Randomness....

Okay, so even though it may have seemed like I shared a lot... there's more... there's always more.

I was just thinking about the kids at the orphanage, and I really can't get them out of my head. There, kids that are 12, seem 12. It's not like here where they try to be 14, 15, or even 16. I work with the youth at my chuch, and it's not even as often as I would like, but I try. Almost all of the kids at my church have parents that love them, and if they don't have that, then there are plenty of other people that have time to love them. It's not this way at the orphanage. There, it saddens me how many have voids in their lives because people just don't have time to love on them as much as they need it. When there's 80 kids and 12 people on staff, it doesn't allow that much one on one time. With that being said, it saddens me, and it works me in ways that I can not even describe. I felt like I have this need to love them and give them hugs and kisses everytime we seperate, even if it's just that I'm going to be spending a little time with one of the other kids. At home, it seems like kids or youth get too big to give them kisses and hugs, yet there, it seems mandatory. It might not be a known mandatory, but it's mandatory within me. See, I can not withhold love from them, and I can't help but kiss them and hug them, and I don't care if they're 5, 11, 12, or 17. They need it, and they deserve it. So, they're going to get it. When you feel their little arms squeeze you harder than you've been squeezed in a while, it becomes evident, and it gives you unneeded confidence to continue to show them love.

When I am there, and even when I come home, I realize that there is a part of me that is only happy when I am with orphans or at an orphanage. I would love love love to be able to live at one, and I would be completely happy to do it for the rest of my life. See, the only struggle I really have while I am there is with the language. If I lived there, I would be fluent, and there would be hardly any struggles.

When I was in Romania in 2001, they were cleaning the pipes for the hot water, and so I only had hot water for maybe a week. It sucked beyond belief, but after a while, you get over it, move on, and begin to somewhat get used to it.

I don't know if I will ever work full time in an orphanage, and I wouldn't be able to do it in the US, because there aren't any. We are so blessed to be in a country that has foster care and group homes, that there really isn't anything past 8 kids in a home. There is the boys and girls ranches, but that's about it.

Back to Imuris, Sonora in Mexico.....

There, they have nothing. They reuse paper cups and styrofoam plates. They sleep with 6 girls / boys in a room usually. They don't have very many changes of clothes, and they hardly own anything themselves. I'm sure they don't have hot water. The bathrooms don't have toilet paper in them, and the trash cans are outside of the stalls if they actually use it. Almost half of the bathroom stalls don't even have doors on them, and the ones that do, your knees hit when you're sitting on the toilet because they are so small. Some of the matresses are falling apart, but they are still used, because they are still somewhat together, and they are better than nothing. The American part of me gets grieved and I feel so bad for them. I wish I could go to Pottery Barn and spoil them like no tomorrow. I wish that I could give them all new matresses, clothes, toys, and that they would live in a huge mansion to where they could each have their own room and have it decorated to their special likings. Yet, then I wake up. They are totally content with everything. Wanting is addicting, and it causes satisfaction to never be met... For this reason, I don't want that much to change. See, now, they appreciate what they have. If they got accustomed to everything I just mentioned, then they would take it all for granted, and they wouldn't appreciate as much. Maybe these kids would be deifferent because of the lives that they live. Yet, I wouldn't want to rob that spirit in them. I am jealous of them for it. I get upset when I don't have very much money in the bank or if I go a while without a pedicure or a manicure, or if I haven't bought new clothes lately. I want to be more like them. I want to realize that there is so much more to life. I know there is, and I have experienced it, and I actually experience it often. Yet, it can be so easy to get into the rut of it all.

Well, I'll write more later... this is it for now......