Today marks 2 weeks since we've been here in Bolivia and we leave YWAM in one week to join up with the rest of the squad before heading to Romania on April 1st.
In these past 2 weeks we have been helping out at a daycare and one of the babies, Wonka (not his real name), really stole my heart.
I love babies, but I don't have a whole ton of experience with them so when I first started I was super hesitant and not sure what to do.Took me a couple of days to adjust and now I honestly feel like I could be take care of babies all day and love it.
Wonka had a cleft lip and palate (he had surgery earlier this week to fix it) and I was drawn to him from the beginning. Even with the cleft lip and palate to me he was adorable and his smile/laugh lit up the room.
Yesterday, I got to spend pretty much 3 hours with him and they were the best 3 hours all week. Wonka fell asleep in my arms when we first arrived and then later he woke up and I played with him until he needed to eat and because of the surgery they had to use a syringe to squirt milk into his mouth. After he finished eating I held him and entertained him some more and then gave him a bath after giving one of the other babies a bath.
After his bath we practiced standing for a little bit and then he started to nod off in my arms. He needed to eat some medicine before falling asleep though and after that I rocked him to sleep and them put him in his crib. It was super hard for me to leave him last night and I haven't stopped thinking about him and how excited I am to see him later today.
Wonka has a special place in my heart and I know I will probably cry next week knowing that it would probably be the last time I see him again. Knowing him and the rest of the babies has definitely left a huge impact on me and I think my desire for motherhood has been heightened even more. I really hope that in the next 8 months we will get the chance to work with more babies.
Thank you, Lord, for Wonka and for the rest of the babies you have placed in my life. I pray that they will grow up healthy and strong and be dearly loved by whomever they are adopted by. May the love that we show them in the time we have here leave an everlasting impact and window for these children to grow up and know you.
