Thursday: The Orphanage

Kathryn is taking Spanish in high school.  Her Spanish teacher and her Spanish club wanted to do something special for kids in El Salvador.   So they put together some gift bags on the hope they would bring some joy to some children in El Salvador.  The typical gift bag contains a stuffed toy, some candy, a book, some crayons/pens, tooth paste and a tooth brush.  Initially she thought they could be given out to children at the Cristo Rey church and maybe to children in the neighborhood around our worksite.  But the suitcase carrying the 63 gift bags was delayed and didn't actually get to our hotel until Tuesday. So we missed the opportunity to distribute them at Cristo Rey church and Habitat does not allow gifts to be given because of the problems and detention it causes the communities when other houses don't have Habitat groups help, and therfore do not get gifts.   So she talked to the Habitat people about some other options and the Habitat people arranged to have us bring them to a local orphanage on Thursday afternoon.  I think we were all a little anxious about what the orphange would be like and how we would feel.  It was a very nice, large and clean building and all the staff were very welcoming.   There were, get this, exactly 63 girls at this orphanage (that was weird, since that was the number of bags we had).  The girls seemed to love the extra attention, even though the books were in english and many were below their reading level.  Some of the youngest just wanted to be held.  We sang a song to them in Spanish that were were learning this weeka and they sang us one of their songs too.  At our evening devotions I think everyone agreed the orphange was the highlight of the week.

My comment that night at devotions was that to me 1/2 of parenting is just being there for your kids.   Obviously not every kid or every parent has that opportunity to be there, as can be seen in the various stories of how the children arrived at the orphange.  But I thank God I have had that I opportunity and I hope I have that opportunity the rest of my life .

Picture of a girl who broke her leg playing basketball waiting to get a gift bag

Kathryn and Pam playing with two of the children

Pam called me over and said one of the girls was pointing at me so I came over and just picked her up.  She just loved touching my face.

Mary holding one of the girls, the girls just liked having the attention

Picture of the girls waiting patiently in line for the gift bags

Picture of Kathryn talking to some of the girls 

Picture of one of the open spaces in the orphanage

Another picture of a small gardeninsdie the orphange.

Picture of Kathy and Delilah of Habitat, and Gail, Kathryn and Pam discussing how to distribute the gift bags.