When Words Fail, Love Silently

So today begins a recap of my week of camp. Over the next few days, I'll try to give you a few glimpses of  my experiences during the last week; the team will be traveling and relaxing the next few days so I figured this would be a good time to catch you all up.
From the moment the first child set foot on the premises, camp confronted me with a hard lesson - loving without words. As many times as I told myself the language barrier would be hard to overcome, I couldn't fully prepare myself for the frustration I experienced when I was unable to tell the kids that they were beautiful or they did a good job. When a child fell or messed up on a craft project, I wasn't able to verbally affirm them or tell them that its ok. That was incredibly difficult for me. The only thing I could do was give them a hug, use the only Romanian word I knew at the time (Bine), give them a high five, or just smile at them. All of the words that came flooding into my mind were of no use and my touch had to become my words. It reminded me of 1 John 3:18 which says, "Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but in actions and truth." Although it bothered me that I couldn't convey my thoughts in words, I learned so many lessons about the value of actions during that time.
It is often said that the hardest lessons to learn end up being the most valuable and it remains true in this case. Love expressed in words is so easy to come by but love expressed in actions is far more valuable and much harder to find. Often times, love in words can be an easy out when actions are inconvenient or difficult and this week, I learned how much actions count. In the end, the kids and our team were communicating much better but the lessons I learned about loving actions was already ingrained. God really knows how to teach us exactly what we need to know...

Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by what I do.
~James 2:18