of course, i will be your mommy.

i have always wanted to be a mommy. some of my first memories are of me walking around my house with a baby doll on my hip, playing house.  i loved “taking care” of something.  i always wanted to be exactly like my mom. i liked the things that she liked. our favorite color was purple. we loved our kids, even though mine were only baby dolls.

as i got older the idea of being a mom seemed less than appetizing. you know..the whole giving birth part came into play? ew. however, i got past that and fell in love with children again.

the two years before i left for the race my days were filled with kids, and i loved every second of it. i guess that is the main reason i am here right now. i couldn’t stand the sight of starving children with no mommy to love them. or a young girl selling her body to feed her family. the thoughts disgust me to my very core. i needed to go. i needed to help.

monday night is a night i will never forget. we left the YMC, our home, to go do street outreach. some of us are fasting our lunch everyday so we will be able to feed the kids on one street in Manila at night. i wanted to see who i was feeding, so i loaded up in the bed of a truck to go meet some street kids.

truthfully, over the past 8 months i have become numb to poverty. i have been living in the middle of some of the most impoverished communities in the world for a while, so somehow it has lost its sting. its like when you walk into walmart, but you haven’t been there in a long time and you are super overwhlemed. i mean there are like 100 aisles of anything you could possibly need. but if you go in walmart once a week for a while you learn where your favorite things are located. you get used to the hustle and bustle of everything walmart. that’s how i feel about poverty right now. i’m used to it.

so after about a 10 minute drive we arrived at the street corner where about 20 kids were hanging out. we hopped out of the truck and went to meet some of them. i noticed that most of them were holding plastic bags in their hands. little did i know that they were filled with glue that they use to get high every night. some of the kids are only 11 years old. they have to get high every night because they have no food to eat. they are hungry, but the glue curbs their appetite. this is a harsh reality all over the world. at that moment….

how could i let this happen? what was i going to do to make this right? i can’t let this happen right before my eyes? where are their families?

all these thoughts are going through my head. i think i am going to cry. i can’t cry in front of these kids. they don’t need my pity. 

that is when i met RJ.
RJ is 13 years old. his parents are dead.
when i asked him where he lived he said that sometimes sleeps at a friends house, but he looks as if he has been sleeping on the streets for a while. 
RJ has a lot of spunk. I really like him.
we continued talking for about 20 minutes when he looked me in the eyes and said “mommy?”. he only speaks tagalog so communication is limited without a translator by my side. i was caught off guard. was he asking me if i had a mom? he asked Ate Pem, the translator to come translate for us. He said “will you be my mommy?”. at this point i don’t know what is appropriate. he is not a child. he is a 13 year old boy who fends for himself everyday. then i realized he only wants someone to love him. all of the questions i had asked myself before had been answered. i had to show this little boy that i love him the way his Heavenly Father loves him. I had to show him that the world has not forgotten about him. i had to be his mommy.
i responded with a smile and “of course i will be your mommy”.

i am now the proud mother of a 13 year old boy. i never thought i would be able to say that when i was only 21, but it couldn’t feel more right. every night this week i will be going back to see RJ and his friends on that street. please pray for RJ and the other children there.