de los Niños: Bernabe

Here's the second installment of the de los Niños series (Click to read them all).

Today I'm looking at Bernabe (6 or 7 years old). I don't know his full name, again (sorry), but I'm pretty sure he's the only Bernabe at CHS. Check out the picture (and another one after the jump).

I don't know exactly when he came to Casa Hogar Sion, but I started noticing him around my July 2006 trip. He has an older sister, there, too, named Esmerelda. As of typing this, he is still at the orphanage.

I first met him in the late afternoon one weekday (during my week-long stay), doing arts and craft in the cafeteria with all of the other kids. Our team had planned a craft for that day, and after explaining everything, I walked around trying to find someone that needed help.

I saw Bernabe struggling a little bit, and sat down to help him. He caught on very quickly, and from there on I could tell that he was a bright boy, with intelligence and potential. He returned a smile and grabbed another project with enthusiasm, and I could see that he was playful, as well.

When I first met him, I remembered him because of his name. It's pronounced ber-NAH-bey, but most of the other kids call him Berna (BEAR-na). "Bernabe" just happened to be the last name of one of my close friends, so it stuck in my memory.

For the rest of the week, whenever I had a break from the grueling work, or wasn't talking deeply with some of the older kids or others in my group, Bernabe would run up and start playing with me. I remember writing in a journal:

Whenever I would walk past him [Bernabe], he'd smile. One day I was just walking across the orphanage when he ran straight up to me with an American football in his hands and asked me to play. How could I resist?

Berna was always friendly and accommodating, and full of energy. I often would talk with his older sister, Esmerelda (who is around my age), and a lot of times he would be there. The group, along with others, make sort of a balance between the different dynamic of kids there: the playful ones that are always happy despite what happens, and the enduring ones who have grown up a bit in life, seen its troubles, and rough through the day in hope of a better future.

It amazes me how he can manage such energy and high hopes despite what ever happens. I know that if I were in his place, I probably wouldn't manage much. I remember one day coming across him break dancing (or trying to) in the cafeteria. He's not only playful, but I can tell that he is bright. I see a great future ahead for him.

Berna, from then on, would be one of the first to greet me as I enter the orphanage at the start of each visit. We'd resume things as if I had never even left.

He is one of the reasons that every time I go back down to Casa Hogar Sion, I feel like I'm returning home.



(As before, if you have any stories of this kid or any other -- or just experiences in general -- feel free to E-mail me. Questions? Reactions? Thoughts? Leave a comment :-) )

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Beads in the sand

Okay, so I think now is a good time for me, in this blog, to start telling my first story about a specific event. Because that's what this is for, anyway. To share personal experiences. If you have any of your own, please feel free to contact me.

Every once in a while in life you have a moment that just slaps you in the face and tells you to wake up. All you can say in reply is, "Oh." Because, as it turns out, the world isn't really exactly as you thought it was. You learn something new.

I had a moment like that (or two, depending on how you count it) on the first night of my extended stay in July, 2006. It was my first time down in over half a year, and also my longest stay to date. Needless to say, on that first day, I was completely stoked. I went to sleep and prepared for an exciting day.

I woke up the next morning with over sixty bug bites. That's right, it's not a typo. 60. In one night.

It completely caught me completely by surprise. Now, for those of you who are accustomed to getting sixty bug bites every night, forgive me for sounding un-hardcore. But understand that this had never happened to me before. I had slept over at CHS multiple times before, and never had I had this problem. In fact, I never received more than five or so bites an entire trip before.

My poor body was unprepared, so the sheer number of bites hit me hard. They were everwhere -- on my arms, my legs, my back, my neck...Chances are there were many that I didn't even discover.

At first, it was mainly a trivial surprise. "Haha, guys. Look, I gota bunch of bites." We laughed it over among ourselves and went along with the day. But then, the bites started swelling and becoming irritated. Pretty soon, moving around became a inconvenience.

