Last week we took some of our 6th graders to an orphanage in the city as part of Activities Week. For about half of the students, this was their first time in such a place.
Students played soccer and basketball with the older kids while some went up to the infant room where they learned how comforting human touch is to a child.
The orphanage is run by a group of precious ladies from the small Mediterranean island of Malta. Their quick smiles and subtle sense of humor are a testimony to the bright faith that has kept them serving here more than forty years.
Some of our students with one of the nuns after she took them to feed the sheep.
Just before leaving, one of the nuns pointed to a boy, about five years old, kicking around a soccer ball.
"Benny weighed only half a kilo when he came to be with us," she began. "An American woman was with us at the time. She would take the child and wrap him inside her shirt as she fed him. 'My Benny will not die,' she would tell us. She nursed that child to health. Looking at him today, you would not know his life started out that way."
A Bingham student with Benny.
I left that day, amazed at the selfless compassion of these ladies who have lived here for so many years. But I was also encouraged by the impact made on a child's life by a short-term volunteer from the States who simply chose not to lose hope.
And sometimes in this life - and particularly in this part of the world - hope is all we have.
"My Benny will not die."
*Benny is a pseudonym. His real name was changed here for reasons of privacy.
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