Murderers, Thieves and Witchcraft

It’s actually been an exciting past couple of days! I’ll start with yesterday.

We got another girl at the Hogar now! She’s really sweet, and her sister is already living here, the one who helps out at the IHNFA. Anyway I got a bit of the background story on the family and found out that the girl who helps me at the IHNFA is actually only her half sister. Her father was murdered with a machete by the man that is now her step father. Her step father sells hammocks, which is not a stable job. And when he does sell, the money is spent on alcohol. From the things that they’ve told Jessica, it’s pretty certain there’s some sexual abuse happening so we’re really glad it’s finally worked out that her sister can move here now too. The first girl came here at 12 years old after her parents sold her for a night to some guy for about $25.

So yesterday we went to help her move, it was a quite a hike to get there. Can you imagine if everything you had in life fit in just 2 backpacks? And these aren’t even my backpacking backpack- we’re talking regular little kid school back packs. It was crazy. We also met her dad, and he seemed totally normal and nice actually.

Then today lots of the kids were getting in trouble at the IHNFA. We suspended 2 boys from the IHNFA for 3 days after they threw rocks at neighbor’s water pipe and broke it. Ugh. Jessica went to explain to the lady what happened though the whole time the boys were protesting their innocence blaming it on Jarol who’s 6 years old. How he could throw a rock hard enough to break the pipe and even get it up high enough (about 30 feet in the air) I have no idea. So we just took his snack away for a couple days, that was it.

Next up  Leila’s watch disappeared (a girl at the IHNFA) and we knew it was one of 2 girls who had stolen it. They were told they had an hour for it to turn up or they both kicked out for a week. Leila marched into the office with a  candle and piece of paper, demanding the list of names of kids at the IHNFA. She intended to write them all around the paper, light the candle and leave the room. When it burned down, whichever name it fell on would be the person who stole it. Jessica was like um no, Leila that’s witch craft. So instead we prayed. And the watch did get turned it, the girl who stole it was hysterical for a while about getting in trouble. So that was quite an ordeal to handle, but she was only suspended for a day since she turned it in. Then Hermana Gloria, a lady working at the IHNFA, gave the kids a fire and brimstone devotional asking them if they wanted to burn in the lake of fire someday and telling them the evils of lying and stealing. Oh my.