Today was my last day with all my kids in Pascuales.
At the end of the day we took some pictures, they kissed me on the cheek and then hugged me and ran off to some adventure. But there were a few who stayed around a little bit longer.
The day was pretty normal. I showed up in the morning, with my Ecuadorian friend who came along to translate my last chapel message. We played, ran around, reviewed our english material, sang songs, and had chapel. I talked about the last three colors; white, yellow and green. They listened as I explained how easy it is for us to get dirty everyday, and how God will continue to clean us, and forgive us; and about how there is such a place as heaven, and God is there. It will be a place without anger, and pain; without murders, without people hitting other people...We sang some worship songs and then I went around with Bartola and tied on all the braclets I had made for each of them with the 5 colors.
By 11:00am they were off, running down the dirt hills to there homes.
Jose and Fransisco, Jayz and her mother, and Israel and his mother stuck around. Jose and Fransisco presented me with a small gift bag full of a matching necklace and earing set, 2 braclets, and 4 jeweled barrets for my hair. Attatched to the bag was a note from Jose, including his phone number. Franscico sat hugging me for a long time before they finally left and he ran back in about 5 times to hug me more. Jose just shouted chau, and awkwardly began to leave, until Bartola told him that he could kiss me on the cheek, and not to worry because I will be coming back to see him by the end of the year.
Israel presented me with a little stuffed bear, and his mom so genuinly thanked me for eveything.
Things with Jayz were not as simple. I spent another hour and a half with them. Jayz is the girl who has become very attatched to me since I have been here. She asks her mom for me everyday. I have been able to spend time with her family at their house. The family has been through alot of hard things. Rosio, Jayz' mom, just became a christian 20 days ago. She and Bartola told me they needed to speak with me. They explained how there was somehting missing for the children at the school before I came. They said there was a sadness and something they needed. And then I came, and there has been a change with many of the kids. (Now, I personally think that this is a slightly exagerrated claim on their part) Rosio said that she has seen a huge change with Jayz, ecspecially. They family has many problems. They do not have much money, the father left to live with another woman and does not help with anything. She is trying to raise 5 children on her own. She said Jayz was so sad and would cry every night, and could not sleep. But, she said, since I have been here, it is like the sadness left her. She was so grateful to me. But then we also began to talk about what will happen when I leave next week. Jayz refuses to believe that I am really leaving. For example, today she kept saying (in spanish of course), "Okay Kathryn, I will see you tomorrow when you come over to my house, yeah, see you tomorrow." I would tell her gently that I could not come to her house, but that I would see her on Sunday when I go to her church. The mom and Bartola asked me to speak with this precious little 5 year old girl on Sunday and explain to her that they are telling the truth and I am leaving. They asked me to explain to her that it is okay her dad left, and it is okay I am leaving, that I do love her, and that she does not need to be sad. They asked me to give her hope, and to pray with her.
Sometimes I wonder if I am going to hurt some of these kids, like Jayz and Francisco, by leaving and if it may have been better to have not gotten invloved in their lives at all. But I do not think so, at least I hope not. So we all talked, and prayed. We prayed for Jayz family, and her mother, and for my conversation on Sunday.
It is amazing how much love can effect people. Especially children. I do not think I did anything very special, or particularly useful down here. I loved some kids, I was nice to them, I played with them. I hugged them everyday and told them they were my brothers and sisters. I wore the same $3 shoes as them. I tried to sing there songs, and speak there language. But nothing extraordinary. It just shows how much people really need love; a present love.
I watched a movie about Africa last night and it made my heart ache. Kind of like it does right now. I do not know if I have started going through the begining phases of some kind of seperation deppression but I am extremely sad. But the sadness does not come from the fact that I will miss Ecuador, or the families, or the kids. Whenever I am in a certain place, there is always 10 others places I wish I could be also. My heart, and the people I love seem to be spread out all over the world. But this feeling is different. It is an aching, a yearning for something. I think C.S. Lewis does the best job of explaining it when he wrote;
"Most of us find it very difficult to wwant 'Heaven' at all-except in so far as Heaven means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, wwould know that they do want, and want acutly, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages. or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in the first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I am talking about. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us....The Christian says, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the mst probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."