That day was a Sunday, so the whole orphanage, including the kids, packed up and headed to Church. Our group was to perform a skit, which we heavily rehearsed. I played the main role, so I did my best to weather out the incessant bites (which were growing worse by the minute). In the skit, many points, I had to express an emotion of pain. A lot of it wasn't acting.

Finally, the church let the kids out into a Sunday School type of thing. By then, the pain had grown even worse, and the swelling was rampant. We were asked to re-performed the skit for the kids.

This time, when the skit called for me to fall onto the floor in emotional agony, I literally did fall on the floor, and the emotional agony was accompanied by a searing pain that ripped across my body. By now it had become so bad that I could hardly move.

Yet, as I lay on the floor trying to recover from the fall, I saw out of the corner of my eyes a little five-year-old girl sitting in the front row. She seemed shocked that I had fallen, and had started to stand up to try to help lift me up, thinking that I was truly in pain and needed help (as my character did).

(Brisa, age 5)

It touched me that she would care so much (I had remembered her from my trips previous...her name was Brisa). But...the fall was a part in the skit. I managed a quick smile to her, to tell her that I was okay. She looked confused at first, but then smiled back and returned to her seat.

The rest of the skit finished without incident, and my group started preparing the activity they had planned for today: Putting together alphabet beads onto bracelets to spell out names of the kids. By now, however, the pain from the bites had gotten so bad that I could hardly move without triggering a wave of pain. I wanted to help out -- after all, wasn't that the reason I came down in the first place? -- but it soon became all too clear that I couldn't. Instead, I retired, ashamed, to sit outside of the church steps, facing the dusty roads of Tijuana.

I don't know how long I waited out there, on the porch steps of the two-room church, alone and struggling to deal with the pain. It could have been as little as fifteen minutes, or as much as an hour. However, to me, it was an eternity. I tried to find a comfortable position, but nothing would ease the pain. My water bottle ran dry before I even realized it, and my throat ached for water. The sun beat down mercilessly on me, and the only noise was that of the occasional passing car. The sand and dust of the Tijuana roads provided no comfort.

Why was I even here?, I thought to myself. Was it because I wanted to help out? Some job of that I'd done so far. Was it to fulfill a nagging conscience? If so, what would that gain me in the end? Just to be a burden?

I waited and listened for an answer, from God or otherwise. None came.

And then, I felt a tap in my shoulder. I braced the pain and then turned around.

Staring right back at me was Brisa, the girl who had stood up to help me during the skit. I was speechless...but she simply smiled, and all of the pain seemed to go away. She took hold of my hand and put something in it.

I looked down. In my hands was a dusty bracelet and there, spelled out in beads, was my name (no doubt made by someone from my group). But the thing that caught me by surprise was what came after my name: two heart-shaped beads.


...and that was it. It was my answer. Beads in the sands of life.




(if you have any experiences from CHS or Mexico that you would like to share, or just want to voice your opinion, please feel free to leave a comment or E-mail me)

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de los Niños: Daniela

(UPDATED: 6/17/07)

This is my first "de los Niños" bio. In these posts, I'll be taking a look at individual kids and relating their personalities, personal experiences and stories with them, and brief pieces of their history. Read other ones here, in the archives.

Today I have Daniela. Excuse me for now, as I don't know her full name. I'll try to get it as soon as possible. But you can tell which one she is from the picture.

Daniela is a girl that's about...nine years old, I think. The first time I saw her was during my stay during the summer of 2006. She had actually just arrived right before that week, so I could say that I know her from the beginning. As of typing this post, she is still at the orphanage today.

Her general personality? It has certainly changed over time, but even still you can never predict her. She ranges from shy to playful to mischievous.

When I first met her, she stood out because of her hair. I found out that she was really shy (at least, to visitors). I can't be certain, but it might have been because, then, her head was almost completely shaven off, and she was bald. I never got the full details of the story (I asked her once, but I didn't know enough Spanish then to understand her), but her hair (or lack of) made her stand out and she probably was a bit self-conscious.

