La Casa de Amistad

The Friendship House is located next to three prisons. The Men´s, the Women´s, and the Maximum Security Men´s. It´s in an area where I have been explicitly told multiple times not to EVER go alone. I´ve been going with the team on a pretty regular basis. What is it? It is a school for the children of the people in jail. It is a safe place where the kids who live (yes, live) in the prison with their parents go to learn.

Wednesday I re-visited. I go in the mornings, so I always see the same kids and I´ve formed pretty good relationships with them. Because the kids are on break, though, there was a surplus of new faces (yes, at this school children enjoy going to school so much that they go during break! AH!)... My new Canadian friend, Megan, and I took a group of the kids to a futbol pitch down the road. In order to get to there, though, we had to cross a major road with a major intersection and a coliseum. You´ll be surprised to hear that it wasn´t the road or intersection the kids were worried about, but the coliseum... The kids who we were with--the kids who walk that way everyday ALONE-- told us about the men we were passing by. They were robbers and rapists and who knows what else (actually, the kids know... But, with my limited Spanish I only caught those two things). We passed those types of people in order to get to a play area, and that isn´t uncommon for these beautiful, little children. My heart breaks when I think about that...

Right now we are preparing for a camp for the kids of La Casa de Amistad. They are coming to the place where we live and staying with us for three nights. We´re going to tell these amazing kids about a Father who loves them and we´re going to share that love with them. 24-7.

Please partner with us in prayer over this next week. It is going to be an amazing time of getting to know these kids and of just being there for them in any way that we can.

Grace and peace,
Margaret