They are Precious!

Mauricio - I love his little smile. :)

We have really been enjoying the children this week. I think Gloria, Matia, and I are all tired when the children head out after lunch - they keep us busy, but it's worth it! Some of these children have some really sad circumstances. Mauricio (in the picture above) lives with his aunt right now. His mother works far away and isn't home much. I don't think his father is around at all. Mauricio has such a sweet little smile though and he loves to be held. He has to show us every little thing that he does and his whole face lights up when he gets excited about something.

Some of these children are really walking a long way to come to the center. We do not have enough money to pick them up and drop them off back home yet. These little 3 and 4 year olds are walking about 30-45 minutes one way! Poor little Jonathan is probably about 40 minutes away and he walked all that way yesterday with a 101 fever! Jonathan's father is not around and his mother takes care of him all on her own. I think that she sometimes just really doesn't know what to do with him. It takes so much effort to get a smile out of Jonathan. I finally got a smile today when we played ball for a little bit. I think he is still a little overwhelmed by all the newness of what we are doing. When we feed him, he eats like there might not be any tomorrow. His family is very poor, so that's probably a reality for him.

Jonathan - he fell asleep in my arms. The poor little man was not feeling good that day.

I have a lot of things to tell you all, but I need to go finish cooking the corn and preparing the lesson for the kids tomorrow. Keep praying for us all. One of the new little boys that I have - Olman - is a particularly hard case. He also has no father in his life and his mother is very young and has another little one at home. He seems to have a hard time understanding us and doesn't speak very well yet. He's also very rough with pretty much everything. I'm not sure all that is going on there, but I would really appreciate prayer for the challenge that he brings us and for him to experience Christ's love through us. 

Olman - he's always wants to have a car!