Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Wonderful Sunday in Honduras.

I’ve learned after three trips that the Sunday routine is very much the same. But, that hardly means it’s routine or that I’ve grown tired of the experience on the first day at the Hogar. In fact, after my experience on my last trip here back in December, I’ve learned that this first day, as routine as it is, is one of the best days.

I enjoy it so much largely for the fact that when I walk through those front gates of Tierra Santa I am greeted by name by so many of the wonderful children that I have gotten to know this year. The kids remember me. The kids know me. What a joy that is to have made these connections with so many awesome kids. It just warms my heart to know that I have over 100 friends living thousands of miles away from my home.

Berto was one of the first kids to come running up to me. Berto is probably about seven or eight years old and is the twin brother of Keekay. He ran up to me, called out my name, and opened up his arms for a big hug. Then the rest of the day I was hard pressed to not find his hand intertwined with mine. He didn’t want to lose me during the day. He also kept asking me if I was coming back tomorrow.

As I said, we did all the typical Sunday things including a tour of the home, a banquet of Honduran food at Santiago’s house, then a welcome reception put on by the kids back at the Hogar. In between all that we unpacked donated items and spent tons of time kicking back with the kids, shooting hoops, reading books, looking at pictures and more.

Books were again a bit hit. After unloading some of our stuff, I grabbed an armload of some books written and created by students from Mrs. Holtan’s class back at Oak Point and brought them out in the courtyard. Within seconds, students were swarming around the books, grabbing them and sitting down to read them. It’s terribly rewarding to spend time looking at books with the Tierra Santa kids. They just eat it up. They love to read and they love to be read to. And you can tell that they think it’s really cool to hold in their hands a book created for them by a child back in America. They loved looking at the “about the author” section at the end of the book to see just who it was who wrote the book. Spending time with the kids and seeing how much books mean to them makes me feel like we, as an organization, really need to keep fostering this love of reading with these kids. They just soak up these good books. And, of course, what a great way for them to learn, to become more literate and to be able to continue to be successful in their education.