was worth every second of struggling we may have had.