Daniela, as she first arrived at Casa Hogar Sion, Summer 2006

But our group stayed over past the weekend and into the weekday grind, it appeared that she began to look at us as family and started to open up to us a bit. She started being a bit vocal and playful, as most of the girls her age at the orphanage were.

She didn't really stand out much, personality-wise, for the rest of that trip. It wa spossibly because she was still new to the whole thing. However, when I came back a couple of months later, it was clear that she had grown more accustomed to her environments. She was one of the first to greet me when I came, and she clearly remembered me.
She lead me on a bunch of wild adventures and escapades, and over the next few months I saw that she was slowly changing.

Which brings us to now (Or, my last trip in February). Until recently, Jasmine had filled the role of rambunctious preteen girl who ran up to the guests and always wanted to play. Jasmine was the most active and playful of all of the girls (at least when I was there)...the social butterfly. She was one of the first kids at the orphanage whom I truly started to develop a bond with and got to know.
However, Jasmine has recently left Casa Hogar Sion. That story (of which the exact details I am still not clear on) is for a later time.

With Jasmine gone, there was a void to fill. Daniela, as I see it, filled that void. On my last trip down, she was everywhere. She quickly started games with some of the newcomers on our boat, and was their main "guide"...almost in the same way that Jasmine was to me on my first visit.

You could never predict her, though. Sometimes in the day she'd play the quiet shy kid, as well. And then at other times, she would steal my camera and hide it (much to my initial chagrin). Sometimes she'd sit back and watch a movie on the community TV...and at others, she'd start drumming wildly on a bucket with a wooden stick and ask me to join.

Like I said, she was everywhere, and that day she was by far the most active. It's what makes her so wonderful.

I don't really know much about her family and her history before the orphanage, because I haven't as of yet had a chance to ask. But it seems to me that she is happy where she is now.

(Have a story about Daniela? Something to contribute? Leave a comment or E-mail me.)

UPDATE: During my 6/16/07 trip to the orphanage, I found out that Daniella is no longer a child of Casa Hogar Sion. In learning this, I also gleamed insight onto her history and past.
Daniella was put into Casa Hogar Sion by her parents about a year ago. Whether it was willingly, out of neglect or lack of money, I do not know. However, she had a very loving grandmother who would always visit her at the orphanage. I recall seeing her grandmother at the orphanage more times than not during my one-day trips.
It was clear that her grandmother wanted to be with her in more permanent situations, but didn't have the resources or the means...yet. However, just this past month she finally reached them. And she adopted Daniella.
Today we can only assume that Daniella lives happily with her grandmother. It's a bittersweet parting, but at least we know she is with her family now.

There is so much to be learned from these partings...and not all of them are for the better. I'll discuss this more in a future post. But for now, consider Daniella adopted.

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My Story. Part 2 - El Primero Invierno

My first trip (click and read if you haven't yet) completely blew me away. For those of you who know me, my "diary" is essentially the conversations I have with my friends via instant messaging (which are automatically all saved by my computer). From looking back and reading over the conversations for the weeks following November 12th, 2005, I could see that all I could talk about with my friends was my trip.

Seeing the disposition of the kids in the light of all of their troubles enlightened me, in a way, and I saw the world in a new light. It didn't completely change my life (at least, not yet), but I put me on the track. Still, back then, I believed that Thailand was the ultimate destination of this road for me, and that Mexico was just a series of stepping stones there. I couldn't have known that, that summer, the Thailand trip would be canceled due to unforeseeable circumstances.

For the next few weeks I dwelled over the few pictures I took on my cell phone over the trip. I wrote down stories of that one-day trip. It was all that was on my mind.

Then came the news. For winter break (December 26-30, 2005), the group would take a full-week stay down at the orphanage.

A full week living in Casa Hogar Sion.

Needless to say, I bit right away and signed up for it. My winter break that year would be very busy -- the first week, I would be in the Caribbeans with my family. We would come home for Christmas, and then I would leave then for Mexico. I started preparing for what would be my first overnight stay.

