Meet Paige

July 12, 2017

Hi! My name is Paige Miller and I will be a senior at Lipscomb University this coming fall. I absolutely fell in love with children when my soccer team traveled to El Salvador for mission work my freshman year of college. I grew to love and admire the Hispanic culture and was fortunate to go back to El Salvador the following year. Through these trips the Lord began revealing a passion I had for children from all different backgrounds and cultures. The passion continued to built as I had opportunities through the Lipscomb women’s soccer team to connect with different community outreach programs throughout Nashville. We worked with refugee neighborhoods as well as built relationships at a local elementary school within a lower socio economic area. Even locally the Lord has slowing been shaping my heart for these children. That is where PTM came in.

Getting the opportunity to be an intern at PTM was very intriguing and I was excited to continue to see how the Lord wanted to stir my passions. It turned out I was placed with St. Luke’s Community House where the students are primarily Hispanic and Vietnamese. The exact culture the Lord first used to show me my love for children. Although my love for children has grown beyond any one culture it was a cool little glimpse of the Lords clarity and direction for my life when he chose for me to work along side children from this particular culture once again.

These kids at St. Luke’s Community house are unreal. Over the past month in my internship I have been able to see so many of their talents and gifts, play all kinds of games, get asked all sorts of questions and start to learn all about each of their stories and backgrounds. Each child’s story is so very different but iv began to realize that deep down each child craves the same thing. You realize this very quickly when you teach them a new basketball or soccer skill and it seems like every single kid yells at once “Miss Paige…Miss Paige… look at me… look at me!!” Each child just wants to know that they are seen, heard and loved. I guess we don’t change that much as we get older because we still crave that. Still searching to be heard, seen and loved. We all have that same desire to be valued and as I leave PTM I hope that somehow I left each child I encountered with the belief that they are heard, they are loved and they are seen. Giving them only a small glimpse of the endless and abounding love of our Father; knowing that through him we are fully known and fully loved.

One of my favorite days at PTM was when the Nashville Soccer team came to hangout with the kids. Everyone loved it. The kids were so happy all of us leaders wanted to cry tears of joy. The soccer team was so engaged with the kids. Some even spoke Spanish with the kids. The day could not have been any better. Towards the end of the day the guys from the team were going to play a short little game for the kids to watch. Unfortunately they only had 5 players and they needed just one more player to make it 3 vs 3. So knowing I played soccer they asked me to join. It was great, the kids starting chanting my name and I was on my high horse as everyone sat around to watch us play. The guys start passing around me and I start realizing maybe I’m a little out of my league here. Then one of the guys thought it would be a good idea to meg me in front of everyone, which resulted in a goal for the other team… oops. Moments later I got megged again. (If you know anything about soccer getting megged is not something you want to happen to you, especially twice in front of a bunch of kids your trying to impress). But it was great, I shook off the embarrassment and got to soak up the joy on each of the kids faces. It was a priceless day.