thanks for writing on the bus seat

Yesterday I had sort of a rough night... thinking about leaving Grenada and all the kids.
I'm sad to think about what these kids' futures.
I see the creepy Grenadian men who say atrocious things to women and I pray that my sweet little ones don't turn out this way... but if that's all the see the men in their lives doing, then they will.
A lot of the girls will end up single teen mothers...
They'll having drinking problems and spend their lives living dollar to dollar. not even paycheck to paycheck.
How will we ever know if what we do at the after school program even makes a difference at all?  The kids will stop coming when they go to secondary school, just like some I've already known.

I cry thinking about all the kids in the orphanages who don't get held nearly enough.  When they are sick they don't have a mommy to hold them and rock them to sleep.  They are alone in their bed every single night.
The sweet boy with special needs will be shunned by society and end up begging for money.
The one with sickle cell won't live very long.
The little ones who already sell fruits on the street corner at the ages of 5 & 6 will continue to earn a living that way for the rest of their lives.

I have such a burden on my heart for this kids and yet there isn't really anything I can do.  I pray for them and trying to give them as much love as I can while I'm here.

Lee says that it isn't as bad for them as I think it is because I was raised in America... and things are different.  He says maybe the kids selling fruit aren't unhappy... maybe the people who sell things on the beach are ok because they don't know a different way of life.
But I know.  I know the guilty feeling I have when I drive past people riding in an air-conditioned SGU bus or when I'm carrying sacks full of groceries from IGA past a lady trying to sell fruit and vegetables at a road side stand.

I was feeling a little down but got a great surprise today when I went over to the Limes to pick up a paper from my friend and some of the kids' mother Jill today.  The Limes field is set in the middle of several schools.  The Grand Anse school is over the hill a few blocks away, but the Special Education school, the pre-school, and the Mennonite school are all set around the field.
Today was field day for the Grand Anse school so they were all in the field running around today!  And it happened to be lunch time so all the other schools were outside too!

I walked around the corner and saw 100s of kids and they started yelling my name.  First at the Special Ed school I saw 3 girls from Bel Air Home, 3 kids from Queen Elizabeth, and Orian from Limes!   Then I saw some little ones at the pre-school.  Another SO friend of mine has 2 kids who attend the Mennonite school and they came running over along with some of the other Limes kids... and then the Grand Anse school is FULL of Limes kid so there were dozens of them!  It was so much fun.  I felt like a celebrity.  It was so fun.  I never wanted to leave.  But the teachers were kinda looking at me like "who the heck are you?"  :)

I then walked back across the way and caught a bus to campus and sat down in a seat thinking about the kids and saw this:

 Tupac is a legend, but Jesus is alive and he saves.

Not only is it a great quote but it is the same seat Amber and I sat in on the trip we took to Belmont Estates my first term... it made me miss her so much!  and then I cried again.