By the time everything was settled on, the trip would not last for a whole week, due to scheduling difficulties. One group would arrive on Monday, December 26th. My group and I would arrive later, on Tuesday (12/17) night. Both of groups would then leave on Friday (12/30). It wasn't the full week I had expected, but it was still the longer than I had ever stayed before.
This time, we had a pretty full group. It was around 9 if I counted right. It included Eunice (the main leader), two or her brothers, another leader from the high school ministry, and four or five students, including me. Eunice's brothers and I were the only relative newcomers.

Once again, I was on the road. It was nighttime, this time, as I crossed the border to Mexico, and it seemed as if we had crossed into a whole other world. As we approached the orphanage on dirt roads, I wondered why something as insignificant as a man-made line could decide whether people had clean drinking water or not, or divide a world into pieces. I realized that, when I looked up, that despite these differences, we all lived under the same sky with the same stars.

Finally, we had arrived and I stepped into the dark orphanage. Almost everyone was asleep, aside from a few adults and some of the older kids. I breathed in the night air and took in the sights and sounds. To this day, nothing compares to experience of walking around those halls in the dead of night. There is a presence you feel there. Something protective. It is as if, around you, the whole world was falling apart. But where you are, there is just peace and shelter.

Almost immediately, Jasmine (the girl from my first trip) ran up to me and gave me a hug. That moment blew me away. She had actually remembered me? I only saw her for one day, over a month ago. The orphanage received many visitors every weekend (even though it wasn't as much as they had nowadays). And yet...she remembered my face despite all of that.
I knew then that the bonds that you develop with these kids are not so easily broken.

Silently we walked to the room where we would be sleeping and joined up with the rest of our group who had arrived earlier. Also with us was a group of construction workers from Hawaii who had come to help with a deconstruction project. That night I met Israel, a Mexican volunteer at the orphanage, for the first time. We then joined together in something that I could never have expected: Worship. Israel pulled out a guitar, and even the workers from Hawaii joined in as we sung praise songs that I knew from back home. Israel even threw in some Spanish lyrics to the familiar songs.
I can't describe the moment with words. I'll tell you that it was simply beautiful, how everyone was united even though they came from across oceans and with different languages and countries.

That week, by the day, we helped tear down the Boy's Dormitories. Apparently, when it was built, it was on a tilt and was pretty much falling apart anyway. Now, they had received enough funds to build a new one, so they needed help tearing the old one down. The days were filled with grueling work, dragging loads of debris into a truck, eating lunch, and coming back to find that all of the debris we had just loaded up had been replaced with a pile that was even bigger.

Deconstruction and cleaning was a group effort. Everyone in the orphanage helped, from the volunteer cooks, teachers, and staff to even the orphans and kids themselves. The actual people who owned the trucks looked were friendly and were glad to help out as if they were your friendly neighbors.
The kids, who could have been out playing, decided to come and help us, too. It hit me, once again, how I -- who had always gotten everything I wanted, pretty much, without trouble -- was a lazy couch/computer potato who didn't do this much work in a year, not to mention a single day. Even more amazing was that these kids, who were considerably less privileged, were happy to help out, with a smile.

But by far the most powerful moment during that four-day stay for me was on Wednesday night, when we drove down to Ensenada, a city about seventy miles south. We drove down along with all of the adults who volunteered at the orphanage to a house that had a shack in their front yard about the size of a garage. It was a home-built, wooden shack – sort of like a mini-house. We walked in and there were chairs set up. It was a church, and they were meeting that night.

About thirty or so people had shown up with us -- some of them volunteers from the orphanage, and some of them from elsewhere. The simplest of worship teams took the stage -- a guitar and a singer -- and started to lead the room in song.

They were singing in Spanish, but as soon as the first line was sung, I understood every word.

It was because most of the songs I knew already in English. And these songs were some of my favorites. These were the songs that brought me up when I was down. These were the songs that changed my life. And here they were, in Mexico, singing the same songs, worshiping the same God. The universalness of it all caught up to me.

