Finally we reached the stadium. A 15-minute walk took double
its time, but it was twice as rewarding as a regular walk. By the reactions of
the Santos and Arial, I thought
these two had never seen grass before. Immediately they kicked their half-deteriorated
shoes off near the FYM’s collection of water bottles and jumped into a game of
soccer. They continued playing for three hours with the other boys in the park
until we had to leave.
As the sun was going down on this tropical city, we called
the boys over to start the walk back home to supper and a cold shower. It was
dark after a few minutes and it seemed as if the walk would never end. It reminded
me of the walk that Eustace and Jill had taken under the earth in The
Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, a seemingly endless journey through
darkness.
“Hey Corey stop. They asked the lady for water” Said Katie,
she is one of the FYMers that has a heart to minister to these boys. I was
walking in front and didn’t realize that everyone had stopped when Arial asked
a lady who was outside her house for some water. He drank two cups full and had
her fill one of our water bottles up. I wasn’t sure if the lady knew these two
or if it was a cultural thing to give water at the asking.
The culture here, as in other South American countries, is
for people to live in community. They watch out for each other and require the
same of others. “Those who think of themselves are not respected here.” Is a
comment I got once.
Home was within sight (after a mile run and over 25 blocks
of walking) and I was praising the Lord! Diner sounded so good…and it did not
matter what it was as long as it would fill my belly, although a shower was
more necessary.
We passed our friends corner store and I saw him talking to
a few friends (he was supposed to meet us that afternoon at the stadium to play
football but didn’t show so I had to give him some grief about it) so I popped
in and said “Hey man where were you?” “Oh my mom made me work for her” he
replied.
“I figured that. Its alright, can you plan on it next
Saturday”
“Yeah I’ll try to”. He speaks fluent English and uses it to
sound cool in front of his friends. He looked at the shoe shiner box I was again
carrying and asked,
“Whose is that?”
“A friends”, I said.
“Oh you going to
clean shoes?”
“This is Christ’s love” was my reply. Smiling as I waved
goodbye I could see his face, smiling in a .
A day before we had talked about the need for Christians to
show love more than rules.
I am not sure if he understood I was doing it out of love
for Santos, but I was glad to try
and be an example of one of was not afraid to make myself smaller in man’s eyes
for the sake of loving another.
We came to the girl’s house to drop them off and realized that
the boys were still with us. We sat on the steps to the house and talked about
who was going to walk them up the bus stop and if we were going to pay their
way home or not. We want to help them all that we can put we cannot allow us to
be the ever lending bank. We do not want our relationships with these kids to
be founded on our ability to provide for them. We had already spent money on
other shoe shiners (buying ice cream for a group of 10 and a pair of school
shoes for another kid) and knew that word would get around quickly about the
American Money Dispensers (AMDs) if we weren’t wise in how it was done. Yet we
have the means to do it and the command of watching out for orphans and widows
and all that. Above all, we desire to give them more than a temporary
providence in the relationship they can have with the Father, to have all our
needs met by Him instead of men.
The night ended with three of us with Santos
and Arial at a street corner in the dark, waiting for a van to pull up and take
them to their part of town. They helped us cross to the other side of the
street before seeing us off.
It wasn’t the last time we would see them. In fact they have
been around our houses for the past couple days. Arial has accompanied us to
the park for worship times and has laid hands on those we were praying for.
Wednesday during our debrief time in the plaza the team was
sharing what gave them joy. After we all shared, Jonathan asked us Spanish
speakers to ask Arial and his friend, another shoe shiner, what gives them joy.
They both replied, “Cleaning shoes well”. A job well done is a smile to a
diligent man’s heart.
We pray that we can be accurate representations of the Father to these boys, and we know that when we fail Chirst will cover it with His love.
I think a phrase that summarizes this article is this: “We love, because He first loved us”
