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| Jonathan |
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| Josue |
Our kids are back from the holiday and we have 3 new kids so
far, and word of 3 more coming next week. They are three very different kids,
who I am excited to learn about and get to know better. I don’t know any of
their stories, but as I have found recently, their stories will unfold over the
years. We haven’t had all of our old kids return yet, so we aren’t sure how
many kids we will have this year.
In introducing the new kids, I will start youngest to
oldest. Jonathan will be 2 in March, a sweet shaved head (here the parents
shave the heads of baby boys and girls to make their hair grow in thicker).
Jonathan is like any other kid his age that probably has never been away from
his mother for very long, we have spent most of our days holding him and
keeping him away from the door. It doesn’t matter who is leaving, he knows what
the gate means and starts wailing. One surprising difference in Jonathan is
that someone has already taught him to say thank you. A lot of kids we work with have never been taught to say thank
you or be grateful, so it surprised us when he said it.
Another little guy is two year old Josue. On a side note,
all three new kids have the name David, but since we already have two other
David’s we are using middle names. Josue might be a few months older than
Jonathan, but a lot smaller. The only reason I would guess he is older is by
what he says. He is going to be a very smart kid. Within 2 hours of meeting
him, he knew my name; and on the first day could tell you every teacher’s name.
A few days ago we gave him popsicle sticks to play with and he started counting
them. It surprised all of us, because even some of our 5 year olds can’t count
to 20. Yesterday, he was playing with the blocks and I thought I would see if
he could recognize the numbers (something very hard for all of our kids). Our
jaws dropped when he could recognize numbers 1-10. He is very verbal, but he is
two so he doesn’t know words yet. He just looks at you and starts talking. I
don’t know his story, but as you will see in his picture he has some kind of
allergy or bug bites from his house. The bites/ or irritation is all over his
body and they itch, so he has scabs from itching. He is adapting very well only
after a few days.
Our third new boy is Moises. He is three year olds and
reminds us a lot of a little boy named Manuel that left our program (and the
city) 6 months ago. He is sweet and shy and does not like to have attention
focused on him. There are a lot of boys around his age, so everyone wants to
play with him.
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| Moises |
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| Ariel, Oliver, Moises, and Calil |
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| Cristel and Heydi |
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| Me and Aben |
Since I haven’t updated my blog since before Christmas, it
is time to let you know that I will be getting married this summer. Some of you
have met him, Aben works for Youth for Christ here in Honduras. I could write a
lot about him and what he does, but I will try to keep it short and you will
get to know him in time. In
joining with his ministry, I will start teaching English to some of his youth. When
we had a team here, I realized how powerful it would be for them to share and
speak without translators. Aben has started a school for kids that have never
had the resources to go to school, he does evangelism outreach in the public
high schools, and has a feeding program at the city trash dump.
