Boys Will Be Boys

Today at Hope we got to see the children in everyday action; with no big teams on the compound life gets back to normal. There were children doing their laundry, helping with kitchen duty, watching a movie (We brought a few “G” rated videos from the states), and even more children just running and playing outside.

It reminded us of our own home and bringing up eight children, seven boys and one girl. They all had their chores and their free time. Even though we have many boys, we felt it was very important to train them up to know how to take care of themselves. This means cooking, cleaning, laundry and dishes. That way when they were grown they could either do things for themselves or appreciate their wives’ care of them from a first hand knowledge. We see this at work at Hope as well and we approve of all the children pitching in to help so no one person has to bear the burden of all the hard work.

That said we want to relay two incidents that happened today that show children are not so different across the world. In the morning I (Alisa) was working with Lia (another team member on an extended stay) to interview all the children to add information to their files when some noise and then crying broke out in the front yard. Knowing that sound quite well, I went out to see what was going on. As it turns out, two little boys had been playing and had collided with each other. They were both hurting, crying and a little mad at each other. Pulling them both up on my lap, I just held them and cleaned their faces and dusted their clothes. It brought back the memory of my own little ones who would get into altercations. As soon as they knew they were loved and cared for the tears dried up, smiles came back to their faces and off they went back to play again.

Later in the afternoon all the adults were sitting in Pastor Prossy’s office once again when BANG went a very loud noise! We all sprang into action to see what had happened. As it turns out the sound was glass breaking as a ball sailed into one of the front windows. The big boys had been playing soccer and lost control of the ball. That really took us back in time to our house. How many times have we had to replace windows because of our boys? As Randy cleaned up the mess, making sure all the glass was cleaned up; Alisa relayed a similar incident to Pastor Prossy. After the second time one of our boys (who will remain nameless) broke a window, Randy told him he would need to pay for it himself. Prossy then asked if our son had a job earning money at the time. I replied that he did not, but Dad gave him one and he earned the money for the broken window.

A little while later after the clean up, Prossy called the big boys into her office. As is their custom they came in on bended knee to face their punishment. She then told them that she would be arranging for them to do some work in the neighborhood to earn the money to pay for the window. She said she would not buy the window until the work was done. It was so sweet to see them smile and clap their hands after they heard their fait. You could see they were relieved that they could do something to make up for the loss of a window to their home.

So boys will be boys all over the world and parents can be parents if they have the love in their hearts to raise them well.