Jun 2007

I'm sorry it's been so long since our last entry. Between writing sponsorship letters and working with the kids our blog entries have fallen behind but we're going to start writing in it more frequently now.

This entry will feature some of the babies...

This is Noemi at 16 months. Pete and I love to play with Noemi because she is always happy. She loves to laugh and loves for us to hold her. She especially likes to be thrown up in the air and caught. Since our arrival, Noemi has learned to walk. It has been such a privilege to watch her go from taking her first steps to now pattering all around. Noemi also loves to swim. I take her to the pool on Thursdays and we have so much fun splashing around together. In the pool, Noemi likes it when I place her on the edge and hold out my hands for her to fall into my arms. We say together (in English), “One, two, three!” and she jumps into my arms laughing the whole time. Noemi is also very cute during snack time. The other day I was feeding her a banana and before she took a bite she would always say, “Yummmm.” Every time! It made Pete and I laugh. We actually videotaped it and we hope to be able to show it soon.

Noemi’s story is very interesting. Noemi’s mother was actually hired as a surrogate for a Columbian family. Noemi’s mother already had three kids, no job, and was living with her mother so she was desperate to make some money. The Columbian family paid her $800 but then they were suddenly called back to Columbia and never came back or tried to contact Noemi’s mother. When Noemi was born, Noemi’s mother couldn’t afford to keep her so that’s how Noemi came to For His Children. She has been with us since she was about a week old. She is a very smart baby and is usually a favorite by all.

This is Andrea at 11 months sitting in Pete's lap. Andrea has the sweetest, little personality. She is very quiet and sometimes timid but she loves to be around people. Andrea especially likes to be with Pete. We recently took her to our house to play, but Andrea wanted to sit in Pete’s lap the whole time. She was so content to just be near him.

Since Andrea is more guarded then the other babies, you truly feel rewarded when she laughs or smiles at you. A few ways to get her to laugh or smile at you is to tickle her. She will laugh so hard when she is tickled that she will go into that “silent laugh” mode. Andrea is one of the more independent babies and seems content to play by herself when we are busy helping with the other babies. In the last month, she has started to walk cautiously but she still prefers to do a butt-scoot-like crawl. She never goes on her hands and knees, rather she scooches her way across the floor. When she gets excited about something she will scooch over to you with gusto so that she is practically using her butt as a trampoline.

Andrea’s story is something out of a movie. A family found a little baby only a few days old in a box on their doorstep on evening. They were afraid to touch her at first because they noticed right away that she had six fingers on her left hand and six toes on her right toe. Finally they called a neighbor (who told them to stop being superstitious) and the neighbor called the police. The police could never find out who left little Andrea there and she came For His Children shortly after. She has had her extra fingers and toes removed now (they were more like nubbins than actual limbs) but she is still very self-conscience bout them. She will not let you touch or see where her scar is on her hands or feet.

Finally, this is Emilia at seven months old. I’m pretty sure Emilia is the happiest, sweetest baby in the whole world. I have only seen her cry once in all my three months here and it was only for a second. I truly believe that Emilia has been blessed by God with one of the best-natured personalities. She is always happy and smiling whether you are holding her or whether she is playing by herself. Recently, I was playing with the babies in their room and Emilia was playing quietly by herself in her crib. The rest of the babies were playing on the floor with me, so I went to Emilia’s crib to have her join us but she looked so happy cooing softly to herself as she played with her stuffed bear that I decided to leave her there. She continued to play in her crib just as happy as could be. I also really like it when I get to play with Emilia in the pool. She gets so excited to be in the water. She loves to splash around, although occasionally she will give herself a good splash in the face which will startle her. As you can see, she is also our most photogenic baby.

Emilia is another baby who was found on a doorstep in a cardboard box only hours after her mother gave birth to her. The family who found her noticed a strange car near their house and they suspect now that it was Emilia’s mother who was making sure that someone found her. The family wanted to keep Emilia but when they called the police, the police told them they’d have to go through the proper adoption methods. So now Emilia is here at FHC and is a healthy, beautiful baby girl.

