Crying Babies, Prison Bible Studies, and Shoe Boxes

Well, I figure it´s time for an update! so here goes... I have moved houses. Now I´m staying in another house with another Ecuadorian family. They are a young couple with 2 children. The husband is a youth leader in a local church. We live in a huge house on a big property with 2 other houses there. The one house is the future home of a teen pregnancy home.

Then there is one other house, which is ¨La casita del amor¨or ¨The love shack¨and it´s for pastors to come with their wives to spend some time. Then there is also another little building, which will be a small sewing factory for 6 women in the future. After women get out of prison, they can come to work there. These plans are for the future, though. Right now the missionaries I am working with are trying to raise money to pay for the houses first by renting it out. So the future teen pregnancy home is now a guest house for missions teams that come, or for this big missions conference.



Since I have stopped my student teaching, I have been going to an orphanage to help. There are 17 infants and usually 1 or 2 at most tías there, or helpers. The first couple days I went, the babies were fine. But yesterday, I could have cried with them, it was so sad. First, I just fed a baby and then changed diapers (cloth diapers). But then, I heard just one baby in another room crying. So I entered the room, and all 4 babies started screaming. And they all hit their heads on the posts of their cribs. I was getting upset though, because I just couldn´t keep every baby from doing it. Then of course they were crying even more because of the pain. So finally I asked the tía why they were doing that. She says they all do it, and it´s just a result of being abandoned. I was so sad though.
All the babies wanted to get out of their cribs, so I put them all on the floor. As soon as I did that, they were so happy playing. But I had to just go get something in another room, and as soon as I´d take just 2 steps away, all the babies would cry. One little girl...I mean all the babies are about 6 months....grabbed onto me and was just hugging me and cuddling. I just feel so sad for these babies, because who knows how often they are held. The tías have enough work to do just feeding, changing diapers, keeping hte place clean, and doing was, that it appears the babies hardly ever get held. And this one boy Nicolas keeps following me around eveyrtime I´m there. He´s one that hits his head a loooot even on my chest or wherever he can. And he´s always crying, but he is the cutest and I want to take him home! Haha. I think by the end I will have a very hard time leaving the orphanage permanently. It´s so hard to leave each day, especially when you have to leave with 17 babies screaming and holding their arms out. I pray that God can be a father to every single one of them, and provide great families for them all as well.
Today we returned to the prison for a Bible study. Monday we had a huge Christmas party for the women, gave gifts, ate food, and had a great time. Today, first we gave out Christmas shoe boxes from Samaritan´s purse, which were sent here from the U.S. It was amazing. Some of the kids´faces just lit up. I had to try not to cry it was so nice. And it´s just neat that people in the U.S. send these boxes...in fact, I have in the past....and here I am on the other side watching people open the gifts. How amazing! Thank God for the boxes and the people sending them! People send little letters or cards inside too, and those are really special to the children.
Well, I will have to meet with my Spanish tutor now! (Two people recently have told me they were surprised to find out I wasn´t Ecuadorian bcuz of my accent....so yay!)