Good morning America!

Its almost nine in the morning in Charallave and already I'm sweating and frankly, smell bad. The days and nights are pretty much always incredibly hot but we are now entering the rainy season so now things are wet and hot. Somehow the rain does not cool the temperature and the heat doesn't dry anything. I did laundry yesterday and now have clean clothes, unfortunately none of them are dry and my host mother said I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow. Might as well wear dirty ones, I'm going to sweat through them anyway.

My team returned to Charallave last saturday from niños de la luz. It was incredibly hard to leave these boys with whom we had built relationships and will always have a foothold in our hearts. The boys come from various situations: most have parents, only their parents cannot support them, they do not know where their parents are, the parents have drug or alcohol addictions or missing mental facilities. The boys have been in and out of group homes and the streets of Caracas. As a result, a few do not know how to read or even know their alphabet. The farm on which niños is located has a small school for the boys who are too far behind to go to real school, but there is no teacher. In our six weeks at the farm, we taught school. Praise God! One boy, who struggles with retaining information and is 11, now knows his alaphabet and simple math and substraction! Another boy, can read simple sentences! We saw incredible growth in these boys while we were there, but it took a lot of time, perseverance and pouring into these boys. Pray for a teacher for these boys. Unfortunately, the host parents are either exhausted from the time they have dedicated to these kids or are fairly new and untrained. So a lot of things fall between the cracks of complete exhaustion and inexperience. All I want for those boys, is that they would be able to just be boys but circumstances have not allowed that. Niños de la Luz is an awesome ministry but they need help. There are three houses: El Camino, Manatial and Esperanza. Pray for them. There are three sets of host parents (called uncles and aunts by the kids): Omar and Josephina, Jose and Mirtha, and Soltela. Pray for rejuvenation of their bodies and minds. Also please pray for more staff. At one time there used to be six sets of aunts and uncles, that would rotate when one set needed time off. Please pray for them, your brothers and sisters in christ.

Only through the love of God above,

Alyse Haldeman

Praises:

- For the time we spent with the boys at the farm. For what we learned and what we taught them.

Prayer requests:

- For the needs of Niños de la Luz

-We are leaving for Brazil this coming monday to renew our visas. Then at the end of May until the beginning of July, we are going to be in the Amazonas. Please pray that God will prepare the way for us and go before us. Especially with all the fish (including eyes and heads), yuca (otherwise known as yucka), monkey brain and snake (don't worry, I think these were jokes) that we are going to eat.