The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
Vignette # 7 from the Children
#7 Amanda, 5 years old, kept complaining to the adult monitor that some of the little boys kept calling her a SPIDER (araña)! They kept insisting that they were not! (a lot of these little ones seem to have lisps and slight speech impediments) Several of the other kids chimed right in and they all had a little philosophical discussion about it.
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
Children talking with God…
Every afternoon a call of “A la mesa!” rings out and echoes around at five o clock. All forty-some children, and about five adults gather around plain long wooden tables, set with faded plastic “Sleeping Beauty” placemats and a plastic cup of hot sweet tea and one “pancito” (a small Bolivian bread roll). Nobody starts in on their food and drink. An adult designates two kids to lead in prayer one after the other. The children’s prayers usually run along the lines of ” Thank you for Auntie ______, Auntie________ and Auntie ________, and please help nobody to have an accident, and thank you for the Program and for the food and, God, please help and give food and clothing to all the poor people out there in the city. Amen.” These children don’t think of themselves as poor! I love to hear them pray. Often, their prayers contain special little pleas for safety and protection for themselves and for each other, and VERY often they pray for themselves and their friends (all there – they act like brothers and sisters with each other) to not be hungry. They DO experience hunger, and rather frequently.
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
Vignette # 7 from the Children
#7 Amanda, 5 years old, kept complaining to the adult monitor that some of the little boys kept calling her a SPIDER (araña)! They kept insisting that they were not! (a lot of these little ones seem to have lisps and slight speech impediments) Several of the other kids chimed right in and they all had a little philosophical discussion about it.
A Unique Adventure God Gave Me, Part Three.
Alright, well, to take up where I left off before, the rickety narrow steps going up to the rooftop/second “storey” of the big, open, multi-hovel brothel where our four children lived with their mother had VERY uneven steps, plus only had a railing on one side. As I carried the heavy end of one wooden bunkbed up those stairs, 12-year-old M. carrying the other end, and going first, I had to try to lift the weight up high so that my end of the bed would fit between and over the railing, and the dangling poorly strung electrical wires and chicken-wire netting above the adobe bricks used to delineate the edge of that property, from the next one, and also, for sure, to deter thieves who might try to climb over the wall to steal people’s natural gas cooking stove tanks. All of a sudden I heard catcalls, whistles and “Que macha!” (“Wow, what a jock”).
The catcalls and remarks were being addressed to me, because I was carrying one end of a heavy wooden bunkbed all by myself up some stairs. I ignored the remark and prayed in my heart, “Jesus, protect us all three, and help us to get these bunkbeds delivered to these children, and help us to shine your LIGHT in this dark and awful place!” I felt a little more calm after that, even though my heart was pounding and sweat was breaking out all over but that was because of the weight of that bunkbed and the fact that it was a very warm summer afternoon.
A Unique Adventure God Gave Me, Part Two.
We labored the various heavy wooden bunk bed parts off the roof rack of the taxi, the two new twin mattresses, the wooden drawers and ladder. Children- LOTS of children, most of whom we DIDN’T know (our ministry is constantly getting requests from moms and grandmas to take more kids – sadly we don’t have human and material resources to take more than we already have – around fifty. Our number fluctuates, as often our children as young as six are removed by their parent in order to make that child work full-time and, as many of our kids get into their adolescent years they don’t stay, with us, either. We are keenly cognizant of the value of that window of opportunity and presence, that is given us as a gift, with each child. Sometimes that window is short.) were milling about excitedly calling and trying to help. Various women, curious as to what was going on, approached. One older woman, hair dyed platinum, stood by the doorway, watching like a hawk and calling the other women and kids, a bit bossily, by their first names and in a familiar manner.
That’s why I thought she might be G., M. and R.’s grandmother – when we first arrived and were doing greetings, I’d shaken her hand and a few seconds later, because of the way she was interacting with persons there, I asked her if she was the children’s grandmother. VERY taken aback, she looked at me and said, “NO! Oh NO! I’m the LANDLADY!”
“Oh, so very nice to meet you!”, I responded. My friend, carrying a headboard in front of me, was laughing quietly, her shoulders shaking as I followed along behind her carrying the other heavy wooden headboard. “Psst, NinadesusOjos,” she whispered to me, she’s the “madam” of this establishment!”
