You all have followed, at least to some extent, all of my adventures this summer, so I will give a super quick recap of how things closed up after One Nation.
Our final day of La Kennedy ministry was on Wednesday the 24th, and it also happened to be Jefferson's 5th birthday. Since we gave Oscar a pretty great party, we obviously had to do the same for little Jefferson! He wanted the same type of cake as Oscar, so we made two vanilla cakes with strawberry icing decorated by wonderful Dan. Instead of doing typical spaghetti or chicken & rice, we decided to make him macaroni and cheese...a meal for a kid! Of course he was equally as shy as Oscar was on his birthday, but everything went super well. Everyone was fed, everyone got cake, and everyone danced a bit.
Unfortunately, it was sort of a bittersweet birthday party since it was our last day. About an hour and a half into our visit, all of the community members started to realize that we weren't coming back the next day, and things became very sad very quickly. In particular, I was touched by one of the girls to whom we had been minstering at the beginning of the summer. She hadn't been in the community for about two or three weeks because she had been too busy working 'arriba' in the streets. When she had been there earlier she was on thinner about 85% of the time and she very rarely would have a full conversation with any of us. However, she was the first person to cry on our last day. Tony mentioned to the community that they should start exchanging contact information (if any) and saying goodbyes, and this girl just started to bawl. Before any of our group or anyone else cried, she was devastated. I never realized how much we were impacting her just by being there. She didn't need to tell us her life plans or do an in depth Bible study with us each day; it only mattered that we were there and that we loved her. This girl, this high, lonely, homeless, dirty girl, is the reason that I fell in love with street ministry. Everything was worth it to realize that she was impacted just by my presence.
After we said our goodbyes everyone started to slowly filter out to the car to go back to the property. I was one of the last people to leave (no surprise), and I had to make a conscious effort to stop hugging people and to just leave. As I started to walk up, a group of them started to shout my name. I turned around and Carla, Jefferson's mom, yelled to me (in Spanish), "I will never forget you. I love you so much... You have changed this place." As if I wasn't already about to cry, this did the trick. I walked out to the car sobbing. When I finally got to the car, I turned around and, of course, a group of about 5 people had followed me out and wanted us to keep hugging them. Tony realized that everything was just going to get harder, so he decided to just pray as a group and head out. While we were all sitting in the car waiting for Tony to leave I heard a little knock on my window. When I looked over, Jefferson was being held up by Carla and he was waving to me with tears in his eyes and the saddest little face I have ever seen. My heart just kept breaking! Needless to say, it was a quiet ride home aside from the sniffles and nose-blowing from all of the crying, but it was such a great way to go out!
Here are lots of pictures from the party, our final day, and other days of ministry.
Jefferson and I!
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