The Least of These in La Limonada
Today Kent, myself and the group from MCRC traveled by bus a few miles to a place called La Limonada - a place of absolute poverty in one of the most dangerous parts of Guatemala City: zona 1.La Limonada...I don't even know what to say about it...as soon as we got off the bus and started entering into this place, the smell of garbage met us. The houses are made out of sheets of metal and raised up on bowing wooden platforms with unsturdy wooden steps leading up to them. Houses are stacked upon houses. Garbage not only is prevalent throughout the streets, but we saw people taking things like large cardboard boxes and street-swept litter and dumping them directly into a, I believe, once-beautiful stream of water. We saw children walking around dirt paths, littered with garbage and pieces of broken glass, with bare feet. We later heard that over 50,000 people live there - about 30,000 of them being children.
In the middle of this poverty lies a building, which the locals call la escuelita, or "the little school," called Plántico de Jeová - a mission created for the kids of the community (from about 4 to about 17 years old). I basically stayed there the whole day (8:00am-5:00pm) talking with the kids and translating for some of the non-Spanish-speaking volunteers. The day camp was split into two sessions: morning and afternoon (while the day camp was going on, other volunteers were working on building a bathroom for a woman as well as a retaining wall for another family with bricks, etc (I didn't help with that because I wanted to be one more voice who could speak Spanish to the kids, but Kent did in the afternoon). There were 4 main stations throughout the mission after the initial time of singing and Bible verse memorizing:
1. play games (like Pato, Pato, Gonzo/Duck, Duck, Goose, Red Rover, fútbol, etc.)
2. snack time (we handed out juice and packages of crackers or cookies as well as played games like Papa Caliente/Hot Potato, Simón dice/Simon Says, Estoy espiando/I Spy...and a girl named Abi read Brown Bear, Brown Bear to the younger kids (in Spanish, of course)
3. crafts (the little kids made "puppets" out of paper bags and cut out paper heads of animals that they had colored, while the older kids did a fun activity involving a maze-type piece of paper and a small mirror)
4. Bible story/Testimony time (Bible stories for the littler kids, testimonies for the older ones)
When we first got there, Kent and I met a man named Miguel. He has been working full time at the mission for about 3 months, specifically working with the young boys and guys who come through the mission who deal drugs, have dealt with sexual abuse, or you name it. He spoke almost no English, so I translated between him and Kent (it went really well :). We asked him how La Limonada (literally, "the Lemonade") first got its name. He told us that, before the place became as populated as it now is, there used to be a bunch of lemon plants amongst the garbage heaps. Miguel also told us that it is a hard job to work with the kids on such a consistent basis because a number of them are bothersome or just plain mean because of the circumstances and the surroundings they have grown up in. One time he asked some of them whey they come to the mission. One responded, "Out there, it feels like a war - in here, we feel peace." He told us that those kinds of things are what motivates him to do what he does. That phrase really stuck with me throughout the day, especially in those moments when I was getting really frustrated with the kids who were kicking each other (which happened all day), punching at/hitting each other (some even ended up rolling on the ground in a fight with each other)...and even in the time when I saw a kid grab something (it looked like an old old exacto knife - no one had any idea it was there) from the only desk in one of the rooms with a blade on it, run up to another kid, throw his left arm around the other kid and pretend that he was going to stab the other kid in the neck. It also struck me in the times when the kids grabbed a hold of me and didn't want to let me go. Girls (and sometimes the occasional boy) would grab my hand and lead me to where they were going so I would be with them, a number of girls gave me big hugs and kisses on the cheek, one girl randomly came up to me and just wrapped her arms around my waist and stood their next to me as I hugged her back and stroked her hair and her back...these kids are SO starved for love and affection from their home lives and are so surrounded by violence on a daily basis that it is all they know in how they interact with everyone around them: they either act out in violence or aggression (which even some of the sweetest girls did at times, which surprised me) or they cling to the love and attention that they do get...
Going back to the conversation with Miguel, he thanked God for bringing us here - he said it was an answer to prayer because they feel more supported when groups like us come because they believe that there are more soldiers who have come to help them fight the battle they are fighting.
After each day camp session, the volunteers split up into about 4 groups with translators to go visit some of the families living in La Limonada to pray for/with them. My first trip out I met a woman named Mirian - a Christian and a mother of one of the girls who I remembered vividly from the morning session - whose husband is unfaithful to her and beats her...and then a 20-year old woman named Eden who was pregnant with her 3rd child and without a home or a husband because he had died recently - she is not a Christian. My second trip out, I met (all from the same very small and unstable home) 2 woman whose names I don't know with 3 small children: 6 years, 2 years, and 5 months old - their dad died just 2 weeks ago - they are also not Christians. I think he was killed and it makes me wonder if it was a gang-related death (gangs have completely divided up La Limonada so there is no real feel of community in an area with over 50,000 people in it). We talked with each of these people for a little while, asked them to tell us a little bit about themselves and whether or not they had specific prayer requests. It was an amazing experience to meet, as Tita our leader calls them, "the least of these" face to face, to hug them, talk with them and pray with/for them.
I'm sure I could go on and on about today - there are so many things going through my mind right now after this experience...but I have to stop somewhere. Please pray for the people there and for the corruption of the government to cease enough for La Limonada to be a place where kids can grow up without violence or garbage on their streets.
Although this place is racked with violence, prostitution, rape, etc, God is still present there and working in mighty ways in the lives of "the least of these."
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on Monday, July 02, 2007 at 5:13 PM.
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Shelly (and Kent), thanks for posting these updates. I love reading them and learning about everything you're learning.
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