Each face holds a story….A past, a present, and a future. I talk a lot about peoples stories.
Mainly because they now haunt me...
they play over and over again in my head. I find my self wondering what it would be like to step in the shoes of the people I meet. As I have said before, we are working with Nacer Ministries this month. They have multiple homes but one of them (Hogar Nacer) is specifically a rehabilitation center for street boys with drug and other addiction problems. Carlos is one of these street kids…….
Carlos, age 22 and one of the oldest at the Nacer home, first arrived in 1998 after years of living on the street and problems with drugs. Since then, he has left the home and returned a couple of times. Here he explains what it is like to live in the street:
“It is the saddest and most dangerous life. In the street, one does not know what it feels like to be loved. The people despise you and you feel hated by everyone. They see you as a thief and that you are just doing drugs. And yes, many times we do this, we steal just so we can do more drugs. But what they don’t know is that once the effect of the drugs wears off, there’s just a lonely person with thousands of problems. The worst part of being in the street, is that I never heard a “good night, son” or a “good morning, son.” I just got a kick or water to wake me up. Did I deserve it? Maybe I did, but also an opportunity, because if they see us as animals, I say that even animals can learn.”
This is reality. This is Carlos’s story….but it is just one of many. Stories of girls entering prostitution at 12 years old, and boys sniffing glue at 13. Would you please imagine what it must feel like to live these kids lives. To have nothing in this world. To go to sleep every night feeling lonely and utterly unloved. To feel rejected and abandoned by all. To not know your worth. Honestly, I feel helpless when I hear stories like this because I don’t know WHAT I can do to help this situation. But I won’t be content to do nothing. These kids need hope….so I will keep moving as He leads, doing what I am doing, being the hands and feet of Jesus, because CHRIST is that hope.
