Wednesday

We started our day off at Hospital Escuela. I have a love/hate relationship with that place. I love it because it continually breaks me. My heart has never left that place feeling anything less than broken and changed. Yet I hate that same place BECAUSE it continues to break me....and because of the reasons it breaks me. It breaks my heart to see so much pain and despair. The hospital is worse than most things I've seen here. They put 10+ people in each bed. So that when you walk into a room there are hospital beds lining the walls on all sides. They reuse catheters, needles, and who knows what else. To top that all of because it is a "free hospital" they don't provide meals or bedding for their patients. So it is easy to see why my heart breaks from just being there. I believe that one of the greatest injustices of this world is inadequate health care. Today was no different for me. We went from floor to floor handing out blankets and stuffed animals. I ended up spending the majority of my time at the bedside of a little boy whose Mom is working every day so she can only come visit him on Sundays. The boy (Christian) couldn't have been more than 2 and when I first saw him he was screaming and crying as he got his injections/treatments for the day. I went to his side to hold his hand and ended up staying until he went to sleep.

After the hospital we went to "the brothers" house to clean for a couple hours. The brothers are a group of 8 boys. The 5 middle kids were the first 5 children in Casa de Esperanza (the orphanage) when they opened their doors. They were placed back with their parents a couple of years ago. Since that time they've been living near missionary friends of mine. (Jen and David) So we spent a couple of solid hours scrubbing, sweeping, mopping, and washing everything we could today.

We then headed to a new ministry called Casa de Esther. It is a ministry for sexually abused girls. They will be opening their doors to the first 4 girls within a month and are equipped to take in up to 30. We spent time building shelves, cleaning, and hauling away wood.

Finally, we headed back to the homeless ministry that my friend Amber runs. She feeds every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so we went there tonight to help feed and spend time with the sweet people that show up each night.

It was a very full day but we were blessed to get to be a part of all of it.