“Christmas on the Streets´” hubbub of activity has faded, replaced with focusing on the planning, organizing of this year´s activities…However, even after these 6 weeks, certain faces from “Christmas on the Streets” are still clear in my mind… Unfortunately, I never seem to remember to take pictures…all I have are pictures from my heart…

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Sometimes when teenagers come and help with the preparations it´s a “camouflage” to hang out with friends or other times they´ve been “strongly encouraged” by their mom or church leader to get involved in “service”… …but 13 year old “Germán” showed up by himself (sometimes with his little brother) looking “cool” in his baseball cap, gel slicked hair and earphones constantly plugged in his ears… Day after day he´d come, quietly bagging our popped corn, wrapping gifts or doing whatever needed to be done… Why did he come?

“And your mom?”, I asked.

 

“She´s not here, she went to Sucre (16 hours away…)…she´ll be back on January 15th…”

 

“And who are you staying with?”

 

“My brothers” (two a bit older than Germán and a 7 year old…)

 

I tried not to look too horrified so he wouldn´t feel hurt... “Your mom left you by yourselves? She´s not coming back for Christmas?”

 

Sonia (Germán´s mom) was our student maybe 6 years ago… We didn´t hear from her for years… then she showed up out of the blue two years in a row to help us cook and hand out “Christmas on the Streets”. Germán was one of the few guys to sign up to clean on the 24th… spending hours scrubbing DIRTY, GREASY pots and pans… How many dirty dishes do you have after cooking for your family?… Now imagine the pots and pans needed for 2700 people! Yes, Germán´s face sticks out in my mind… a 13 year old boy… missing his mom… taking home 4 meals to share “Christmas” with his brothers…

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One of the things we remember about “Christmas on the Streets 2014” was the crazy, nerve wracking saga of getting our chickens and pigs slaughtered and into town on time for Christmas… it had been raining and raining… the roads were terrible and our trucks had to make their own “roads” through raging “rivers” and detours…

This Christmas was much drier so there weren´t road problems… but we always wonder “who” is going to kill and pluck 300 chickens… (we were missing Devan who we could count on for everything!!!) We had some good hearted volunteers sign up… Don’t take me wrong, good hearts are wonderful… but if they don´t have experience plucking, it makes for a LONG night… In the end, one person brought another… and they brought three more who were all well experienced… and in the end, it was the easiest chicken experience of our history…

The faces of “chicken team” made me both smile and cry…

“Anibal”… one of the very first street kids that I got to know… he named his first little baby girl “Corina”… (She has a new family and a new name… and just a couple weeks ago turned 18 or 19) When Anibal got off of drugs and the streets, he worked at a chicken farm for several years… He now has 7 kids under his care… he and his “wife” Laura sell toys on the streets… Seeing his cheerful (and drug free!) face made me happy…

 

“Nahomy” (one of our teenage moms) came with her older boyfriend, and three cousins… all experienced pluckers, who work through the night and get paid by how many chickens they pluck… In order to stay up all night, they smoke and chew coca leaves mixed with baking soda… The thought of having experienced help was great… but looking at their faces made my heart break…

 

Rufino and Michel used to go to our workshops… but then they dropped out of school and our program to be able to work plucking chickens… They may be about 15 years old… their lips are “burned” and stained from chewing coca… Rufino´s face is a sickly pasty color, from working nights, not eating well and chewing coca… It made me upset with both their moms who allow it and the company who hires them… I told them that our property was God´s… that I didn´t want anyone chewing coca or smoking while they plucked our chickens… They wondered HOW they´d be able to make it, but lots of candies and lollipops helped!!!

 

…and then there was the third helper, Julio Cesar… He is Michel´s younger brother… he is 12 years old but he looks like he is only 10… He already plucks chickens some nights… He still is in school… but for how long? He chews on lollipops, not coca… but for how long? He still looks like a healthy, normal kid… but for how long?

 

Faces from “Christmas on the Streets”… Sigh…

 

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It´s always a challenge to get our pigs cut up… because the markets are overcrowded with frantic shoppers, the meat stalls are busy, busy, busy… selling to people who are getting ready for their special Christmas supper on the 24th…

Enter another face… The first time I met “J.J.” was at our closing program at workshops… He was a newer kid, thought he was really cool and I wasn´t too impressed. It so happens that J.J.’s dad has a meat shop in a small, little market near the workshops… ¨J.J.” and his older brother (16 years old) cut up our 6 big pigs… and charged us less than $20 to do it all… We didn´t have to fight with crowds of people and it was the most relaxing pig-cutting we´ve ever had…

 

While we were waiting, I had a good chat with J.J.´s dad… he told me how J.J. had become very rebellious, hanging out with bad friends and going astray… but, since he started going to El Jordán´s workshops, there have been many good changes… Nice to hear!

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“Los abuelitos” (the grandparents), have been names on our “Christmas” list for the last 6 years or so…our student Carlota would always ask for two extra plates to share with the “abuelitos” who lived alone down the street…
This year the “abuelita” came with Carlota to help chop up our chickens….a face to put to the name…

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The night before “Christmas” I went to the streets with Melanie, our German volunteer, to remind them we´d be by the next day to share “Christmas” with them… I also was looking for a girl named “Gardenia or China”, who I had been told, lived under a certain bridge…

We climbed down into a canal and towards a bridge I had never been under… Our eyes strained to see if there was anyone there… Yup… we saw the light from a cell phone in the distance… We slowly walked closer… I always try to be careful when I go “into” a place on the streets… or under a bridge… not because of danger but out of respect for their “home”… we wouldn´t barge into somebody´s house without knocking on the door or ringing a doorbell… why should we do it to street kids?

