volunteer

other

The last few days are all so much that I don’t know how to write anything at all, but for the same reason I’ve gotta write something, so it’ll be the game of hell and earth and life and god in as few words as possible. Here’s what happened; what I feel and need to say will come later.

She was jumped and raped monday morning. For 72 hours she was in hell. When she slept she relived it over and over again until she woke up, then it’s this batshit scared broken semi-concious state where she thrashes and cries out until she realizes that it’s not all happening again, and she begs to not be alone and her friend would ask her if she needs anything, food or water, then she falls asleep back into reliving what’s far worse than death until she wakes up again. I’ve never seen something so terrifying and horrible, when I finally let it all out and cried and cried, I’ve never cried like that before in my life. Something change deep in my heart, the type of change that doesn’t happen but a few times in a lifetime.

She was completely disabled. To go to the bathroom, Jorge and I had to stand her up, at which point she’d pass out and we’d have to carry her fireman style (the two of us barely held up, she’s not a small girl) to the bathroom, where we’d leave her with a few of her friends and she’d wake up on the toilet and panic and cry again. She hadn’t eaten a meal since Sunday.

And yesterday morning 72 hours later she woke up and said she needed to walk. She bathed with a little bit of help from Julia and asked for breakfast. She ate, and we went to the Catholic Church. She got into and out of the car on her own. So here I am sitting a few spots down the pew from her. She’s forgiven the four men, she’s sobbing but there’s no more pain nor fear, she’s sobbing because she’s giving thanks to God and she looks at me with a smile and says David, I need to look for the people who are most needy in this world and help them, Jesus came to me in my dream and told me he didn’t want to see me like I was, he told me to get up and walk because there’s work to do, and she says this with a smile. I need to find the most needy people in this world and help them, she said. You arrived was all I could say, and she smiled and nodded.

And yesterday morning something else changed deep in my heart, the same type of change that doesn’t happen but a few times in a lifetime. She left Barillas yesterday after going to church, she left with two of her friends in a little old plane piloted by a content old gringo who doesn’t really have any home at all and in half an hour she was in her hometown Quetzaltenango for medical tests and then went to be with her family.

You can’t make this stuff up, man.

other, photography

Two of the families that have children in the sponsorship program, the Lorenzo León family and the Rodríguez Méndez family. One of the families doesn’t have a father, and one of them has basically nothing and not really enough money for food. The other family has a little bit more than nothing, and still not really enough for food.

Also, I’d forgotten how white I am. Dang.

The Lorenzo León family (and gringo)
the Rodríguez Méndez family (minus the little dude, Sergio)

other

Well, here it goes: this is my first whack at building a website.

Rough draft:

http://www.porchcoffee.org/lifeandhope/Home.html

The buttons don’t work (unless you’re an IE-user), there are no pages but the main page and the two boxes below the slideshow have absolutely zero format/style/font/zing/content. Ok Kelvin, fine, maybe it’s not absolutely zero, but it’s dang close. And with respect to being edgy, hip and cool (beautiful examples: Amnesty International, RED or Kiva), it’s simply not even an attempt.

But it’s a website, which is a new thing in dave world :). Also, for its audience the only need is easily available content. Once we here have made some orders-of-magnitude epic growth, then it’ll be time for a slick website to draw in more publicity and viewers. For now, I think it’s time to go eat a delicious two dollar lunch of carne asada, Guatemalan veggies and an orange.

Edit:
The buttons work now. Done son, wOOt, boomshicka-wow-wow and all that jazz, I’m pretty stoked that they work now. Apparently the slideshow div was messing with the button bar (?). A switch from relative positioning to absolute positioning did the trick. It’s probably a hack way of doing things (I don’t know enough about webpage code to even know if something’s hack or not, haha), and I don’t really understand why it worked, but it worked and (I’m pretty sure) it works in chrome and IE and firefox. Close enough.