OOOHHH.
(shows how much I know…….not…) How embarrassing. At least she didn’t get too mad when I called her the gramma.)
Wednesday Post
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Ghandi
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, … and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed then your light will rise in the darkness.” Isaiah 58:9-10
Wednesday Post
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Ghandi
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, … and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed then your light will rise in the darkness.” Isaiah 58:9-10
Vignette # 7 from the Children
#7 Amanda, 5 years old, kept complaining to the adult monitor that some of the little boys kept calling her a SPIDER (araña)! They kept insisting that they were not! (a lot of these little ones seem to have lisps and slight speech impediments) Several of the other kids chimed right in and they all had a little philosophical discussion about it.
The Children, Vignette #’s 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Vignette #2:
Teaching the 3, 4 and 5 year olds today we had to reprimand several of the little boys for talking and gesturing with each other about stabbing people with knives and about slitting people’s throats with same.
Vignette #3: Little E., four years old and speaking with a lisp, when the topic of class discussion got on “Obeying our Moms when they Ask us to Wash up, or to Go to Bed”, talking eagerly and excitedly to everybody in the class about how he has 3 Moms!
Vignette #4: Sharing Who Jesus is with the children, verbally, in small groups of four or five, through use of the “Evangel-cube” and how eager all the children are to hear and “do” the cube over and over again, never tiring of it, and breaking in to help tell the story, and how they love to handle the cube themselves, in turn, and help tell bits and pieces of the story.
Vignette #5: How the children were all big-eyed when I introduced the new Crayola crayons all the way from the Estados Unidos, and how worried they were about the possibility of accidentally breaking the new crayons. One little guy said, “Oh no! The point of my crayon is breaking!” when it was only blunted the tiniest fraction through him starting to use it on his color paper…
This is one of the pictures on the walls at our outreach center, with our children… I like it, because I see in the lives of our 45 kids and other persons, that it is really true.
Came across this scene near Christmastime a year or two ago…
and when I spotted the photo on my external portable hard drive just now, it reminded me of one of our situations with the children’s outreach. In the program are two siblings, G. and F., aged 9 and 6, with a baby brother, 17 months old, named A. Our outreach is only able to take kids ages 3 through 18, and not even all those within that age category who want to come!
Well, an exception was made, and for a few weeks, we had the 17 month old, only on Mondays, as well, and had even gone out and bought a crib for him and for some of our other, younger children who fall on the floor or tables in the early afternoons, overcome by sleepiness, because their moms don’t make them go to bed at night.
Baby A. had come to us, for Mondays, because a neighbor had called our outreach in the middle of a Monday morning, saying there was a 17 month old baby boy crawling around in the middle of the busy public street and could our outreach please do something to help! My friend rushed right over there, a distance of only 3 blocks or so, and recognized the baby and brought him to the outreach.
1 Thess. 2
1 Thess. 2 We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.
This is one of the pictures on the walls at our outreach center, with our children… I like it, because I see in the lives of our 45 kids and other persons, that it is really true.
Rejoicing because of a little (but big to us!) answer to prayer!
For about a week and a half now, three of our young children have not been allowed by their mother to attend OUTREACH.
This morning, in the middle of preparing lessons and activities for tomorrow and next week, for the children, here in my apartment, I called my colleague, G. in order to work on some plans and arrangements together. At the end of our phone call she told me that Sunday afternoon, after P. and I had LEFT the outreach, these three siblings SHOWED UP at the outreach!
Sunday afternoon we were in the middle of a special meal and activity and amusements (two clowns had been hired) for the kids, since it was International Children’s Day.
They arrived by themselves, having walked from the one room the family lives in, about three blocks from our program/outreach. The youngest of the three is 17 months old, so he was being carried, in turn, by his two sisters, who are 9 and 6 years old.
Also, this morning at Outreach, the 9 year-old, is THERE! Praise the Lord! We are continuing to pray for this little family, for the mom to come to know the Lord, and for the 3 kids (and now a 4th sibling on the way!) to be safe and to be fed, consistently, and to be allowed to continue to come to our outreach.
