One of these opportunities is for a group of our women to go spend time at a home for Armenian girls.
Leah Sadoian wrote this piece about her first experience at the house last Wednesday:
“Serving God Through Service to Others”
or, How Justin Bieber Managed to Save What Could Have Possibly Been an Awkward and Ridiculously Uncomfortable Next Seven Weeks.
I’m not a big fan of Justin Bieber. In fact, I don’t really think I am a fan at all. I once learned how to play his first big hit - “Baby” on guitar as a joke but never thought it would prove useful in any situation. However, this little skill potentially saved me as I, and a handful of girls headed to the Armenian Girl’s Home this past week for our first day of our service project.
For the next seven weeks, a group of us girls will be doing a service project with an Armenian Girl’s Home, which houses girls from kindergarden age all the way up to high school. These girls are not orphans, but rather come from unstable homes. In other words, we were being sent to simply love on these children, show them kindness they may not see otherwise, and spend time with them for an afternoon once a week.
The initial moments went something like this. There were 8 of us American girls on one side of the room, and then about 40 Armenian girls standing on the other side. None of us were saying anything. We introduced ourselves in Turkish, while the girls did the same in English. To be honest, it was a bit awkward and uncomfortable. Eventually we worked our way into the crowd, sat down with some girls and got to talking. The conversations seemed forced a bit, with limited language capabilities and the girls being shy. I met two girls who after a bit of coaxing from Sosi started to ask different questions to me which ranged from, “how old are you?” to “what is your ethnicity?” And then, the kicker question. “Do you like music?”
For starters, I LOVE music. I told them just that, and they replied the same, and began rattling off names of American singers and popular American songs, mostly hovering around tween Disney Channel stars. That’s when I first though of J. Biebs. “You like Justin Bieber?” I asked them. They eagerly nodded. I immediately jumped up and got Dana’s guitar out of her case, and sat down next to them. It was then I realized the entire room had gone silent. And I mean, like so-quiet-you-could-hear-a-pin-
I looked around at the others American girls as if to mentally beg them to sing along with me in case this all went terribly wrong. I started singing “Baby” by Justin Bieber (if you’ve never heard it - go watch the music video. Please.) and as the American girls joined in, I saw smilies starting to form on the faces of the Armenian girls. Some of them were actually singing along! As we got to the first chorus, every single girl in that room was singing along to the words of good ol’ J. Biebs, in loud and proud voices. I caught Anna’s eyes as the girls were belting out the song and she couldn’t even sing she was laughing so hard!
From that moment on, through dinner and our time with them afterward, they girls were latched on to us. They did our hair, asked us more questions, read us our fortunes after drinking cups of Turkish coffee, and then asked for pictures as we said we had to get going. It was almost impossible to leave these adorable girls, who in their own way had been just as much as a blessing to us as we were to them. We promised we would be back next week, and that the fun would continue. As we bid them good-bye and stepped out into the cold (and now snowy) Istanbul night, my head was spinning.
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