When a Park Bench is Your Bed

By Dani Rupp

As dusk set in over Plaza Altimira in Caracas, the neon green vest of a policeman caught my eye.
"Give me what's in your hand, " the policeman demanded to a young teenage street boy, dressed in raggedy clothes and no shoes.
"No," the fiesty boy responded, struggling to get away from the authorites. Despite his small size he held is own.
"Give it to me!" the policeman ordered again.
Again the boy refused, a wild, glazed look in his eyes.
The policeman grabbed the boy's hand tighter and the teen finally relented, giving up two small white pills. The boy, still agressive, walked angrily way, shouting threats and obsenities.
"Wow, he's usually not like that," one volunteer for Contactos de la Calle (Contacts in the Streets) sadly obsereved. "He's usually well mannered and calm, but tonight he's high."

This was my first encounter with a boy living on the streets of Caracas. Last Friday night Brett, Cassie and I had the opportunity to go out with Contactos de la Calle, an organization that pairs up with Niños de la Luz to help kids on the street. We me up with about ten Venezuelans and split into three groups to hit different parts of the city. After buying bread and pop to hand out to the kids, my group headed out. Besides the boy mentioned above, the plaza was mostly vacant of kids, as the presence of the police scared them away. We kept moving around and over the next hour or so we met up with mostly older teenage boys, talked, ate and prayed with them. It was eye opening to see where some of the boys we work with at Niños probably came from. After seeing kids on the street first hand I have a better idea of how to pray for the boys still living on the street and for the boys living at the farm.

Prayer Requests
* Niños de la Luz- for the boys living there and the staff, especially since they are short on help
* Contactos de la Calle- continued strength in their ministry and for males to volunteer to make going out at night safer
* Kids still on the street
* Our team as we leave Niños, prepare to renew our Visas in Brazil and then head to Amazonas

Praises
* Health and safety
* Connecting with kids and staff at Niños
* All the memories made the past 6 weeks at the farm

Ninos de la Luz

Brothers Joseph (11), Matt (10), and Luke (7) who have lived at Ninos de la Luz for almost two years. (Names of the children have been changed for confidentiality purposes)

Jeremy helping learn the alphabet in the school.

Cassandra Klingenberg
4/14/08

When we moved to Ninos de la Luz, we expected to be busy, but didn’t know with what. Within three days, we realized there was a need to teach at the Esculita, a school on the farm for the boys who are not yet ready to enter the school system. Only weeks before our arrival, the teacher of eight years left. We are serving as substitute teachers until they fill her position. Some of the boys can’t go to the public school because of behavior, learning disabilities, or being academically behind. I’ve been working especially hard with Joseph, age 11, who struggles with identifying numbers, colors, and letters. He’s slowly been progressing as we combine learning the numbers with BINGO, UNO, and flash cards.

Joseph’s dream is to be a pastor one day. Before bed each night, he asks Brett and I to pray for him and his little brother, Luke (7). If we forget, or come in late, he’ll whistle quietly until we come into their room. I’ve never seen a young boy so hungry to pray, sing, and learn scripture. We feel the presence of the Lord is upon him, and believe one day he will be called to be a pastor.

Praises:
-The relationships we have been able to build with the boys
-We have successfully cleaned over 20,000 eggs in the last 3 weeks!

Prayer requests:
-Discernment as we will need to leave the country in a month to renew our passports again.
-Continued energy and strength as we pour into the lives of the boys

Vigilia

Jeremy Spangler
April 1, 2008

Vigilia. What does that mean? Over the months that we have been here, I have learned quite a bit about this word. It is Spanish for wakefulness or vigilance. In our first month here, I had a roommate named Johnny. Johnny said this word to me one evening in a conversation not long after we got here, and I did not know what it was, so I looked it up. I was still confused as to what he was getting at, and over the next month with him I saw what he meant. Johnny works as a plumber with long hours. He would spend the night in the upper room of the church next to our house and he told me he would read and pray until about midnight, then sleep for about three hours and get up and read and pray then go to work at five.
The night of Thursday, April 28, about 120 people from the Shalom Congregation gathered in the front yard Brother Carlos in La Mata, not far from central Charallave to have what was called La Gran Vigilia: Adoremos al Rey (The Great Vigilance: We adore the King). We stayed up through the night praying and worshipping and having theatre and singing contests. It was a lot of loud music, testifying, and passion, all for the King, all night long. The reason for a vigilia on this night was because it is ‘the night’ that Jesus prayed and sought the guidance of God before he was crucified and in the same way we adored the King and sought his guidance through the night.
The one thing I saw through the whole night was love. Love for our King and love for each other, which represents all the more loving our King. It did not matter how someone sang, acted, performed, or anything else, it was known they did it because they loved the King and wanted to adore Him.
The next day I asked Pastor Ceferino about noise annoying the neighbors and he responded, “Ni importa, están acostumbrado.” Which mainly means it does not matter, they are used to it. It is not unusual here for parties to have extremely loud music, which can be heard for blocks and can go for hours into the night. Though we have been here for the time we have, it does not mean that we are used to it though.