There, in that room with thirty or so people singing praise together, I felt a great light shining forth. I saw a vision of a dark, empty place. Then, a spark -- a candle lights up. The fire spreads and lights up another candle. Many more pop out, and from their flames they spark new ones. Soon, the entire world was lit brilliantly that way.

Even in the darkest places, you can find hope. And, if you believe in it, you can find God.

The service continued as people came up one-by-one walked up to share stories and testimonies. Not a single one who didn't break down into tears by the end of their story, with numerous shouts of "Amen" and "Dios Bendiga" from the crowd. There truly was a presence there, and it was ready to overflow and spill out into the world.
The floodgates were opening.

On Friday, we worked a bit, played with the kids, and, after touching good-byes with the numerous kids I had gotten to know, headed back home.

This time, however, I realized that in a way, I was already home.

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My Story. Part 1 - Como Empecó

My last post was on the history of the orphanage. It was a factual explanation. If you had asked, "What is Casa Hogar Sion?" to, say, a phone book, then that might have been the answer.

But if you asked the same question to me or any other of the many people whose lives have been touched and changed by it, you would get a completely different answer. The answer would be a little bit deeper. "What is Casa Hogar Sion?"

What is Casa Hogar Sion...to me?

I'll tell you this. Casa Hogar Sion is my calling, I believe. At least for now. It is a second home to me. And there, I do feel home and welcome.

That's a quick summary of what I wrote in my last post, and I'll try to take things a bit deeper now with my story. This is my answer to the Question. And even more, it's the story of how I got involved in this whole thing, from CHS to beyond.

It all started the end of summer before my Freshmen Year of High School, 2005. I was fourteen years old then, I believe. (man, has it really been that long?) I had just entered the High School ministry as a student. I didn't really think that I fit in anywhere until one night, when the short-term missions teams had a presentation night. You see, in the previous summer, the high school sent kids all over the world, from Thailand to Tijuana, on short-term week-or-two-long mission trips.

Immediately, I was hooked and longed to fly to Thailand on a short-term mission trip. There would be a trip next summer, and immediately I talked to the leaders to try to arrange something. They said, yeah, sure. I was on board. I would be going to Thailand! Overseas! "In the mean time, though," they said, "Why don't you check out Mexico?"

I shrugged. Mexico seemed cool, but not as big as Thailand. Thailand was overseas. Mexico was...a few miles away? How different could it possibly be? Anyway, it was something to keep me busy, to I took it. I saw Tijuana as my "gateway" or "stepping stone" to Thailand. If I could survive this, then I would be ready to go to Thailand.

Because the Mexico missions were so close (only a few hours from home, in Tijuana), the group planned one-day monthly trips. These were useful in a way that anyone could go down for a visit without too much commitment. After my first planned trip down to the orphanage went awry because my mom lost my birth certificate, I went down for my first time ever November 12th, 2005.

Already, things were being shaken up. Eunice Han, who had lead the summer week-long team, was the main leader of these trips. In fact, I could say that without her, I wouldn't be where I am in relation to Casa Hogar Sion today -- and neither would my church, Newsong. For over a year, Eunice was the integral bridge between Newsong and Casa Hogar Sion. You could actually say that the whole connection that we have today was originally her vision.
I'll talk more about her amazing story later. Eunice's part in this story is cut short. The day before my first trip, she was involved in a car accident on the freeway. She didn't get too seriously injured, but she wasn't able to come on my first trip.

Oblivious to all of this, I met up with the traveling group on Saturday, and I had no idea what to expect. The leader was now someone named Will, who never expected to lead. Apparently, a lot of the other kids were busy due to school and other events, so only one other girl showed up: a college student named Avita. So, it was just Will, Avita, and I. Some group, huh? Just three people, including me -- only one of which has even set foot in Mexico before.

The drive down to Mexico went without incident. We crossed the border, and I celebrated my first time out of the US. In a short time, we had made our way to the orphanage, and I took my first steps onto the dusty road into Casa Hogar Sion.

