Since I didn't have internet access while in El Salvador, I wrote my blog entries by hand, and will post them now by the dates on which I actually wrote them.
7/27/08
I'm in Central America – for the fourth time - and I don't care that I'm in the jungle. I never thought I would say that. In Belize, simply being in the rainforest is perhaps my favorite part and why I've returned each year (along with the people and culture and archaeology, of course). And the forest is by no means absent of faraway here either, it's just eclipsed by why I am here.
HIS - Harvesting in Spanish - is an American non-profit that runs a fundraising company, a school, and an orphanage, along with several satellite projects in the San Salvador area. We are here as missionaries to work and witness at the orphanage. The construction - concrete - work we'll be doing will start tomorrow because today is Sunday, so our first day was spent getting to know the campus, in church services, and interacting with the kids. And they, already, are why the jungle remains peripheral.
This morning we had some downtime, so Loran (Lorenzo) and I (Matteo, here) went outside and sat at a cement table (at the kids' height!) talking. It was while we were there that we first interacted with the children, though we had talked with a few of the older ones Rick knew from the last trip after breakfast. When the kids finished Sunday School, they came running down the stairs from the church to the playground where we sat, boys first then the girls, and the first two boys that reached us - who had not seen us yet until then - ran up and hugged us. They were probably about 7 years old. During the first church service, I sat in the second row behind the 4-7 year old girls (the youngest sit in front in tiny chairs). They would turn around to play little games with me over and over, or lean their chairs back against my knees with their heads tipped back for me to poke their nose or forehead, or just turned around to smile. In the afternoon, we played soccer on a concrete, fenced-in basketball court – Americans vs. Latins - and finally won 9-7 when their team got down to just three players against our six ... and even that was close. All the boys now give us a high-five followed directly by a touching of fists. At the second church service, we all went up on stage and introduced ourselves (translated), led them in two songs, and put on a skit of David and Goliath. Toward the end, they asked the young kids to come kneel at the stage to pray and be prayed for, and for our team to come with them. They all knelt along the stage, and we stood or knelt behind them, and all of them gathered to us like iron filings to magnets, wanting to be in physical contact. The one five year-old girl I was with was holding on to me the entire time.
This open need for affection and physical contact with other people in these orphans left me wordless most of the day, and it's taken this long for me to be able to write about it, now before bed. I am surprised by it, not in its simple existence, but in its intensity, and honesty, and innocence. They don't know who we are, but they don't care - we're here to help them and be with them, and that's enough. These youngest don't speak or understand a word of English, but they don't have to, all they need to say is communicated in their actions and smiles. If this isn't the first time I've understood what Jesus meant about us needing to be simple like children to get into His Kingdom, then it is at least the strongest, clearest, and most beautiful reminder I've found.
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