Well, as the saying goes, i've got good news and i've got bad news.

The good news is that another mother has been trying the same stunts as Alejandrina did: going up to the school and trying to cause problems with the teachers and new director. (That's the GOOD news???) Laura had a meeting with the director and explained things, giving her a list of the children along with the judicial order numbers that put them under our roof to protect them from their parents. She understands and the girls will be allowed to come home early every day , as well as being exempted from open house days to avoid the times when parents can enter the grounds freely. The GOOD news is that the children have officially been declared abandoned by the courts and put into our care permanently. i never thought i would call something like a child being taken away from their parents a "good" thing, but then i never thought i would know any parents that would abuse their children so, including asking one of them why she didn't just kill herself... how would you like to hear that one from mommy when you are nine years old and with a birth defect caused by your mother trying to abort you when you were in her womb? Another was repeated raped by her brother over a number of years and when she tried to tell her parents about it, they beat her and yelled at her for lying about her brother and trying to get him in trouble. Now maybe you can understand why it is good news.

 

The bad news is that we have a building behind the main house. This building is two stories with an extry high attic in it that really makes it 2 1/2 stories, or even three. It is about 4.5 meters wide by 9 meters long. We have a building permit from the Municipality to construct his building and have recently finished re-roofing it, because the first roof wasn't put on well. This building houses our animals down below, the school room up above and two other rooms that we were finishing out for Sarah and Corban when they return. i say "were" because Laura found out today that we are going to have to tear this part of the home down because all of a sudden somebody remembered an easement that they forgot to tell the municipality about before they gave us permission to build in it. They are supposedly going to reimburse us for the building, but i will be surprised to see it. Not to mention that we were planning on putting the school there, have already begun the permitting process based on that location, etc. BUT, God is good and we know that He has His reasons for this. If it is dangerous for the school to be there, better that it should happen now than too late.

 

Please pray with us about these things, as well as the traveling that we (Sarah, Corban, Caleb and i) will be doing beginning this Monday. We head out through Corpus Christi, then to Arizona and California before returning here around Labor Day. Then we will be heading up north and east. Please pray for travel and preparation, as well as the ability to minister to the people in all these places.

Praise the Lord with us and thank you all for your prayers.

 

The meeting started a little shakily with all the teachers gathered together - their main beef being that it was difficult for them to say that a mother could not see her children and give them at least a little change or a piece of bread... Again, they had listened to Alejandrina and not investigated. Their "other hackles" had come up! By the end of the meeting they understood the situation - and when Alejandrina was asked to come in (she had been waiting in town for her children to get out of school so she could see them against the court order) they were totally convinced that we were correct in all that we said, because she denied ever having gotten drunk (the Director herself has seen her passed out in the street). They understood that the trauma the children are experiencing is from their contact with their mother in the school and not in El Arca.

 

Please continue to pray for Alejandrina. In spite of everything, we would still love for her to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and get delivered from all that torments her.

 

The school also gave us permission to keep one of the newer arrivals at home and teach him. He has been falling in the mud, losing his uniform, hiding under the bed and many other things to keep from going to school. He hid under the bed today and when i came home from doing some things in Poroy, i asked him why he didn't like going to school. It didn't take long until he told me with tears in his eyes that it had to do with his mother. She dropped them off at the home without warning and told him she would come back. She didn't. Before that, she would always just lock him in a room with the television on and take his younger brother on her back to work. It is possible that a 14 year old boy molested him while his mother was away. We are asking for a physical and psychological exam to find out if it is true. Meanwhile, we get to keep him with us and love on him.

 

On another note, the teachers had nothing but praises for the other children and wish that all of their students could be the same.

Last night, Gabi asked me in her broken english, "Papa, are you going to adopt me?" i asked her if she wanted us to and she said yes. She later asked me if i thought she loved me because of the things i give her and i replied, "No. i think you love me because you are a wonderful little girl." Her brother Alex has been a constant handful since we received them three years ago. In the meeting with the teachers today, his teacher said that when they first started to school, he wrote his name down as "Alex Lenz" and not Alex Aranya Ccori. The teacher could find no Alex Lenz on the list so asked him why he had written his name that way. He said, "Because he is my papa." (THAT is more than worth all the problems!)

 

Please keep praying for all of the children. They have experienced things in their short lives that many of us can't even imagine (or want to, for that matter.)