Caring El Salvador

A lot of good work goes on in El Salvador.  Many people care for others.

One group of Christians held a men's prayer breakfast weekly, seeking the Lord's face as to what to do for His work.  They met regularly over a period of months.  At some point during those months, one of the men described what he had unwittingly come across during his daily work.

He had entered an old delapidated building and found an elderly woman living, not on her own, but surrounded by 50 babies, all in various stages of neglect.  Some had big sores caused by over-wearing badly soiled diapers.  All were malnourished and the stench, he said, was overpowering.

This woman rescued unwanted babies and did everything she could to keep them alive.  Her task was overwhelming but she was undaunted.  She had no apparent means of support and was not a registered orphanage.

The men's group decided to take a look and they too, were horrified by the outward condition of what they found.  They did a clean-up for her and left, feeling vindicated to some degree by their good deed.

They continued to meet, asking the Lord to show them what they should do to further His Kingdom
on earth.  Slowly it dawned on them that G-d had in fact answered their prayer.  They had just been avoiding the answer as it was so very much outside any of their combined curriculum vitaes.

Still, having awakened to the need, they put hearts and soul into the work that needed to be done.

Today they have a 30 acre property for the housing and use of el salvadoran orphans.

This is just one group.  Another, seeing a similar need among El Salvadorans orphaned population have bought a 10 acre property and are working towards a sustainable community where house
parents look after 6 or 8 orphans per unit, and sustain the community with a hydroponic fish unit
combined with vegetable growing and poultry. This is a rural community.  The first thing that needed
to be done was to build a wall around the acreage to provide a degree of safety.  A gang culture still exits in parts of the country.

Sadly there is a culture in El Salvador of sexual misconduct.  Incest is common in some communities and women see little hope of breaking away from the cycle.  Their attitude is rooted in 'it happened to me so it is likely to happen to my daughter too'. This is not something necessarily connected to poor families.  In fact, many poorer families are free it.  (I am quoting an orphanage worker in this paragraph and cannot say for sure that the problem is country wide.). It is a generational problem which needs to be addressed.

A brief reference to the gang culture.  Our son has a small beach front property on the La Libertad
coast.  A river borders the side of the property and across the river is a shanty town area.  The employed builder related the previous day's events to our son when he went down to check on the building progress.

Apparently a gang from the shanty area had crossed the river (very easy to do) and used the accommodation on the property for a night's stay.  On leaving, he related, they marked the property on the outside wall with their logo, an X.  Sure enough, an X existed.  So the tale having been told, what should the outcome be?

" Scratch out the X"-  was our sons instruction.

This was met with disbelief and astonishment.  "If the X is scratched out, that will anger the gang so much that they will seek you out to harm you", our son was told.

He persisted though, and the X was duly removed.  There were no repercussions.

What he did notice though was that young people came to stand underneath the trees on the short rubbish littered drive to the property because they could connect to the hotel's wifi, the hotel being opposite to our son's property.  Sometimes there is a simple reason for what seem to be difficulties.