The purpose of these emails is to make this leap year a LEAP Year. (Living to Educate ourselves and others About Poverty by spending 1% of our day on the subject or 14.4 minutes.) After 29 days we hope to have 29 kids sponsored, $29,000.00 raised and a new way of thinking and good new habits formed.
This is a little long because we are making up for lost time. It still may not take you 14.4 minutes if you read fast. :>)
Day 8:
Teenagers are horrible. Everyone knows it. I remember it! Attitude, angst, venomous, sullenness and sarcasm. Did I leave anything out? They aren’t cute and cuddly and they are more expensive than the younger sweeter versions we actually like. And once they get past 10 or so, you can’t change them, or control them anyway.
I sound Horrible don’t I? We would never say such things. At least not out loud. But as a society we think this way. Don’t believe me? My friend works for Children’s Services here in Oregon. She told me that a Foster child that goes up for adoption (the parental rights of the biological parent have been terminated), but remains in the system past 10 years old, only has a 10% of ever being adopted. We have told 90% they are too much trouble to keep. We tell them by our actions. That is almost 100 children in Washington County alone that have felt the weight of this cultural ideology. Yikes!
But wait… Christian’s email yesterday… He is 13. Maybe they aren’t sooo bad. And even on the days they are all those things listed in the first paragraph, so was I, and you all love me now. Right? :>)
One of my dear friends has a teaching style I like. Then again, I have a sick sense of humor.
Handsome (vain) 14 year old stepson is having fun getting into trouble. Like “the school keeps calling” type of trouble. Wise Stepmother shares with stepson how much he has, and is completely ungrateful for, compared to the children of third world countries. (According to the State she must provide food, shelter, education, and clothing. So in her explanations/corrections/trainings, she wisely knows her boundary lines, even though she is human and possibly has considered leaving him on a street corner in a box with “free” written on the side. This is pure conjecture of course.)
She explains that the beautiful wavy hair he enjoys is a luxury, that due to lice, the children of Hope cannot enjoy. He gets a buzz cut. Behavior continues south. The children of Uganda do not have the wardrobe he enjoys, so he will now experience “poverty immersion” by getting the use of only one of his outfits for the week. And not the cute name-brand one either. She has now gained his attention. He is then listening when told of the long walks to school, the flat bed truck that is sometimes used as a school bus, the cost for schooling/that no child attends for free, and therefore many do not attend. She now has a stepson in a state of tearful understanding and gratitude for what he has and they do not. However, the sentence isn’t over. He still has to follow through with the one outfit only and wash it himself if smelling good is important to him, because that is what Ugandan teens would have to do.
What does all of this specifically have to do with Uganda’s Hope Children’s Home? Education and Sponsorship. Teenagers are often on their own in Uganda. The Teens at Hope know EXACTLY what they have to be grateful for and show it. However, they aren’t cute and cuddly and they are always a struggle to find sponsors for. The typical reaction is to sponsor the youngest ones first. There is nothing wrong with that, we just need balance. We need those who see what is ther, and those who see what could be there. To sponsor a little one costs $35 a month. * Because Hope is not able to provide staff and space for a secondary education on site, they must send the children to the nearest secondary school and that costs more money. Children who attend secondary school require a sponsorship of $50 a month. Some teens may not have completed primary school yet, due to life circumstances, so it is possible that a teen will still be attending primary. However, they still eat more/cost more to clothe, etc… than the little ones, just like your kids at your house, and they will be attending secondary school shortly.
Would you consider sharing one of these teen’s stories with your teens? Would you consider sponsoring a teen at Hope? Be careful if you do… you may start describing teenagers as: hardworking, grateful, eager learners, sweet, sincere, a pure joy…
Believing the unbelievable,
Lia
*The $35/month school sponsorships will include a meal, basic school supplies, uniforms and it helps to cover the local teaching cost/school fees for toddler through pre-teen.
So what happens if we LEAP all the way to $29,000?
Fencing the perimeter is the first priority.
Hope Children’s Home is a place of safety, love, and provision. However, it needs some real improvements. The children are safe inside the house. Uganda is beautiful and the kids love to play outside, which is great!… Only not so safe.
Hope Children’s Home is on a “corner lot” which means it has roads along two of its perimeters. So there are four “momma’s” and several teachers watching the 100 children who live at the home and the additional 100 kids that attend the school on the Hope property with no fence. Kids are playing, there is laundry to be done by hand, and cooking to be done over open fire, with all of that commotion someone could wander off, become part of an accident with the many motorcycles that pass by, or… God forbid… be taken. Unfortunately it is a possibility.
The kids do a great job of watching out for each other, but a fence would greatly improve the safety for any of the potential dangers. Imagine letting your two year old play alone in the front yard while you work in the back yard? Of course they do their utmost to diligently watch all of the children, but we all have a story of when, in a split second, a toddler got away from us and nearly gave us a heart attack.
The children bathe in buckets behind the Home, but if someone wanted to, they could watch/enter the property from the road. Privacy would help these little ones, who don’t know that they need to be protected, stay safe from certain watchers. The bigger, more modest kids just do a "washrag bath" in their room sometimes. Though few strangers come through unnoticed… it would be prudent to have more control over who can get near the children without going through a specific gate.
There are fun reasons for the fence too! They have lost many a soccer ball, a prized rare possession, to the neighbors. The neighbors aren’t in a hurry to return them either. So the lessons of “these are our things, this is where we use our things, and this is where we keep our things when they are not in use” would be easier taught with visual boundaries. Have you ever had your two year old lean over the property line, a nice row of flowers, to yank the neighbor’s tulips out of the ground, to your horror? How many of you tell your young ones, “Not past the sidewalk.”? We let them go a little at a time by using visual cues and physical boundaries, until they have the maturity for more freedom.
Have you ever gone camping? I mean “Boonie” Camping. Waaaay Out. Do you remember how dark it gets at night? It gets dark around seven in Uganda most nights. I mean pitch black. So for safety reasons, all of the kids get corralled into the Home at dark. A tight fit, to be sure. To buy a little more time for 100 children to have a little rumpus room… that is a blessing that every parent, daycare, or Sunday school teacher is nodding to right now. Yes, I can see you nodding, smiling and saying “Ummhmmm”. :>)
Do strong boundaries, the ideas of privacy, ownership, security, and responsibility show love? Do they teach it? I think so. And if you have a fence around any part of your property… you probably do too. Show Mercy can start the fence, but they can’t finish without our help. How much did your fence cost? Would you consider raising or donating 1% or more of that cost to build a brick fence at Hope Children’s Home for their kids?
Securely in His hands,
Lia
