I’ve been telling lots of stories lately…so I figured today I’d tell you a bit more about what’s been happening at the home lately. However…before that…we need to take a moment to talk about… things you generally don’t expect to see in a public restaurant…

I was surprised by…but okay with…the lady who came into Burger King the other day with her pet monkey. He was pretty cute. Just a little guy…all black with big eyes and long arms and legs. He sat at her table and ate his french fries like a little person. It was entertaining.

The guy the other night in the chicken restaurant with the python? Not so cute. It was still entertaining, I guess…in a “hope that thing doesn’t kill anyone” kind of way. It’s just that I’ve never really been a snake guy. I don’t have any phobias exactly, but snakes would come close. The scene from the first Indiana Jones movie where he falls into the pit of snakes still makes my skin crawl a bit. And every movie that has the big snake slowly advancing on the unsuspecting guy sitting against the tree eating his sandwich? Does not take me to my happy place.

So you can imagine how I felt eating my chicken while this dumb snake kept lifting his head and staring me down. It was wrapped around the guy’s neck and one arm and seriously…it kept looking at me. I don’t know how fast pythons can move when they want to, but I figured I was probably the biggest and tastiest morsel there. I was glad when they finally left. The funny part was that it seemed like everyone else was completely fine with dining alongside something that could potentially dine on them….

That’s as weird as it’s gotten so far. I’ll keep you updated.

So…life at the house…

Well, there are definitely some things to pray about. One of the struggles that some of the guys here face, is trying to understand and believe that God has a future for them. They tend to live in the moment and base their decisions on what’s happening right now. I knew that going in, and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this…to help the guys understand that there will be good experiences in their futures. That God does have purpose for their lives. That, with God’s help, they can accomplish what they set out to do. That it’s okay to have dreams.

But the reality is…that’s going to be a long road and we may lose a few guys before we get there. Some of them understand this and are moving forward very positively. But I had three different conversations in the past week or so, with guys thinking about leaving. That was discouraging.

For sure these guys face all kinds of pressures that we in North America often don’t. One of the fellow’s family is very poor. He’s feeling like he should be doing something to help. The fact that if he studies one more semester, he’ll be able to get a decent job in his area of study, and will be able to continue studying, just didn’t entering into his thinking. Another guy’s family wants him to basically give up everything to babysit his thirteen year old sister while the parents work. She could go to her mom’s store after school…she just doesn’t want to. So this fellow is supposed to give up everything because his younger sister is being stubborn. But he feels obligated to help.

The third story is the saddest for me. This fellow is thinking about leaving because, ultimately, he just doesn’t believe that God has anything better planned for his life. This guy spent the majority of his life on the streets with no idea where his family was. Nothing very good has ever happened for him. So you can understand why he thinks the way he does. He does have dreams for the future, but doesn’t believe that anything will come of them.

So please pray for them. I’m hoping that I was able to talk through these situations with the first two guys, and give them some ideas of how we could help their families without them having to leave. The third guy…I don’t know what he’s thinking. He’s one of the guys that I’ve known the longest, and I can see incredible potential in him. But I have no idea, really, what he’ll do in the end.

But on a more positive note. Some of the guys are doing very well. We have a volunteer coming in every week to teach a class in English. Two of the guys decided that English was a priority for them (the ability to speak English opens a lot of doors here), and asked if they could enroll in more intensive classes. They’ve been studying diligently…and it’s been fun since I’ve been able to help them. I told them I was useless when it came to helping with Chemistry or Physics…but English I understand. More or less anyhow. One of the guys came to me with a question about possessive adjectives and I was like… “Uh…what?” I’m a little rusty on the terminology, but I can at least teach them how to pronounce “th”…(it’s not “da” as is normally taught here). As a side note…when you try to pronounce words slowly and clearly…they don’t really sound like English anymore. It’s actually kind of hard to teach proper pronunciation.

And finally…the guys and I have an ongoing “discussion” (argument) about which language is more difficult, English or Spanish. Yesterday the volunteer who’s teaching English (but is a Spanish speaking Bolivian) agreed with me that Spanish is the more difficult language…

Ha…I win.

Thanks for praying everyone! We appreciate it!