At the end of the day we took some pictures, they kissed me on the cheek and then hugged me and ran off to some adventure. But there were a few who stayed around a little bit longer.
The day was pretty normal. I showed up in the morning, with my Ecuadorian friend who came along to translate my last chapel message. We played, ran around, reviewed our english material, sang songs, and had chapel. I talked about the last three colors; white, yellow and green. They listened as I explained how easy it is for us to get dirty everyday, and how God will continue to clean us, and forgive us; and about how there is such a place as heaven, and God is there. It will be a place without anger, and pain; without murders, without people hitting other people...We sang some worship songs and then I went around with Bartola and tied on all the braclets I had made for each of them with the 5 colors.
By 11:00am they were off, running down the dirt hills to there homes.
Jose and Fransisco, Jayz and her mother, and Israel and his mother stuck around. Jose and Fransisco presented me with a small gift bag full of a matching necklace and earing set, 2 braclets, and 4 jeweled barrets for my hair. Attatched to the bag was a note from Jose, including his phone number. Franscico sat hugging me for a long time before they finally left and he ran back in about 5 times to hug me more. Jose just shouted chau, and awkwardly began to leave, until Bartola told him that he could kiss me on the cheek, and not to worry because I will be coming back to see him by the end of the year.
Israel presented me with a little stuffed bear, and his mom so genuinly thanked me for eveything.
Things with Jayz were not as simple. I spent another hour and a half with them. Jayz is the girl who has become very attatched to me since I have been here. She asks her mom for me everyday. I have been able to spend time with her family at their house. The family has been through alot of hard things. Rosio, Jayz' mom, just became a christian 20 days ago. She and Bartola told me they needed to speak with me. They explained how there was somehting missing for the children at the school before I came. They said there was a sadness and something they needed. And then I came, and there has been a change with many of the kids. (Now, I personally think that this is a slightly exagerrated claim on their part) Rosio said that she has seen a huge change with Jayz, ecspecially. They family has many problems. They do not have much money, the father left to live with another woman and does not help with anything. She is trying to raise 5 children on her own. She said Jayz was so sad and would cry every night, and could not sleep. But, she said, since I have been here, it is like the sadness left her. She was so grateful to me. But then we also began to talk about what will happen when I leave next week. Jayz refuses to believe that I am really leaving. For example, today she kept saying (in spanish of course), "Okay Kathryn, I will see you tomorrow when you come over to my house, yeah, see you tomorrow." I would tell her gently that I could not come to her house, but that I would see her on Sunday when I go to her church. The mom and Bartola asked me to speak with this precious little 5 year old girl on Sunday and explain to her that they are telling the truth and I am leaving. They asked me to explain to her that it is okay her dad left, and it is okay I am leaving, that I do love her, and that she does not need to be sad. They asked me to give her hope, and to pray with her.
Sometimes I wonder if I am going to hurt some of these kids, like Jayz and Francisco, by leaving and if it may have been better to have not gotten invloved in their lives at all. But I do not think so, at least I hope not. So we all talked, and prayed. We prayed for Jayz family, and her mother, and for my conversation on Sunday.
It is amazing how much love can effect people. Especially children. I do not think I did anything very special, or particularly useful down here. I loved some kids, I was nice to them, I played with them. I hugged them everyday and told them they were my brothers and sisters. I wore the same $3 shoes as them. I tried to sing there songs, and speak there language. But nothing extraordinary. It just shows how much people really need love; a present love.
I watched a movie about Africa last night and it made my heart ache. Kind of like it does right now. I do not know if I have started going through the begining phases of some kind of seperation deppression but I am extremely sad. But the sadness does not come from the fact that I will miss Ecuador, or the families, or the kids. Whenever I am in a certain place, there is always 10 others places I wish I could be also. My heart, and the people I love seem to be spread out all over the world. But this feeling is different. It is an aching, a yearning for something. I think C.S. Lewis does the best job of explaining it when he wrote;
"Most of us find it very difficult to wwant 'Heaven' at all-except in so far as Heaven means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, wwould know that they do want, and want acutly, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages. or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in the first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. I think everyone knows what I am talking about. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us....The Christian says, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the mst probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."
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