We are going to be starting a small program of working with all the moms; it starts on April 24th, and all the moms will be able to choose between three small classes. Which one do they want to take? Cooking, sewing, or handicrafts? In the planning meeting the other day, we had 23 moms show up! That’s a lot of interest! YAY!
Children talking with God…
Every afternoon a call of “A la mesa!” rings out and echoes around at five o clock. All forty-some children, and about five adults gather around plain long wooden tables, set with faded plastic “Sleeping Beauty” placemats and a plastic cup of hot sweet tea and one “pancito” (a small Bolivian bread roll). Nobody starts in on their food and drink. An adult designates two kids to lead in prayer one after the other. The children’s prayers usually run along the lines of ” Thank you for Auntie ______, Auntie________ and Auntie ________, and please help nobody to have an accident, and thank you for the Program and for the food and, God, please help and give food and clothing to all the poor people out there in the city. Amen.” These children don’t think of themselves as poor! I love to hear them pray. Often, their prayers contain special little pleas for safety and protection for themselves and for each other, and VERY often they pray for themselves and their friends (all there – they act like brothers and sisters with each other) to not be hungry. They DO experience hunger, and rather frequently.
Saying grace before supper and, “Oh, and God, please help the poor.”
Every afternoon, with the children at the program, a call of “A la mesa!” rings out and echoes around at five o clock. All forty-some children, and about five adults gather around plain long wooden tables, set with faded plastic “Sleeping Beauty” placemats and a plastic cup of hot sweet tea and one “pancito” (a small Bolivian bread roll).
Nobody starts in on their food and drink. An adult designates two kids to say grace, one after the other. The children’s prayers usually run along the lines of ” Thank you for Auntie ______, Auntie________ and Auntie ________, and please help nobody to have an accident, and thank you for the Program and for the food and, God, please help and give food and clothing to all the poor people in the world. Amen.”
These children have been taught here at the Program to not think of themselves as poor, and to pray daily for the needs of the poor to be met.
Encouraged by these humble snippets from my quiet time this morning.
Hebrews 11:20 “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. “Life is complicated, isn’t it? I am so glad God didn’t limit Holy Writ to high and lofty subjects. From the birth of family life, He revealed how entangled and awry human natures can grow in relationship to one another. Our personalities, replete with their insecurities and strengths, collide with another and enmesh at times into a tangled mess. We are a complex lot wired with DNA that often seems woven from spun gold and splintered twine. Few of us are thoroughly good….or thoroughly bad. Most of the time, our inner self is at war; just as the Apostle Paul grieved. (see Rom 7:23). I have yet to find the story of a fully healthy and functional family in the Word of God. So that we wouldn’t lose heart or hope, He graciously made sure we’d know that in things pertaining to the sons of the earth, abnormal is more normal than normal. That doesn’t mean we should surrender to dysfunction. It means we don’t have to hang our heads as we surrender and let Him sort out our tangled mess.” – Beth Moore, in her Bible Study Material entitled “Believing God.”
Thanksgiving Day Update on the Children’s Outreach Side of Things
Today I was thankful to have received an email from my friend, the founder and director of the Children’s Outreach. I’m in northern Guatemala at the moment – she’s in Germany at the moment! The children are, of course, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with good trustworthy day care during the hours that the program runs. I get to Cochabamba this coming Monday; my friend gets to Cochabamba a little later in December.
She writes that the children are doing well, she’s doing well but missing the children tremendously and looking forward to returning to Cochabamba to be with them daily again. I am too.
God is providing the needs of the Outreach, word about it is now getting out, a tiny bit more; people are PRAYING for it and for EACH OF THE CHILDREN, as well. Recently, two of the children and one of the moms came to personal faith in Jesus Christ and began their faith walk with HIM! A few months ago, one of the WORKERS with this outreach, a young public university graduate in Psychology, did too and now she is growing spiritually in Jesus and being discipled by the words and truths of the Bible in community with the director, myself, others among the children and workers, and she’s attending local church now in Cochabamba.
Happy Thanksgiving Day, everybody! I’m looking forward to getting home to Cochabamba on Monday and seeing the children…
Books, Glorious Books!
“Some people have a weakness for shoes. I can go barefoot if necessary. I have a weakness for books! ” – Oprah Winfrey
GlobeRoamer 