August 8, 2011

Nelson!!!!

Posted by Ashley

4 comments

A few weeks ago a long awaited moment finally happened. Since we arrived in Honduras we have been looking for Nelson every time we were driving ANYWHERE, as well as asking Jorgito almost every day if he had seen him or heard anything about him. And then a few weeks ago Justin and I were about to leave the transition house for the day when I looked out the gate and saw him just standing there. I wanted to just run to him, but I hesitated and thought that maybe it was just a boy that looked like him, or that he wouldn’t remember me. I just opened my mouth and said “Who is that?” and Justin said “that’s him, go.” I ran out and immediately hugged him and he remembered me! I mean, really, remembered me. He remembered conversations we’d had a year ago, he remembered our names, he said he has our picture in his room. I can’t describe the emotions I was feeling. I was THRILLED to see him and heartbroken at the same time. He was stumbling over his feet-a symptom of the glue he’d been inhaling. He had no shoes. He was filthy. And one of the first things he tells me is that his “wife” had just had her baby. Wow. This boy is maybe 16, possibly 15.

I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I SO badly want him to come back to the project. He tells all of the kids at Manuelito that they should never run away, that they have a good life and need to stay, but he won’t take his own advice. He’s lived his whole life on the streets to where structure and rules are nearly impossible for him. To earn money he searches through the garbage for bottles that he can sell. This ABSOLUTELY breaks my heart, and I can’t even think about it without tears coming to my eyes. I want so much more for him! I want him to be taken care of, he’s just a boy! Now he is the one, more or less taking care of his own family. It’s just so hard. He can’t come back to the project now because he says he needs to care for his baby, which is an honorable thing and not at all typical here. I’m proud of him for this, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. I love this boy. I want to know that he’ll be safe, that he’ll have food. I want him to understand how much God loves him and has so much more in store for him than drugs and garbage.

He really wanted us to meet his baby, so he took us to his “house”. He said about 30 people live there and it consists of 2 small rooms made of wood. Tegucigalpa is an impoverished city. You see it everywhere, but I’ve never had a chance to go inside of one of these houses. Wow.

His baby’s name is Christopher and he’s absolutely adorable. I pray that somehow his life can be a little easier than his parents’.

Nelson assured me that he’d be at church that Sunday. I had my doubts, but he did show up when he said he would. But he wouldn’t go inside. The church is WAY up a hill, it took a lot for him to walk all the way there, which he said he did to see the pastor. But once he was up there he was too embarrassed to go in and say hi. We talked for about fifteen minutes and I tried to convince him to sit in the back with us, but he said he needed to go see the baby because he hadn’t been back home in about 4 days and had been sleeping in the market.

That was a few weeks ago and we haven’t seen him since. Please pray for him. His life is not an easy one. And it’s not easy to know that he’s so close and not to be able to see him, or do much of anything for him when we do see him. Please pray for guidance for us, so that we can know how to help him.