 

Under the bridge, directly across a little “stream” (sewer?) from a group of kids, I could see some shadows…but couldn´t make out any faces…(How often are these sub cultures of society “faceless”? They are “there”… but not really seen, known or understood…) I called out into the darkness, “Is China there?¨ No answer. “China?” Someone made a flashlight shine right into our eyes… Now we really couldn´t see. “I´m looking for China… Do you know where she is?”

 

Then finally I got an answer, “Hermana Corina, Is that you?” “Yes, it’s me! …but who are you? I can´t see you!” “I´m Ruth…” Ruth, Ruth… my mind flipped through a couple Ruths I knew… “I´m Ruth Shirley” Ahh… a street girl who I´ve known since about 1998 when she was 14 or 15… she´s come off and on to El Jordán… but she´s always ended up going back to the streets and addictions…

 

I took off my sandals to walk across the water (I didn´t want to get my Birks dirty!)… Without a flashlight shining in my eyes, my eyes grew accustomed to the dark… and I could make out a group of maybe 8 “kids”… Ruth Shirley was sitting on a mat, SO thin, scarred and sickly… probably a third of the size of the last time I saw her… beside her was a tiny, tiny baby girl…

 

Her little face was so beautiful… perfect… peaceful… such a stark difference to her harsh surroundings… She was 2 weeks old… Her name: Nazareth Esperanza (Hope). Wow… Hope under the bridge…

 

While we were chatting, I felt someone jump on my back and little arms tightly wrap around me… I turned around… Dayana – 7 or 8 years old… I looked around to find her mom, Miriam-Lidia… They had been hiding under a blanket, ashamed to be found under the bridge… until finally Dayana told her mom that she was going to say hello…

 

We chatted for a bit… reassured them that we still cared for them even if we found them under a bridge… and we promised to be back the next day to share “Christmas” with them…

 

(Just a little side note: Ruth Shirley was taken into emergency a couple weeks later… her body was shutting down… she pulled through, but it was a brush with death for her… Please pray that the Holy Spirit would remind her of the Truth she knows… and bring her to humble obedience before the Lord…)

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After handing out Christmas to “my” places, we still had maybe 25 meals left over… Other “spots” near us were already covered… so we drove around some neighborhoods, looking for solitary street people wandering around…

 

We STILL had food left over… so we went to a market where we thought for sure there´d be kids: nobody… I felt the people in my car were getting antsy… but I didn´t just want to give the food out to anybody… or double up on a place that had already been visited… I thought of a nearby park where several years ago people used to take Christmas on the Streets…

 

Only one man… passed out on a bench… I went near to him and whispered, “Buenas tardes?” I tapped him on the shoulder… His eyes opened… and I could tell he wasn´t focusing very well… “It´s Christmas… would you like something to eat?” His bleary eyes cleared a bit more… and he struggled to sit up… I repeated my speech… his face changed, he got a bit teary eyed, smiled and said, “Thank you for bringing happiness to an old drunk like me…” I talked about God´s love, the real reason why we were there…

 

“Do you have any other friends around here?” He looked around the park, nobody…

Then he pointed down the street… “But go to the black gate… there are more there!” In the end, he offered to bring them to us… It was quite unbelievable! I have no idea what is behind that black gate, but lots of people came out… street people of all ages and sizes, people who had just gotten out of jail, transvestites and more… all with a surprised look on their faces at “Christmas” that had knocked on their door…

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The last portrait I want to share with you has nothing to do with Christmas on the Streets… but it might be the picture that I love the most…

We were cutting up the chickens (for Christmas on the Streets) and the phone rang. It was Marco Nogales, the man in charge of the special needs home… He sounded so sad on the phone… I started thinking about how hard Christmas must be for him… the only family he has by his side are the 13 boys that he pours his life into day and night, day after day, week after week, month after month… year after year… A neighbor lady who helps out… but I´m sure for Christmas her family demands her attention… Marco is left alone trying to “celebrate”… A holiday is another day with the same needs to be met, with the same demands for his attention…He tries to make things special for the boys… but who does that for him?

In 2015, we went twice with a group of girls from El Jordán to help clean… That day close to Christmas Marco asked me, “Would any of your girls mind coming and helping us clean?”

How could we say no? How could we truly “celebrate Jesus” yet say we were too busy or too tired for the “least of these”? It wasn´t right… so… in the middle of our “Christmas” preparations, 6 of us went to clean… and to say “Merry Christmas” with our actions…

(I´m getting to the portrait… please be patient!)

Walter was sitting in the dining room… His arms and hands are all bent and stiff… but he always smiles at visitors and tries to shake their hands…

“Do you know where we could get a wheelchair for Walter?” His old wheelchair had fallen apart I don´t know how long before… so Walter gets carried to the dining room where he sits until someone moves him… There is a missionary who very kindly gives us wheelchairs he gets from Germany whenever we need them at El Jordán… they were at the very end of their shipment, but I could go and look… Guess what! There was ONE wheelchair and it was meant for Walter…

 

I wish I could´ve had a picture of Walter´s face when he got into his chair… PURE JOY… Wow… that right there was the highlight of my whole Christmas… I´m not sure how he moves his one leg to pull himself forward as if he was on a skateboard…then he has to almost face backwards to get his one arm in position to move a wheel… Watch out because Walter is coming through!!!

 

Thank you Jesus… for your wonderful gifts.

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THANK YOU for being a part of our lives, ministry and Christmas on the Streets… Your prayers and generosity make it possible for us to be here and serve… THANK YOU!

 

The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26

 

God bless YOU…