Saturday afternoon I went to La Carpio where they have more of like a youth group activity. There were about 25 girls around age 13 involved. We had a guest speaker come in and talk to the girls about forgiveness and had an activity. The activity was the part that was super interesting for me to watch. During this activity, the girls were doing a competition type thing. It’s kind of complicated to explain, but basically it was nuts. The girls were yelling and standing up shouting at each other as they tried to argue why they were right. This activity was incredible, and I totally just watched. The idea of sitting down and raising your hand was totally foreign. That was not the type of life that they were familiar with. The only form of communication that they know is yelling. It was really good to get to watch this type of interaction between the girls over something so small like a youth group game.
After the afternoon was over, I got a chance to talk to the director of the institute (Marielos) for about a half hour or so. Just to clarify, all the programs in La Carpio that I talk about are all part of the same program: Christ for the City. The part that I am specifically going to talk about is the part that I have been at every afternoon for my internship.
When I talked to Marielos, she told me more about the girls that I have met and La Carpio in general. She explained how she began working in La Carpio and why she had an interest in this community. One of her first visits to La Carpio left a vivid image in her mind: she saw a baby sleeping in a “hammock” that was made out of old rice bags.
She told me several stories of different people that she had met. One of the stories that really moved me was about 4 girls. These girls were ages 13-16, and they lived in a tiny single room “house.” When she went to visit the girls, they talked to her about what they did and how they got money. They were prostitutes. They had no other way to get money to buy bread. On a later visit to this house, the girls presented her with a present. Marielos was very grateful and thanked the girls, but she also knew they did not have any money. After thanking the girls for the gift, she told them that they did not need to get her a gift. She proceeded to ask them how they could afford a gift for her when they don’t’ even have money to buy bread. The girls told her that they got the money in the same way they get all their money: by selling their bodies for prostitution. They gave up their bodies to get a little bit of money to buy a gift for someone who was much more economically stable than they were.
The original design of this insitution was to be a safe house for women and adolescents who were in dangerous situations. Marielos had this idea of a safe house because of one girl’s specific experience. The girl’s father made her go out and buy something at the little store nearby. When she was walking, some guys called out to her, pulled her into a building, locked the door, and raped her. Upon returning to her house 1 ½ hours later, her dad proceeded to beat her severely because she took so long. Her body was covered in brusies. Marielos has a vision for this institution being a safe house for girls in situations like this.
Although a safe house is the original intent and still the future goal of this place, right now it is mostly a place where the girls come for classes and school. Legally, they have run into some road blocks. Because they are located right next to the trash site for all of San Jose, they are not legally allowed to take in girls for this purpose. They are still working on fighting through these road blocks.
I think it goes without saying that this conversation with Marielos was really great, and I was really thankful for the oporutnity to hear more about these stories first hand.
Saturday night when I got home, I had coffee with my family, made supper with my mom, and got my nails painted again (yeah, I have no say in the past part :).
Sunday my family wanted to take me to the pool. We left about 9:00am, and we spent the day at this pool/park place. It was really nice place, and we had a really good time together. Something interesting to note is that a Tico picnic is not a picnic like I am used to. We brought the crockpot with rice, normal plates and silverware, and everything all prepared and ready to go. We did buy meat to grill on a little electric thing. It was this whole gormet meal…but in the park! Overall, it was fun to cook there and spend time in the beautiful atmosphere. It was relaxing, and we had a good time.
We got back about 4pm, and of course we had to have cafecito (coffee time). At 5:00pm I went with my mom and sister to mass. As I mentioned, they are Catholic, and yesterday I talked to my mom a lot about the Catholic faith and her faith specifically. We talked for probably 20 minutes before church and over an hour after church about faith and her life. It was really an awesome conversation, and God really gave me the grace to be attentive during the whole conversation. Instead of being impatient and antsy to have a break from all the talking, God blessed this conversation and really allowed it to be a wonderful time with my mom.
God has continued to give me grace when it comes to listening. For example, this morning I listened to my mom and sister talk for about 1 ½ hours straight during breakfast. After that, I took a shower and got right back to listening to my sister for another half hour. The conversations just never seem to wane, but God is giving me his grace. He is teaching me through these conversations, and I am thankful for how he is providing me his grace. On my own, there is no way I can sit and listen attentively to people going off in Spanish for such long periods of time, but God is somehow giving me grace to sit there attentively and try to learn from them as much as possible. I’m so thankful for his grace to me the last 2 days in this way.
I pray that he would continue to give me this grace though. I need more and more…because I know the day is just barely starting :) I love my family dearly—I truly do. I just need a lot of grace. :)
To keep this blog from being eternally long, I’m going to stop here, but I know I still have more to say…so I will probably be posting again before the end of the day.
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