Yesterday I had the amazing privilege to visit an orphanage where a friend of mine is a new missionary nurse. My friend Brandon and I were given the task of scrubbing a stairwell wall in the school so it could be painted. However, when I went into the kitchen to get some more cleaning supplies I couldn´t help striking up a little conversation with some teenage girls that were washing beans at a table. Despite my incredibly small Spanish vocabulary, we had a good little chat and then I found one of them, Karen, at my side with her arm around me. From that moment on, I was pretty distracted from the job of bleaching the hallway! One of the older girls, Clara, seemed to be the least shy around me and became my constant shadow the rest of the day... joking about the two boys I was volunteering with- calling them my ¨novios¨ and when I said, that they were only ¨brothers¨ she asked if I had any Guatemaltecan boyfriends then instead. :) I told her that she shouldn´t be thinking about boyfriends so much until after she was thirty. This was so hilarious to her that she went and told the rest of the girls who all immediately went into a giggle fit(afterwards they trumped my advice by asking Brandon, and he told them they could date after they were twenty five). It was incredibly life giving being with these beautiful, giggly, 12-18 year olds for the afternoon! Before I left, I asked Clara if she liked living at Casa Shalom and without missing a beat she said, no, I love it here.

In a country where kids disappear off the streets and ¨ladrones¨ sell them with false papers to be adopted, sold into slavery in other countries, or even murdered for their organs to be sold... these kids at Casa Shalom feel safe, loved, and are a part of a giant family who loves Jesus and each other like none I have ever seen before. Please check out the link for Casa Shalom on my page, if you want to find out more about the ministry there. And please pray for my friend, Cristen, as she transitions into the community.