The below entry was written by Stefan Feuerstein, National Director of
NPH Honduras. Stefan reflects on the emotional experience of bringing
eight-year-old Manuel permanently into the NPH family due to the closing of the
home where he had lived.
I don’t know if I will ever really understand
this world, where small children can be so totally lost and desperate that they
will happily get in a car and drive away to a new place to live with complete
strangers, while smiling and laughing. I
don’t know if I will ever understand how children can become so disappointed by
those who should love them, that they find hope in those they don’t yet know.
But today reminded me of the role that we can all
play in the lives of the lost to make things just a little bit better, and it
reminded me of the huge responsibility that we all bear together as we embark
to do just that.
Today I felt my heart get ripped to tiny shreds
and stitched together again a thousand times as we drove back from San Pedro
Sula to the Ranch with Nidia, our Social Worker, and Manuel*, a child of eight
years, in the back seat of my car. A
small, innocent boy with a sweet laugh, missing front teeth and a lisp, Manuel
talked and talked and laughed and talked as Nidia laughed and listened. He
talked of his favorite foods that he had not yet eaten, and compared in great
detail the hamburger that we bought for him, to the previous one, the first
hamburger he had ever had. He tried for a while to count the stars through the
window as we drove on winding roads through the mountains once it got dark. He
explained to us which robots are the strongest, and why. But in his stories, so
sweetly told, you could also find bits and pieces that reminded us over and
over again how broken we have let the world become. He proudly told us that he
is never afraid of the dark, not even when he sleeps outside in the grass at
night to avoid beatings from his step-father. He spoke of his dreams of becoming
a soldier, because they have bigger guns than the murderers who walk the streets.
In childish pragmatism, he tried to figure out how many pizzas you would need
to take with you if you tried to walk to the United States in three days from
Honduras.
But watching Nidia and Manuel in my mirror as
they talked and laughed together, I saw how one broken little piece of this
world can maybe fix another broken little piece. Nidia came to NPH when she was
nine. She worked hard, studied well, and graduated from university as a Social
Worker a few years ago. And here she is
today, negotiating with politicians, arguing with government social workers,
formalizing the legal guardianship of NPH for 20 children from a closing
government home, and laughing with a lost little boy in the back seat of a car
as she takes him to the place that will be the foundation for his future.
It’s been a long, tiring day, with long tiring
drives to and from the murder capital of the world. But it’s been a truly
beautiful day.
I am so proud and grateful to be part of this
amazing endeavor that Father Wasson started so many years ago. There is so much
that we will never understand, and there is so much that is broken, but there
is also so much that is good in the people around us.
Tonight I go to bed thinking of broken pasts
and promising futures, and thinking of those little things that might mean that
some little worlds and some little lives just might be ok soon.
Tonight is Manuel’s first night of many on the
Ranch.
Good night, and God Bless,
Stefan
*names have been changed to protect the privacy of children