Daily, after classes at the local public school I feel like the pied piper, wondering our dirt road with rarely fewer than a dozen children. Some on bikes, some barefoot – some chattering continually and others quizzically quiet. Some times we spot a Toucan, a snake or even a panther on the half mile walk to our gate. At times we practice Spanish for Jude and I or English for them, and lately I have been asking them a lot of personal questions.
You see, we just received word that the paper work is moving along, Jason and Sarah have their first host mom picked out, within the month we should finish the next house, and orphans could be arriving before the November rains. Which is SO exciting, considering that is the drive behind this ministry, but as a I look around my kitchen every afternoon at children reading, playing, dressed in spiderman costumes or asking for help with their lego project or moderation of their UNO game, I am saddened by the fact that this time of 'free-for-all' must come to an end. We must put hours and order in place and I must say, “go home” to the neighborhood children who have cooped our home.
From the hints that they had left me, I know that I am not sending them to a happy place – a place of luxury like our home – but I wanted to see for ourselves. So last Wednesday, with Edwin as our guide and a bag of oranges for his 60 lb grandmother who is dying of stomach cancer, Jude and Lucy and I head to “the end of the road” - “arriba” in the mountains, where most of our little guests live. In the 3 hour journey we were received into numerous homes, my kids were given bananas and hugs, and we all had plenty of laughs. I met some mothers, but mostly grandmothers and aunts of the students, who were dutifully washing clothes or drying beans along the road. The only evidence of men were the bags of beans they had lugged from their fields or the scattered beer bottles and hammocks swinging quietly in the corner. And I came home with a heavy heart, to my home of luxury – my home with a smiling husband and well fed children.
And I I wondered, how do we live here? With them? But so unlike them? I just want to throw a whole bunch of money at them and make all the pain go away. But it won't. Money brings no answers here. We are trying to provide some work and to teach some skills. Give some education. Start a Bible study. Small things... anything. But we don't know what we are doing- we just long for God to work in spite of us - for Him to redeem our errors and shower them with healing love. We want to touch the children of the community. We are about to ask a hard thing of them. That they welcome 40 some orphans into their close knit community of survival.
The children who will live within these walls will be the kings of Urraco... the 'spoiled' orphans. If not for the refrigerator and the washing machine, for the books and the games, beds, sheets, for the window screens and pantry full of food, and simply because they will walk into a home of hope, cared for by adults whose lives and faith permeate their little bodies and souls with the knowledge that who they are REALLY MATTERS. And that is a luxury that my children will never live without, and that is what will make us more different than our neighbors than any possession.
After a soccer game in the rain with some of our regulars we gathered for this photo. (Left to right)
The boy in the green is Ever. I think this is his only shirt. He has a little sister Lucy's age and is most amused by the luxury of new white cloth diapers, as his sister is pinned in any old rag. Because seriously, isn't a diaper kind of the bottom of the barrel of jobs for a piece of cloth. After it has lived a long and useful life – then let it catch the poop.
The boy in Orange is Alan. He is most confused by the concept of, “Ok, Jude needs to come in now and take a bath and eat dinner. Namely, because he has never taken a bath in his life and I believe as his grandma gets more ill dinner is becoming more infrequent as well. I buy my beans from him - for the going rate of 75 cents for 3 lbs. What a cash crop.
The girl in white is Salie. Bright and quite, she can sit for hours and read. They came from the city a few years ago and she likes it better here. Her mother makes cheese and I bought some cuttings of her Hibiscus plants last week.
The boy in blue is Edwin, Alan's little brother, and sometimes I find him watching the mashing machine spin (It has a clear top.) The first time he ate lunch with us I noticed that he probably had never sat at a table with a plate of fork before in his life. I am paying him to make sling shots to bring home to our friends.
Beverly is in my lap. She is Jude's age and is in love with my refrigerator. She pets it and calls it beautiful. Her mother wants to buy one. Which, since she is Sadie's little sister... I am wondering about her mom's cheese now.
The white kid is Jude. The best loved 4 year old in the world... with a million friends who let him play soccer... even if it is just because he is the only kid with a soccer ball. And as he informs me, the only one of his friends who has to brush his teeth.
The girl behind me in yellow is Iris. She is a 16 year old sixth grader who I have started to train to clean my house. She has never left Urraco and yesterday I taught her how to flush a toilet for the first time in his life. “Now how did you make the water go away?”
Darwin is in the white wife beater. Thirteen and the older brother of Allan and Edwin. Doesn't come to school often because he is working with his grandpa. Abandoned by his parents, sleeps outside of his grandparents home in a hammock made of a big rice sack. He gets thinner every day, not enough food to grow as fast as he is, but somehow he manged to dye his hair black last week. He has dreams of selling cars some day... and weekly brings me plants for the garden – yesterday it was wild ginger.
Below him is Franklin. He is a bit slow and I can't understand his spanish, spoken through a perpetual smile. He plays for hours with Lucy's little music box the her grandparents gave her for her birthday. He will probably steal it soon... and we will all cry for different reasons.
Shirtless Kendi is a little lier. Who I love with all of my heart. He is AMAZING with my kids. Holding Lucy while teaching Jude Spanish. The apple of Jude's eye. He is 'wealthier' than most of the kids as he is raised by his aunt while his mother works in Spain. He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. He is bright. He is charming. He needs Jesus more than the million things he asks for each week. And I need him to teach me everything about being Honduran.
Our friend David has agreed to do a weekly Bible Study with Jarod to teach him all we need to know about campesino theology.
Please pray for us as we learn... that we may only be teaching the things of Christ along the way. Also, please pray that Jason and Sarah would have wisdom in how and when to open and run the library/ community center.
