Just about a month ago, my "bestest friend" since I was two years old, flew to Kursk Russia for the third time to adopt a little seven year old girl from an orphanage, deep in the heart of Russia. This little girl has amazingly learned in just these few short weeks more English words than I could probably ever come to know in Russian. One phrase she has taken a particular liking to is, "Oh my gosh!" I babysat her for several hours just yesterday and I am confident she said, "Oh my gosh," once a minute for three hours straight. I think she is happy to have finally figured out the phrase that expresses her excitement.
Yet most the evening she spoke to me in Russian, frequently trying to get me to take her to my house to play piano again (she had come a couple of days before). I understood the word car and that she wanted to get in mine, and the hand motion for piano then pointing at me to play mine. I think I may have a new student on my hands, simply from her unrelenting insistence at wanting to learn.
But the highlight was teaching her to play the card game, "Go Fish!" When she heard that you say, "Go fish!" when you don't have the card, she just started giggling like the world is the funniest place one could ever imagine. She tipped right over she was laughing so hard. Earlier in the evening, I had given her some of these very thin hollow, tube-like sugar cookies I make, Krumkake, which she proceeded to use like a telescope. So I pretended I lost her, until I found her through the cookie telescope. Each time I did this, her belly laugh tipped her over sideways on her chair, so she'd have to right herself and take a breath. She was laughing so hard, that it got me going. I couldn't stop laughing. She could hardly breathe for laughing. We both had tears of laughter coming down our faces.
A good belly laugh is a great way to end the year and I had many with my family and niece and nephews over Christmas, and then again last night with her. This little girl whose story we don't really know, who has reason to think life isn't funny, who rattles stories in Russian, absorbs English like a sponge, and laughs one of the most contagious laughs I've ever heard, brings a boat load of love smack down in our little neighborhood.
After coming home from rounds of belly laughs, I needed to log on to look up some information on Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (related to researching a trip I want to go on). I read of the unfathomable levels of violence, bitterness, abuse, mass scale rapes and the orphaned children- no better than Sudan, arguably worse. Not to mention the stories my friend told me of the 160 kids in that one Russian orphanage who have no family, who will be kicked out when they hit 16 years old. There are so many, it's so hard wanting to help all those children. To give them all a game of Go Fish and the belly laughs of a child in safety, with a Mama, a Papa and a home. It's hard not to feel helpless in front of all that need.
But I am reminded, we have our sphere, our little sphere of influence, which just isn't so little. As I wrote just a few days ago, it is hard to be away from who we love, or just away from love. But unbounded love comes from unexpected hearts, and often emerging strongest from those who know loneliness and abandonment. In this case, from a little girl who has so much to give, and to love. I'm blessed to know this little girl, who came from Russia, with love. And lots of it. We owe the same in return, unboundedly.
