Our teams have taken a special
interest to a local orphanage that houses only 20 some kids with ages from 4 to
14ish. We have visited this place so far
at least once a week and one week twice. The kids here seem to see no light, the place itself in its physical
nature is dark, with not much lighting and just the feel of it is dark. There are only 2 or 3 people who were there
and only work from in the morning to the evening when they take off to stay
with their own families. Who stays with
the children then? That’s right…no
adults. The kids are left to defend for
themselves and who knows what mischief and hell goes on in the dark of the
night. I know some of the older boys
escape during the night to do who knows what, only to return in the morning so
they can be fed.
The
other morning when we went to come and play with the kids, a few of the people
in our group have taken a special interest in a kid whose name is Julius and he
has been in the orphanage for about 10 years and is physically and mentally
handicapped. He sits in a wheel chair
and has severe autism. When we arrived,
my team mates found Julius tied to his wheel chair, now they have noticed deep
scars on his wrist before and had an idea of what was going on but here they
saw it with their own eyes. They tie him
down at night so that he doesn’t hurt himself with his hands and so he doesn’t
fall out of his chair and none of the other kids at the orphanage take care of
him.
I
went over to talk to my teammates to see how their interactions with Juilus
were that day and that’s when they told me how they had found him. I had an idea of bad things happening there
but had no idea how bad they were. My
heart sunk not only for Julius for he seems to have no one to really care for
him but also for the other kids and how much they need Christ like figures in
their life. I see how the older kids
behave and know that is what the younger kids feel like they need to be when
they get older. I already see a sick,
sick cycle forming and it hurts my heart.
During
my time there, I got to take some pictures and a kid took interest to me taking
pictures so I showed him how to work the camera and then showed him how to take
video. He really enjoyed the video
feature. He then took me to their little
chapel and set the camera up on the altar where it was flat and wanted me to
act for him…and so I did. Upon stopping
my antics, my new found friend watched the video and saw it even more funny
watching it over again. So we did this
again and I invited him to act crazy with me this time. He did so and as before went back and watched
the video we just taped. I saw him laugh
even more this time than I did the very first time. Each time we did this we seemed to be drawing
a crowd of more kids. Each time we stopped
to watch the new video I saw so much joy and laugher come over their
faces. I was afraid that the lady in
charge would not like us dancing in their sanctuary but when I thought about
that I saw a statue of Jesus and I just pictured our Loving Savior smiling over
us and laughing with us as we danced and acted silly, seeing the smiles over
his children’s faces seemed to make Him smile and so I didn’t give the thought
of getting in trouble a second glance.
