Adventures at the civil registry in July

Today was a very long difficult day, requiring a lot of sacrifices. I’m tired but glad to be home after more 14 hours away. We left about 6am in the morning and I got home at 8:30pm. I suffered today, but by the end I was smiling. It was very satisfying to see the results in the end of the day.

Today I went with four families to the Civl Registry in Borbón. We took the bus there and a canoe back. It was a three hour canoe ride from Borbón to San Francisco de Onzole.  At the civil registry we were able to register four children.

Today the difficulty was registering David‘s daughter. Remember back in May we registered him and his son. As you remember that went well because his son already had a certification of live birth. The problem is that his wife doesn’t know how to sign her name (she doesn’t know how to read or write). Without her signature they could not register their daughter. She struggled attempting to make a satisfactory signature (the clerk was being extremely difficult), this humiliating and difficult process took nearly four hours until the clerk would accept it!  The other issue was that David‘s wife was going to be signing as a witness for some of the other children! Because she wasn’t able to sign her signature it was a source of embarrassment and frustration for the whole group. Fortunately at the end she was able to do a satisfactory signature. They now have their birth certificates and the next steps will be to get them there ID cards, but that should be pretty easy now. We left victorious and grateful to God for his help.

The painful experience with the signature and the difficult clerk.

We went back by canoe. I was really scared to be on the river because the Rio Santiago is very big and dangerous. But God smiled on me with a beautiful rainbow that filled my heart with peace, comfort, and joy. I took a picture but it didn’t come out very good.

A beautiful evening on a scary river.

First we go up Rio Santiago then Rio Cayapas to the town of San Francisco. When I got to San Francisco I was concerned because there was no public transportation at that late hour. But God sent my help via a cattle farmer that was heading my way in his truck (it’s about 1/2 hour by truck) He left me off right near my home! I was glad to be home because I was leaving early the next morning to go to the city of Esmeraldas to register a group of 19 children. It was good to get home and prepared for the next day.

When I got home I was very overjoyed to find that there were three children waiting for me to get home, they wanted to visit with me. A lot of the kids have been working on their farms this month with their parents and siblings. So I haven’t seen many of my kids.  During the rainy season a lot of people will cut trees, mill it into lumber and float it down the river,  of course their children are the main source for manual labor.  During this period of time children will miss school so they can help their parents with their work.

The kids were sad that I had been absent so much and when they had time I wasn’t here. It’s been a very busy week for me. Even though it was sad, I was encouraged that I was able to help attend to these children. I was able to make a meal and eat together. It seems like in these little details that God is able to restore my strength, it helps me continue to be able to love and help these children and families. I actually wanted to send them home but as I spent time with him I felt like my strength was restored. God lifted me up as I gave more.  It was beautiful!

Dinner at home with my young friends!

It was a long day full of a variety of emotions.  I just wanted to tell you about my day because a lot of people don’t understand the reality of what it is like here.  People that aren’t from here don’t understand, and people here don’t have the same values or sentiment. Sorry for such a long message but I really needed to share the difficulty and the joy that I experienced today.

Victory!After a long frustrating day!