A Child's Laugh-Medicine for the Soul

Today, we took a group of street kids (there were 23 kids and 5 adults in Tim's van) on an outing to a ranch outside of town. There is a Mexican man and his wife who are working with kids who have single mothers, who are addicted to drugs/prostitution. A wonderful lady who used to live in California who now lives on this ranch has offered to give a piece of her land to Lalo and his wife to build a house for these kids.

We took them out to see the ranch today, and did some of our VBS program with them. I could cry just writing about it - those kids were so excited when they got in the van, you could almost touch it. The little boys were tough, almost all of them were dirty; you could tell that some of the girls had seen too much, and I fell in love with them all. They break my heart. Lalo pointed out some of the older ones to me (7 or 8 yrs. old) and said they all were addicted to sniffing glue when he first met them. He has taken some of them into his home to live with him & his wife. He showed me a picture of the place where one child was living, and it was a room filled with garbage, and nothing else. I wanted to break down and sob when he showed me that picture.

At first, they are a little leery of you, but when they realize that you want to give them your attention, they are all over you! I took pictures of some of the boys doing break dancing tricks for me; music truly is a universal language. The littlest children (2 or 3 yrs. old) got SO excited when I would take their picture with my digital camera and show it to them on the screen, it was absolutely precious!

I was in heaven when I saw this ranch - it was beautiful! Rich tones of adobe brick blended beautifully into its surroundings, with big beautiful shade trees to sit under. It was incredible! What a wonderful place for these troubled children to live. I know I was ready to stay! They had these goats and sheep there, and when you would walk over to the pen they would all start "Baaaaing" at once! It was hilarious, and I thought, "I bet that's what we sound like to God most of the time!"

We stayed until about two o'clock, and we must have played them out, because most of them fell asleep on the way back. There was one little one sitting right behind me (about 3 yrs. old) and I started playing peek-a-boo with her, and then she was putting her hand on my shoulder, and I would try to catch her. She laughed so hard she had everyone laughing around her. It was a great day, and I found it very encouraging. It's a very quiet evening at home, but it's nice and a perfect end to a day I want to savor. God is so good J