Day 4

Hola, Amigos!

Today has been emotionally exhausting. Please bear with me on this email b-c it´s hard to put into words what we experienced today. First of all, I goofed when I said that we were going to the same Compassion Project that we visited on Saturday. Today we went to another project in Cochabamba and we are the first group of sponsors ever to visit. The church where the project is held is located in an extremely poor area. I won´t even try to explain that any further b-c you´ll just have to see the pictures to even get a sense of it. When the bus pulled up, there were children out front of the church in native dress holding banners with welcome messages. Each of them greeted us personally and shook our hands as if we were visiting dignitaries. Some parents were there with their children, the project director, the pastor of the church, and the entire staff of the project right down to maintenance workers and cooks. There were even people who weren´t part of the project gathered outside the church, peeking in the windows. All the children in the project were gathered in the auditorium and they sang, did a short drama, and listened intently as the director and the pastor welcomed us. Here´s the really amazing part...they asked each one of us to come up on stage and introduce ourselves. Terry, our leader from ChildReach Ministries, said that while we were onstage, one little boy came up to him and asked if he was his sponsor. When Terry said no, he asked if each of us was his sponsor. The translator had to explain that his actual sponsor was not there, but we all sponsored children in Compassion International and were there to help them finish some work on the building and to interact with them.

During the day, we did a craft project with the children, painted 2 classrooms (started anyway...all the primer was finished and the color coat, which was actually primer colored with some sort of dye, was just starting to be applied in one room), knocked out old concrete, and started building a brick wall. There were 2 large groups that came...one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning group left to go to school after eating lunch, then the afternoon group came after school, ate lunch, and did their sessions. We were treated like honored guests and ate lunch with the children. We didn´t realize what was happening, but as we were eating, the groups were switching and the afternoon group was sitting off to the side waiting for us to finish eating so they could sit at the table. When we realized what was happening, we felt so bad, but we were assured that no offense was taken and that they were honored to have us there. The word ¨''honored'' came up many times today and it was quite overwhelming.

After the afternoon group left the project, we split into two groups and went on home visits. I can only speak from my personal experience, but that visit was one of the most heartbreaking things I´ve ever witnessed. We went to the home of a woman who had 4 children. One of them, Luzclarita, was a part of the Compassion Project, but the other 3 were not, although Fernando, her son, may be admitted to the project. The whole family lived in one room that was about 10 by 8. Three of her children were from her first marriage and their father had died several years ago. As she told us this, she started to cry. She said that her new husband didn´t love the other 3 children b-c they were not his own. He ignored them and didn´t care for them. The truly heartbreaking part of this is that 2 of those 3 children were in the house with us. They showed absolutely no emotion thru their mother´s entire story, which made us wonder what other emotional trauma they have endured. We presented them with gifts for the children and some household items and she cried some more but asked the translator to tell us that they were tears of joy for our visit. (I failed to mention that the house was SPOTLESS. She was obviously proud to have us there.) She mentioned that her husband does not allow her to attend church anymore, so she and the children rely on Luzclarita to tell them about God when she gets home from the project in the afternoons. (Luzclarita had mentioned earlier that her favorite part of Compassion was learning Bible verses, so she has taken on the responsibility of teacher her mother and siblings.) Of course, by this point, there was not a dry eye in the house, including the Compassion staff that was with us. I can´t put into words what I felt as we trudged back up the dirt and stone street to the project. I was heartbroken for the mother and her concern for her children, angry at the father, frustrated that Fernando might not be able to join Compassion, and helpless that I couldn´t do more to help. It was a rough trip back to the hotel.

We had an especially emotional debriefing session after dinner and I feel completely drained. One more tidbit for those of you who might be considering sponsoring a child thru Compassion International...staff members told Terry that, although the families we visited appreciated our gifts, they would probably never be used. Many times personal gifts from sponsors are displayed in the home, almost in the fashion of a shrine. In fact, after one sponsor visited another project home, the family did not sweep away the Compassion sponsor's footprints from their home for a year. I´ll leave you with that...just think about that for a minute and you might get a tiny bit of the feeling of today.


amy