After giving Paolo a low five/handshake (I don’t really know what to call it) he looked at his hands and said probably what anyone who was holding hands with the kids or playing with them thought, “My hands are dirty from the kids.”
It was really cool though because he looked at em and just shook it off. He said, “it’s good though.” Which is EXACTLY what I was thinking.
Last Thursday and now this passed Monday and Tuesday night we have gone out to Santa Lucia to just spend time with the kids there. There’s at least twenty kids from ages 7 to 20 out there every night. They’re out there every night because that’s their home, that’s their street, that’s where their work is, it’s sad but that’s where their hearts are. Their family is the brothers and sisters that they have out there on the street. Their real family has either abandoned them or simply can’t take care of them.
These are real kids with the same potential as the kids back home: there is ZERO difference. They wanna be loved, they wanna have fun, and they wanna share it.
Location Location Location
That’s the only thing that has them in this situation. Having the same nature and potential that I had as I was growing up, someone could have adopted them from the states and they could be the one writing the blogs, facebook stalking, skyping, credit card swiping. I think that’s one of the hardest things to understand so far. These kids are exactly like we were at a certain age, no difference. In fact, Junior and Gilbert(brothers 9 and 7 or something like that) remind me exactly of my younger brother Matt and I.
So this Jesus guy was pretty much a baller. He still pretty much is a baller because the work He started still goes and doesn’t stop.
I say that I had an awesome response to Paolo’s comment about his hands but it definitely wasn’t me, it’s Him in me. I remember my buddy writing some kind of a quote on facebook a while ago, maybe before I left I can’t remember but it said something like this
You can’t get something clean with out getting something dirty
I actually struggled with that a little bit. Just because I took from that that something is ALWAYS dirty. If you apply that to a person in something like shame, guilt, pain, anything like that it seems like there will ALWAYS be shame, guilt, pain, all that crap. Hmmmmm. Not true at all, our crap gets sent to the grave that God made for it.
“My hands are dirty from the kids.” He said
“So were Jesus’ hands from ours”
The more we go to the streets with our guys from Children’s Garden, the more dirt we’re taking away from them. The more street we’re takin away from em. These aren’t “street” kids. They’re kids. No one called me a “school” kid or a “home” kid. I was a kid when I was growing up.
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