The scene was surreal, to say the least. One hundred and twenty kids, and only a few were outside. I think, now, that most of them were inside and only a few were outside playing. But still, as we made our way through the halls, there was a surreal silence as I looked around the whole place to take everything in. From the corner of my eyes, orphans appeared and vanished like wisps of smoke in the wind in the empty hallways.
"How poetic," I thought.

Finally, one kid at about ten years of age (whom I didn't know then but could recognize anywhere now) walked up to us, and Will said something to her in a broken Spanish. Cuando fui a la orfandad por mi primera vez, no sabía español. At the time, I couldn't understand Spanish. After conversing for a while, she led him to what was then the Nursery.

It was then that I got my first chance to play with the kids. The babies, at least. I had many cousins their age, so I fit right in. One in particular caught my attention: Evelyn (or Jasmine, as she was nicknamed for some reason), who was a newcomer. She was particularly playful.

Babies are one of the ultimate levels of innocence, and I couldn't help but feel a pang inside when I realized that almost all of them had some terminal illness or disease. It hit me that most of the babies in this room were fighting for their lives every single day.
I picked up a baby that had lost both of his parents. I looked into his eyes, and I could have sworn that an adult was staring back at me for a split second. That baby had seen a lot in his life (moreso than some of us have seen in our lives, at least), and was now at risk of possibly having contracted AIDS or syphilis from his late parents.

After a while, one of the staff took our small group out and started to explain to Will a current situation. One of the babies was sick. Dangerously, terminally, and fatally sick. They didn't know what it was for, but they guessed that it was either syphilis or some sort of pneumonia. It was actually one of the babies whom they had just taken in recently.
Throughout the rest of the day, a sense of foreboding all too familiar to the orphanage settled over it.
The fate of the baby, Timoteo, and his ties to Eunice and many others, are a story in itself, for later.

Later on that day, the older kids (3-12) started coming out to play. I didn't need to walk up to one of them...instead, one of them walked up to me. Her name was Jasmine (nine years old, then), and from what I could gather was one of the more mischievous and playful of the orphans there. After some initial chasing around, she stuck to me for the rest of the day and I started, slowly, to build my first bond with a kid at the orphanage.

For lunch, we left to get tacos off of the Tijuana street...my first taste of authentic tacos. I also drank, for the first time, Manzana Lift -- an apple-flavored soda manufactured by the Coca Cola company that was only sold in Mexico.
Needless to say, those two things are the main reason I come back now. (That's sarcasm, there, in case you didn't catch it.)

We came back to the orphanage after lunch, and Jasmine once again stuck to me. I couldn't talk to her as well as I would have liked, because she only spoke Spanish and (at the time) I only spoke English. Yet, there was still a sort of connection that transcended language barriers. In the end, we did more than just play together. In a way, we got to know each other in a way that looked past language, location, and race.
More and more kids came out to play later in the day. I met for the first time a little boy named Sammy, a girl his age named Brisa (Evelyn's sister), and some other kids whom I would come to know over the years.

The more time I spent with them, the more I noticed something. I looked at myself, living a sheltered life with everything that I could ever want, at the call of the parental units. And yet here are these kids who, possibly, have fought for their lives every day. Who have withstood abusive parents. Who have been thrown out of their houses and abandoned. Who live in a government-neglected orphanage.

But these kids look past it all. They look past the troubles, the hardships, and the broken families and just have an open heart to give out love. They freely give out their smile, which is one of the most heartwarming sights in the world. To be able to endure all of that and still love, smile, and enjoy life...that is something that is not of this world.

I didn't figure out everything that day. But I realized enough to catch me in its spell.

When the time came for us to leave, Jasmine ran up to me. After an exhausting day of chasing her around and being chased, climbing up slides and sliding down them, and getting to know each other, connecting in ways that transcended language barriers, she hugged me and asked me when I would next be back.

"Soon," I said. "I promise."

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