March 6, 2014

It’s been so long since I updated my blog.  The kids are still amazing, but I haven’t felt inspired to write because my life has become somewhat normal after six months.  I have to keep reminding myself to look for the extraordinary that exists in all of the simple events of a day.  Just like life in the United States, God is here and working in and through it all.  A couple weeks ago, all of the Honduran workers had a training while the kids were at school.  There was an emergency poopy pants call in the preschool classroom.  I volunteered to do the duty because I was in a planning period.  As I walked with the little tyke back to his room, I marveled at the flexibility and richness of my life here.  What’s a school day without a diaper change in the middle of a planning period?

The hot thing here lately is bracelet-making- strings, beads, rubber bands, etc.  The other volunteers and I have the materials so the kids are constantly making dates with us to make bracelets.  I have a waiting list of about 12 kids.  Though the constant questioning of whose turn it is wears on me sometimes, it’s fun and good one-on-one time.  Speech therapy is going well too.  My most needful “client” is a little girl who almost nobody can understand.  We’re working on crucial words like baño (bathroom).  She mastered that one.  When she sees me from across the hogar, she likes to yell out, “Miss Emma!  BAÑO!”

Like I said, life has become kind of normal, and sometimes I forget the pasts of our kids until something happens or something is said that reminds me of the reality of their situations.  During one of my bracelet dates with a little guy, he casually told me that he didn’t like beer.  His dad had poured beer down his little throat while he was sleeping, but he thought it was nasty and bitter.  How can people do these things?  

This past Sunday was Visitor’s Day at Amigos.  Family, friends, past teachers, and past caregivers arrived to spend the day with the kids.  It was beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.  I watched families greet each other with genuine love, hugs, and tears.  I watched other kids mope all around all day if their families were not able to come due to distance, death, abuse, or other factors.  The day was organized so that all of the kids would have “special visitors,” but some of the older kids definitely understood the difference between visitors and family.  When the day ended, the families left.  They left.  They left their kids again.  It could be due to economic reasons or difficult family situations.  Who am I to judge?  There are valid reasons to give up a child, but it doesn’t change the pain, the hurt, the abandonment.  I overheard conversations later amongst the younger boys along the lines of, “My dad is going to come back for me, and I’m never coming back here.”  The truth is no matter how good life is here, it can never replace a loving family.

Later at Mass the same day, the reading was from Isaiah (how fitting), and since then these words have been reverberating through my head…

My favorite part of Visitor’s Day was Delilah.*  Delilah is my student and a very resilient 11-year-old girl who is showing a lot of promise with English.  Though she has two siblings here, Delilah’s family from outside wasn’t able to come on Visitor’s Day.  The kids without visitors were given a small amount of cash to buy food items.  Delilah bought herself a 3-liter soda, cups, several packets of peanuts, and chewing gum.  She called her sister, another volunteer, and me over from across the field and set up a little picnic in the back of one of the pick-up trucks.  She said that she wanted to share her food with her “family.”  We sat together and indulged in the little snacks until they were gone.  It was such a privilege for me to share this time with her and to witness her generosity.

“Can a woman forget her nursing child

And have no compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.

“Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;

Your walls are continually before Me.

Isaiah 49:15-16

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

*Name changed for privacy