Back at Home

Well I arrived back home on Tuesday night. It was wonderful to come home to my mother's cooking and sleep in my own bed. :) I've also been enjoying having hot running water always available, and not thinking about cockroaches in my room at night. We live in such luxury in the US. I have never appreciated hot showers and a clean house as much as I do now. You really can't appreciate what you have until you go without it for a while.
I hope that while I was there, I was able to bless the school and the kids in different ways, but I know that my time in Guatemala, more than anything, was a learning experience for me. It was really good to get some experience teaching kids so I know what I'm getting into studying elementary ed. After the first week of teaching kindergarten I had decided I could never ever be a teacher, and was almost sure I would be changing my major as soon as possible. But once I started teaching a little older kids--third and fourth and fifth graders--I really loved it and now I'm much more confident going into elementary ed.
I also learned a lot from my time in Guatemala by seeing Marta and her dedication to her work. I envision myself in the future working in a very similar ministry to Marta's, if not in Guatemala, somewhere else in Latin America. So seeing the way she ran this school helped me understand some of the challenges and the fruits of working with kids from hard families and backgrounds. For one thing, kids from these kinds of families tend to be very undisciplined which makes teaching them very difficult. But when they don't get a lot of love at home, they are so excited to get hugs and attention from their teachers. That was my favorite part of spending time at Preciosos Momentos--just loving the kids. The joy of Marta's ministry is seeing kids get all the way through sixth grade who otherwise would not have gone to school at all.
I don't think I ever mentioned this, but while I was there, Marta made a huge step in expanding her school to go through 9th grade. She got the permission and certification from the department of education to teach "basicos", which is kind of the equivalent of middle/high school. Now she needs teachers for the older kids, who she hopes to start in February for next school year. They will go to school in the afternoon, after the younger kids leave. Getting the certification was a huge step which everyone said was impossible with the school's lack of...everything, but God worked things out. Now we need to pray for good teachers to come.
Overall, I'm really thankful for my time in Guatemala and everything that I learned. God is working there and its exciting to see what he is doing. I can't wait to return to Guatemala. But for right now, I get to start getting ready for college :)

Poverty

In the neighborhood where I live, there are two areas where all the people are extremely poor...La Isla and Los Eucaliptos. Many of the kids at the school come from these neighborhoods. So on Monday, we walked down to Los Eucaliptos, and yesterday we walked to La Isla to visit some of the kids at their houses and to get to know how they live. It is amazing to see how they live. Last year during our vision trip, we visited La Limonada, which seemed very poor--but those houses were really in good shape compared to some of the places we visited in the last couple days. They are just tin shacks on the side of the ravine. They cook over fires, and of course they don't have bathrooms. In order to get to their houses some have to climb down the steep side of the ravine, which can be very dangerous in the rainy season. You would never guess, from seeing the kids at school, that they came from those kinds of homes.

As you go lower down into the ravine, it gets harder and harder to walk down the trail, and the houses get worse and worse. But it is also more dangerous the lower you go, because there is more gang violence lower down. From a distance, though, the ravine is beautiful because it is so green.

After going down there, I was talking to Martha about poverty. One of the biggest reasons these people can't get out of this poverty is because the kids don't get an education. The parents would rather have the kids working at home, so they don't send them to school. Without school, they never get a better job, and the cycle just repeats itself. But according to Martha, another big reason things don't improve is because of missionaries and churches who hand out free food and gifts. Every day, there is at least one free meal for the kids of La Isla. If people get free food every day, the parents stop sending their kids to school. If food is free, why study to try to make a better living?

It was several years ago that a new feeding program got started in La Isla. As soon as the program started, Martha lost a lot of the students at the school. It surprises me that it would make that big of a difference, but this is what Martha tells me.

Another interesting thing is that at the school, there are 27 kids in first grade, but only 6 in sixth grade. Every class gets smaller and smaller as they get older. There's a whole lot of kids in this neighborhood who don't go to school. And their parents don't care. Even if people are given the chance to get out of their poverty, so many just don't try. They don't want to put in the effort, and if they aren't willing to work at improving their situation, there's nothing someone else can do for them.

