jose y josecito: so each week i’d like to try and tell a little about some of the different kids here. last week i talked a little about paola, who makes my life somewhat difficult at times, but this week i'd like to talk about two boys that bring me so much joy! like i said, i work in a house called san pascual, but i eat my meals in a house called santa rosa, with twelve 11-13 year old boys… needless to say, we have a lot of fun! not that i have favorites, because they are all funny and unique in their own ways, but two boys that i've really connected with are these twins named jose and josecito. now i gotta say right away that if you come across twins with those names, you gotta know it’s gonna be good! they are almost completely identical except for a scar jose has on his hand, but i can’t usually see it, so it really doesn’t help me… plus they are always together so it doesn’t really matter, because i just yell both names and they respond. anyway, this is probably going to be a lame story because i can’t really think of words that describe them… they are just the sweetest, craziest, strangest little boys ever. they are always laughing and just seem like they are having so much fun. they are the smallest ones in casa santa rosa, but they definitely have two of the biggest personalities. most of the boys here play sports in their spare time, but jose and josecito don’t seem to a be the most athletic kids here, so they usually try to play but lose interest half way through. one day we were playing soccer and all the sudden i realized that we had lost some players and i looked around and jose was off to one side playing with a stick and josecito had himself rolling around in a big cardboard box. my favorite part about them is they are always inventing things. they come up to me practically every day with a new creation. sometimes it’s a battery they’ve found and connected to some random wires and it makes a little wheel spin, or a water bottle top they’ve stuck a stick through and they spin it like a top, or even a kite they’ve made out of string, sticks and some type of fabric or material plastic bag or something they’ve found. and they love making silly faces, which is usually how we end up communicating when i don’t understand them… we just make funny faces at each other and forget about the fact that i don’t get what they are saying or how to say what i want to say to them. really it’s hard to describe them but i think they are really going to help me get through this year. anytime i've had a challenging day or i'm homesick, they always manage to put a huge smile on my face! '
family day: this sunday was “family day” where the orphanage is open for visitors to come see the kids. while the orphanage is technically open to “orphaned and abandoned children”, there are also a good number of kids here who do have at least one parent, but that parent is unable to take care of them. so, every three months there is a visitor day for the kids who may have parents or extended family that might be able to come visit. i really had no idea what to expect. it seemed like it could be a very emotional and hard day, not only for the kids who didn’t have family, but i would imagine for the kids who do have family as well. if they do have family and they didn’t come that would be probably really hard… but even if their family did come, it would probably be really hard to accept why they have family out there and aren’t able to live with them. i don’t know, but a lot of the volunteers and i were really kind of nervous for how the day would go, but we planned a lot of activities to keep the kids busy. it actually ended up going a lot better than i thought and the kids handled it a lot better than i thought. a lot of the older kids were kinda quiet, i suppose because they understand a little better what is actually going on, but most of the kids were ok. a good majority of the kids didn’t have anyone come. i would say out of my 14 kids, 3 had someone come…. and not necessarily a parent, many had grandmothers or aunts come. it was very cute to see the kids who did have family come, though. they were so happy and excited and so proud to introduce their families. my god-child, salomon (who also has one older brother and two older sisters at the orphanage), had practically his whole family come… his mother, father and grandmother. i got to meet them and his father was really, really sweet. i guess it’s easy to judge all the parents of these kids here and think “how could you abandon your children or not want to take care of them?”, but it was just all a good reminder that we never really know what’s going in other people’s lives and it’s really not our job to judge them. i think it was mother teresa that said when we judge people, we have no time left to love them... and really i guess that is our job here... just to love the kids... we don't know why they're here or why they can't be taken care of by their families, but for some reason we are all here together.
si dios quiere: so they have this phrase here, “si dios quiere” (“if god wants”) and they say it after you say something like “see you later” or “see you tomorrow”. so they first time i heard it i thought it was kind of an interesting thing to say and kind of a little depressing to think that you might not see that person tomorrow, but the more i started to think about it i realized that it’s just a really great moto for how we should all live our lives. i remember when i was discerning whether or not i should come here it was really hard. i knew i felt some sort of call to do it, but it was still hard to think about leaving my whole family and all my friends and my job that i loved. but I remembered coming across this quote from mother teresa: “let Jesus use you without consulting you.. take whatever he gives and give whatever he takes with a big smile… if he wants something done, he gives us the means. if he does not provide us the means, then he does not want that work done.” so, i just applied for the job here and told myself if i got the job then i was supposed to do it and if not, then i wasn’t. there’s a lot to be said for the effort and work we put into things and i think God gives us the free will and ability to work hard so things will happen, but sometimes i think it’s good to be reminded that we aren’t in control of everything and sometimes we just have to let go and this “si dios quiere” attitude in the dr has taught me that this week. there is actually a lot of peace in living this way.
“human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it." -cs lewis
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