new members of the faith: we had the great blessing of having a priest come a few weeks ago, who will be here for the next 5 months! his name is padre eduardo and he is from canada. he has been coming to the home here since it began and he stays for about 5 or 6 months every winter. it's great to finally have a priest around because we can finally have mass in the school every week and do other sacraments that we weren’t able to do before… plus he’s just a really, really precious old man… all the kids love him and some of the little ones think he’s father wasson, which is cute and we don’t have the heart to tell them that he died 2 years ago. so, since father is here, we got to have baptisms in the special needs house this week, which was cool. all four of the kids that haven’t been baptized (kaki, genesis, lisbeth, and rosali) were baptized by father eduardo and i got to be the god-mother of three of them. at first i was a little upset when i heard that we’d be doing them in the house with just a few tías and staff members present… i thought it should be done in the school, with the whole community present, but i soon learned that it was better we did it in the house! the whole thing was great, but the kids were definitely themselves… kaki screamed (his happy scream) and clapped his hands through the whole thing. rosali laughed so loud, as she always does, especially as the water was being poured over her head. genesis sat in her chair in her own little world, making the humming noise she always makes. it was a crazy experience, but very fun at the same time… and now i have 3 god-children!
finding hope in a tin shack: i'm not gonna lie… i think a lot of times my blog is a little misleading. i write a lot about the fun experiences we have (and there are a lot of fun experiences) and all the things i'm learning (and i am learning a lot about myself and life in general), but a lot of times i find myself wondering what i'm doing here! i know that just sharing joy and love with these kids on a daily basis is something, but a lot of times i can’t help but think about the long term… what is the future for these kids? yes, a lot of them have been pulled off the streets, or out of abusive families and that’s good… but what’s going to happen when they go back out there? you look around san pedro, or around this country, and it’s easy to feel hopeless. you drive around at 10 am and see the men sitting in their plastic chairs with a presidente (the local beer), listening to bachata music… and you know these are their only plans for the day. you see the 25 year old women who already have 5 kids with 4 different fathers, none of which are anywhere to be found and it's hard to no feel somewhat hopeless. i mean sure it’s great that we bring these kids here, give them clothes and food, send them to school, and give them a roof over their heads, but is it enough to help them rise above the world out there?i feel this a lot and question what exactly i can do here in only a year… and worry about what is going to happen to these kids when they leave. this sunday, however, i got an opportunity find some hope. i was walking over to salomon’s house to have lunch and he asked me if i wanted to go visit his mother with him and his family. so i said yes. i had no idea where we were going or why on this random sunday we are going to visit his mother, but i went a long for the ride. we went with his two older sisters, and one older brother. we didn’t drive too far, just about 20 minutes to a nearby town called sante fe. we drove through the dusty, bumpy road of this small town and watched the people going about their daily lives… people sitting outside their houses, buying a soda at the corner store, kids running down the streets… and i couldn’t help but wonder if the four kids i was riding with were thinking the same thing i was… why do they live in an orphanage, when their mother is just 20 minutes down the road?
even though i'm solomon’s god-mother and i've been here for 6 months, i really don’t know the story of him and his family... i don’t know if it’s my place to ask. i know they’ve lived at the orphanage for 3 ½ years. i know they have a mother, a father and a grandfather that love them enough to come visit them every 3 months on visitors day. i know their mom’s house is a tin shack about the size of my bedroom at home… with curtains separating the kitchen, bedroom and living room. i know their mom removed a bottle of alcohol from the table as we walked in at 11:00 am, and then i watched her pull down her tank top and show us the scars from the latest operation on her chest. i know the kids were quieter sitting in that living room that i've ever seen them. but i don’t know what they’ve been through. and as i sat there in the awkward silence of the living room, i couldn’t help but think about the stories of all our kids and the strength that they have. yeah it’s frustrating some days when there is a constant struggle with these kids… to get them to listen, to show respect, to want to learn, to have some discipline. but as i sat there i thought about how what some of these kids have been through is enough to put most of us in counseling for years... but these kids just have to move on. they get up everyday and carry on with their lives. and i thought that maybe it’s true... maybe we are pulling them out of this cycle of poverty and giving them a chance. i looked at deborah, the oldest, who is a great student and a great kid, who wants to go to university and become an oncologist, and i wondered if she would have those same hopes and dreams if she had spent the last 4 years living in this house with her mother. a lot of these kids might end up leaving here and falling right back into what they came from, but maybe some of them won’t. maybe what we give them is a chance that they might not have had otherwise… and maybe that’s enough.
"it is Christ in you, the hope for glory." - colossians 1:27
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