It definitely isn't the case with everyone. Yener is a sixth grader who started out in the same situation. He lives in one of the tin shacks in the ravine. Martha found him selling candy in the streets when he was about seven, and she got him to start coming to school. He's gotten all the way to sixth grade, and he's very smart. I was teaching English to the sixth graders the other day and he knew all the answers and was very excited to participate in everything we were doing. I think that he has a lot of potential. Its easy to get discouraged about the situation with so many of these kids, but there's some cases like Yener who make the work worth it.

Friday

All week we have been getting ready for a big event today at the school. It was the day that the "Reina del Colegio" was chosen--the school queen. One girl from each class was nominated to be a candidate, and today they each had to model five different outfits and answer questions, and then the judges (me and two other ladies) chose which one would be the queen. All week we've been making decorations and banners and flowers, decorating their dresses, getting food and music...it felt like we were getting ready for a wedding. Yesterday for hours we sat in the living room and made the decorations, sending Brandon to the store every fifteen minutes to buy more tissue paper or glue.

Then this morning we set everything up in the street and all the kids came with their parents. Even the motorcycle shop was closed for the event. This is quite a big deal here. They had a table set up for selling food to raise money for new uniforms. All the girls and their "escort" boys were so cute, especially the kindergarten and first graders. The sad thing is that out of five girls, only two don't win, so it was very sad for those two. And it made me sad because I was one of the judges, and the girls we didn't choose were crying afterwards. After all the work they put into getting their outfits, I think they should all win something. But overall everything went well. After subtracting all the expenses, our "fundraiser" raised a grand total of ninety quetzales and forty cents (about eleven dollars).

After it was over and we were cleaning up, I could see that there was something going on with Martha and some of the teachers, but they were trying not to let anyone know. They were looking a little bit worried, and then one came up to me and quietly asked if I had seen two-year-old Dillan at all. He is one of the daycare kids, and had disappeared in all the activity. They were trying to not let people know that they had lost him, but after a while we were sending people out in all the streets to look for him. Martha was so scared she just went in the back and later told us she literally couldn't stand up. We had kids searching the school and people in all the streets searching.

After a long time, one of the women was asking the ladies in the streets and the stores if they had seen him, and Doña Carmen, who sells fruit a couple blocks away, said she had seen him. Rather than bring him back to the school where she knew he was supposed to be, she had brought him to a neighbor who had him in her house. The two of them were trying to get Martha in trouble for not taking good care of her kids. They absolutely refused to give him back. So for about an hour, we all sat in one of the classrooms, everyone worried and talking at once about what we need to do. Martha was just frantic, worried that she would get into so much trouble for this. We were trying to call the mother, who was at work and had not been told anything.

Finally Zoila went to the police with Erick to try to get the boy back. Technically, there was not proof that he belonged at the school, because they don't have any paperwork for him. But the police knew about Martha and her ministry and trusted their word. So eventually, after Zoila had argued with the two women and gotten yelled at a lot for not taking care of the boy, the police went with her to the house and got Dillan back and brought him back to the school. Meanwhile, his mother never heard about what happened until she came to pick him up after work hours later. Martha was scared to tell her what happened, but she took all the blame and just said she was so sorry. The mom just started crying but she didn't get mad at Martha, which Martha was so relieved about. In the end, there is a police report with Martha, Doña Carmen, and the woman who had him in her house--Martha for not caring for the boy, and the two women for kidnapping him.

So that was the excitement of the day. They have been talking about it for hours now. The event this morning has mostly been forgotten after everything this afternoon.

Sunday and Monday

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Guatemala. I went for most of the day with Nancy and Manuel and their kids out to Lago Amatitlan, which is a beautiful lake close to Volcan Pacaya. I don't think I've mentioned before about the volcano. About two months ago Pacaya erupted and completely covered this part of the city with black ash. Everyone took time off school and work just to clean the streets and the roofs of the houses. But I still see black sand on a lot of the streets and on the roofs...so driving out to Amatitlan there was a lot of sand on the side of the road. We had a really nice time out there and I enjoyed getting to know their family a little more. Afterward we went out for lunch at Pollo Campero (definitely a favorite here!) and then went to their church at night.

I really enjoyed school this morning. I went around and taught English the the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. I think that if I become a teacher, I would rather teach third or fourth grade than kinder or first. I love the younger kids, but the fact that they can't read makes teaching really hard. I also spent some time taking care of the babies this morning.

