Most of this month has been spent pulling weeds, making stairs in the hillside, picking fruit, cooking, folding laundry, and moving heavy stuff for the FriendShips ministry site here in Roatan, Honduras. Doing yardwork everyday for 7 hours a day, plus walking up and down the equivalent of Morton Hill 10 times a day is not what my body intended. It's a far cry from pacing my classroom and going to the office for copies, which is a decent distance to walk several times a day. So when I had the opportunity to spend the day helping at an orphanage instead I was elated to be spending time with kiddos. Much more my pace. Little did I know how much they would truly impact me.
Kids come in and out of my life every year. For the last few summers I've spent a week in July with foster children who I usually don't see again until the next summer camp. Many I'll never see again because they graduate from the program. These children, my students and the RFKC kids, will always be on my heart, but I can release them because I know they are being taken care of with all the advantages available in America. Here the children are not so lucky.
In the states I spend time in the IAT process working to help a child who may be in need of extra educational attention. In Honduras if a child has a disability they are not allowed to attend school at all. It's because of this that little Sindy breaks my heart. 
Sindy was born to a mother who did not want her, so she didn't bother to pay any attention to her. She was never held, hardly fed, and often left in soiled pants. This is why she was taken to the orphanage. If you've ever had any type of child development course then you know how this kind of treatment will affect a child. Sindy doesn't make eye contact with anyone. When she first arrived she wouldn't speak, was unresponsive at being touched and didn't know how to relate to the other children. Since then she has started speaking some Spanish, plays with the other children and even throws out her arms for a hug.
On the day I was there we played Connect 4, and she was able to separate the black and red chips on her own without my prompting. As a teacher, this tells me that all though she may not look as if she knows things she does. Her eyes are almost like those of a blind person because she won't focus on people. My heart is breaking for her because I know that with the right one-on-one teaching and therapy she could be so much more than what she'll be living here. She is 
certainly in a much better, loving environment and will most likely never be given back to her mother.
However, she doesn't go to school like the other children and I'm not sure that she ever will have that opportunity. My hope is that enough prayers will be said for her and God will find a way to bring Sindy out of the fog she lives in currently.
I was only able to spend two days with her, but both days I told her over and over that I loved her. On the last day she did look me in the eyes as I told her "te amo," which I will forever hold in my heart.
