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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