ANIJA and Palo Blanco

Sorry there was no post yesterday. It was pouring down rain and the internet connection was awful. I tried for about an hour and half to upload pictures without much success and then just created a post without pictures that apparantly didn't go through. So I will try to make up for it tonight by posting a few extra pictures.

We started out our morning at ANIJA - one of the Kid's Alive schools that we have several sponsored children from. We put on our puppet show for them, played games and handed out our gifts. You can see the campus in the picture below (with Ashley Riley in the corner). :) The kids that we sponsor from the Ark orphanage attend school here so we got recognized as soon as we entered campus and got lots of hugs!



The picture below is Chris and Rachel with two of their sponsored kiddos Angelica and Dahiyana. During the puppet show Dahiyana, who was a little timid at first, inched her way closer and closer to Rachel until she was leaning against her. At the end of our time at ANIJA one of the staff members called Rachel and Chris over to share a bit of Dahiyana's story with them. Dahiyana's brother had attended ANIJA before she started and already had a sponsor. Dahiyana started attending the school and her mother was paying her full tuition which was a great hardship on the family. Shortly after she started attending school her father left the family leaving them in an even harder position. Each day Dahiyana would go to school and ask the staff if she had a sponsor yet and day after day they had to tell her no until CCW got involved. Dahiyana asked the staff member to translate to the Russell's that this sponsorship was the most important thing in her life right now. I think it is so easy for us at home to overlook the importance of our relationship with these precious children. We don't realize that they think about us, by name, day in and day out and that we are truely changing their future!

The children at ANIJA made us a sign to thank us for our sponsorship and each of the team members got an ANIJA school pin. Every single one of us on this team would easily agree that we have gotten far more out of this relationship already than our monthly payment reflects!

After ANIJA we went to Palo Blanco where the majority of our sponsored kids attend school and live nearby. This area is the poorest of the poor and the school at Palo Blanco is doing amazing work to change the future of this little community! Nearly 70 children from this small area apply to be a part of the new 3 and 4 year old group at the beginning of each school year and the staff has the difficult decision of selecting 30 of those children. We were told that this is the hardest part of the job. How could you decide which child gets a spot and which one gets left out of this life changing program?? The get more than education at these schools - they get healthcare, meals, stability, safety and love!

The picture below is a picture of Danae with Shayne and Matt Crain's sponsored child. She took an immediate liking to Danae and was by her side during the majority of our visit.

We got to eat lunch with some of the children in the school. In the picture below you can see Ashlee eating with two of the girls. We had the typical Dominican meal of beans and rice and cabbage salad. This meal is often the only meal the child will get for the day.

Chris Bennett was sitting beside the little cutie in the picture below. He noticed she had a heaping plate of food but didn't even know how to hold her spoon. She was more than happy to eat once she had a little help!

We got to go to the homes of some of our sponsored children which was the most eye opening, heartbreaking reality check. The picture below is Tina with her sponsored boy, Raul, and his father and cousin. Raul had a very nice home for the area as it was all made of concrete block and not just wood and actually even had a very small upstairs area.

However the picture below shows a much more accurate depiction of the majority of the living conditions in the area. This is the cooking area of the home Jerry and Donna Riley's sponsored boy lives in. There aren't even words that can do justice to describe the neighborhoods. Today was also a rainy day and the mud on the paths leading up to the houses was so thick it sucked our shoes off. The amazing thing was that every home we visited we were welcomed into warmly with no protests of "my house is too small for so many people" or "but I haven't had a chance to clean." We were able to pray protection, love and security over the homes with most of the families that we visited. I think we all left feeling incredibly humbled, heartbroken and inadequate in our ability to help.

There were so many tears shed today but our hearts are so full. We all agree that we want to find a way to not forget what we have seen, heard and felt when we get back to all of our creature comforts! We want our hearts to stay broken!