I can't believe my time here is already over half over. It goes by very fast. For some things, it will be nice to be back home, but I will be very sad to leave the kids here. :(

Los Niños

Now that I'm not actually teaching the whole day, I get a whole lot more time to talk to and help individual kids, and I enjoy that so much. I'm with a little bit older kids now, and I just love them. There is one little boy whose name is Junior and he has started to call me mom. He tells everyone that I'm his mom and every time he sees me he runs up and hugs me. He's about seven. Martha tells me that he lives in one of the poorest parts of the neighborhood, in a little tin shack. His brothers are in a gang. There's another girl who also calls me her mom and her name is Naydelin. Her mom is an alcoholic and doesn't take care of her at all. There are so so many stories like that among the kids in my class. Josué lives with his grandma because his dad is in a gang and his mom left him. He is the biggest troublemaker and cannot sit down for more than three seconds, but he is the cutest little boy ever and I just can't bring myself to get mad at him. He loves to tell me all the English words he knows. All of the kids love to hug me all the time. I think that a lot of them don't get a lot of hugs at home. Yesterday one little boy named Walter didn't want to participate and he was so sad, which is so unlike him. When the other kids left I asked him what was wrong and he told me he was sad because his mom wouldn't give him breakfast. I gave him some cookies.

It makes me so sad to think about the futures of these kids. When your dad and your older brothers are in gangs, and your mom doesn't really take care of you, there's not a whole lot of question about where your going to end up. Its all they know. I hope that their time at Preciosos Momentos at least shows them that there is another way to live, so that they can somehow break out of that cycle of brokenness.

Danilo and Dulce

Last night as I was eating dinner with my family, we started talking about the news and about all the violence in Guatemala. This is a regular topic of conversation because everyday the newspaper is filled with stories of murders and attacks. Last weekend alone--Saturday and Sunday--sixty people were murdered in Guatemala.

We were talking about where the problems with gangs originate, and how important it is for kids to have a stable home and family to keep them out of the gangs. Marta has a heart for kids and the goal of her ministry is to help provide the stability to keep them away from gangs. But she feels very discouraged that despite all her work and love for the kids she takes care of, so many of them still return to that life and forget what she worked so hard to teach them.

There are two people who she has taken in, though, who have completely changed their lives and are now Christians--Danilo and Dulce. They both came from very hard backgrounds and were only young kids when they started to get involved with gangs. They both had very unsupportive families. Danilo still is not documented because his mother never registered his birth. They would both definitely fit in to the category of the "least, last, and lost". But Marta took in Danilo about six years ago, and Dulce about two years ago. Now Dulce is the care-taker for the other kids and Danilo is always around the house helping. They went to church with us last week, and just seeing them there worshiping God is an amazing testimony of God's grace.

I think that people like Danilo and Dulce probably understand God's grace and the gospel in a way that I never will. They have experienced first hand that "God's grace is like water, pooling up in all the lowest places."

I pray that there will be more and more cases like Dulce's and Danilo's that come from this ministry. But as Marta said last night, even if they are the only two people, after all her work, who end up changed, it is still all completely worth it.

Preciosos Momentos

I think that I haven't written very much about the school yet. It is called Preciosos Momentos, and most of the teachers are Marta's daughters --Melissa, Nancy, and Zoila--and Marta is the director. There's a couple other teachers, but it is mostly run by this family.

Dulce is a girl who lives at the school with her two kids, Isaias and Andrea, and takes care of the other kids who live there. There are about 10 of them who sleep in one little bedroom. Marta cooks all their meals for them and brings the food over there--the school has no kitchen. During the days, 150 kids come and squeeze in there. Each classroom is very tiny and has about 25 kids in it. What I think would be perfect is if they could get a whole separate building for the school, and this building could be used just for the orphans. Marta dreams of running a whole orphanage, but she just doesn't have the space. She has had to turn down several kids because there is no room for them.

On Wednesday, she went to a little town a few hours away to see an orphanage there, and she came back so sad because it was so beautiful and had so much space, and she just wishes she could do something like that, but doesn't have the resources. That orphanage is run by Canadian missionaries.

I do not know how she keeps up with paying for this school as it is. Only about a fifth of the students actually pay tuition, because the others can't afford it. Out of that little bit, Marta pays rent on the building, pays the teachers' salaries, pays for the food for all her orphans, along with any other expenses that come with running a school.

But Marta has such a great heart and she has poured so much into this school. She definitely isn't trying to get money or sympathy out of anyone--she just loves helping kids who need it.