All three of these babies are very dear to my heart. Please pray for them to find loving, Christian families soon. We will write more soon!

Since this is probably one of our only venting sessions I (Tesha) thought I'd jump on and say one more thing about Ecuador/Ecuadorians that frustrates/confuses us. First, let's think about an every day situation in the United States: You’re at the grocery store. You don't have a cart. You're browsing in the middle of the cereal aisle deciding which one you'd like to have for the next morning's breakfast. While deciding you notice out of the corner of your eye that someone else is moving down your aisle with a shopping cart. You are in the middle of the aisle and the person is looking like they want to pass you so you....
a) Take one step and move out of the way
b) Pretend like you don't see them and continue standing directly in the middle of the aisle as to make it very difficult for them to maneuver their cart around you

Now I may be an optimist but I believe most of us would trouble ourselves to take that extra step so the person with the cart could easily pass. Common courtesy right? Not here in Ecuador. Seriously, it's like all people of all ages have the "I'm not going to move" mentality. It happens to us everywhere...buses, malls, grocery stores, sidewalks… At first we thought that they were just giving us "gringos" a hard time but then we noticed that everyone does it to everyone else no matter what their race or status is.

We're getting used to it now; plus we're getting really good at making ourselves a lot smaller to squeeze by people, but it still one of those things that makes you really appreciate certain common courtesies in Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

When something frustrates you in your home country, you normally blame an individual, a restaurant, a bank, or some other company. But when you're in a foreign country and something frustrates you, I think you tend to blame the entire country.
There are some things here that frustrate Tesha and me, and we're trying not to blame all of Ecuador. The first thing to bother us is that pedestrians have no right of way whatsoever here. A couple weeks ago we almost got hit by a car when we were crossing the street at at stoplight, in a crosswalk, with the walk signal, when the driver was making a right turn. The driver, by the way, was a police officer in his police car (we stopped, not him). I immediately blamed the whole country - the Ecuadorian mountains, jungle, and all, but now I take it back. The law favors pedestrians; in fact, you'll go to jail immediately if you hit one, but I guess drivers know that pedestrians won't gamble the driver's jail sentence with their own lives. I've never blamed the USA for American drivers who aren't courteous to bike riders, but it's easy to blame Ecuador when I'm frustrated here.
Twice now I've opened a new stick of butter that was made, packaged and sold in Ecuador, and there has been a thin layer of paper from the wrapper that sticks to the butter. "Ahh! Curse the trees of Ecuador!" I've never blamed America when the Fruit Loops bag is so hard to open that you pull until it just splits down the middle all the way to the bottom.
Today I had to try hard not to be mad at Ecuador. Because some government agency in Ecuador wanted to be a pain and maybe make a little more money, Tesha and I are required to register ourselves with our visas now that we're in the country. (I thought that obtaining the visa registered us.) It's not that big of a deal, but it's annoying because we get sent from one agency to another and then back to the same one because of a lack of communications between the agencies. To make things worse, the worker at the Ecuadorian consulate in Los Angeles forgot to give me one of the documents that I need. So now we have to pay extra because "the law leaves no written exceptions that deal with our situation." In this case, I have to try extra hard not to blame all of the land in between Columbia and Peru, since the government is causing the frustration. As nice of a person as I try to be, I will admit that I had a hard time thinking nice thoughts about every Ecaudorian in a government uniform that I saw for the rest of the day.
A related frustration is that to get my Ecuadorian drivers license, I am supposed to get a document from some sort of notary public in the United States, saying that my California drivers license is legitamate. I want to ask Ecuador, "and then should I get a document saying that the document that legitamizes my license is legitamate, and then one that says that document is legitamate...," and so on. Honestly, what will probably end up happening is that the worker will act like there is nothing he can do until I hand him a 10 dollar bill along with my license and that will serve as my offcial document. It's very easy to blame all of Ecuador for the corruption and bribery that goes on here, when really it is just a small percentage of individuals to blame.

We're having a great time here; I just wanted to share this to remind travelers that if you're frustrated at a whole country, it's probably just becuase you're out of your comfort zone.
-Pete