Su Nombre
By Alexis Perez Rogers, WBC Volunteer 2011-12
He also has really been enjoying reading. He asks me to read him the same "Grifford the Bombero" book twice a day. After I read to him one day, I asked him if anyone has every read him a book before. He shook his head no. Not even a short bed time story? Nope. It then occurred to me that this little boy, like many others here, probably had never even seen a story book before in his home. The whole concept that the words on the page tell a story was new to him. I asked him if he wanted to take a book home and have someone read it to him. His face lit up. He had a huge smile and got so excited. I let him borrow a book and told him to bring it back at the end of the week and he can trade it for another one to take home. The next morning, the first thing he did was excitedly pull out the book and tell me that his sister read it to him before he went to bed.
He can't read, but since I read to him everyday he has began memorizing the book and here he is shyly reading to me and the camera the first couple pages of Clifford:
WBC student expresses God's love through poetry
God's Love
by Kimberly Rochina
It is indestructible
It is beyond words
He watches over us and protects us
He gives us strength to continue fighting,
Not to stumble in his flock,
And walk with the devotion of his love.
Amor de Dios por nosotros es único
Es indestructible
Está más allá de las palabras
Él nos cuida y nos protege
Él nos da fuerza para seguir luchando,
De no tropezar en su rebaño,
Y caminar con la devoción de su amor.
The Magic Shoes
By Sister Cindy Sullivan, BVM
Working Boys' Center Director
Meet Aracely Ruiz. Aracely, age 9, entered the Working Boys' Center this past September with her mother, her 13-year-old brother and her younger twin sisters, Nicol and Carolina. I first laid eyes on Aracely during a noon Mass in the Center. She was sitting on the front bench refereeing the play action of her two sisters the whole Mass. I caught her line of vision a couple of times to giver her my "sister" stare that meant shape up! It had no impact on Aracely. Since she was new I did not try to win this battle. I knew that there would be more battles.
A week later Aracely had the good fortune that I was visiting the English classrooms. A volunteer was trying to get her class to listen to her and have them all sit in the assigned seats that were evident by the brightly colored name tags that the children had colored the week before. Aracely was challenging a couple of her classmates because they had moved her name tag to a different seat. She was having none of that. I once again gave her a "stare" and told her to sit down where her name tag was located. With that she went to her seat, but, not before knocking to the floor all the name tags of the other kids that were within reach. I hovered over her until she picked up the name tags and sat down. One battle won!
Two weeks later I happened to be observing the physical education class. Aracely was in a tag team race. Her team was doing well, but when it came to Aracely's turn the class all laughed as she half waddled and half loped when it was her turn to run. Fortunately the last person on Aracely's team was fast and picked up where she had lagged and her team won the first heat.
During the second heat, once again when it was Aracely's turn her style of running brought gales of laughter from the entire class. This time the teams had a baton that they were supposed to pass to the next runner. When Aracely arrived back she stared down the whole team and threw the baton down and dared anyone to laugh. No one did. She then went to the back of the line. When all the team mates were once again focused on the race she burst into tears.
So, I took her into a room apart from the other kids, and asked her what was the problem. She spat out that the kids were all laughing at her. I tried to console her and told her sometimes kids laugh when they shouldn't. Then with a pleading in her eyes she said, "Madre look at my shoes!"
Her shoes were an inch too big for her. She was trying to run and keep her toes curled up so not lose her shoes in the process. Thus, the funny gallop. She informed me that she was not running anymore! I once again explained that sometimes we get hurt by others because they don't understand. I sent her to wash the tears away to save face…besides I needed to dry my own.
A couple of days later I found two second hand pairs of soccer shoes with pumas on the side. I had one of our shoeshine kids shine them up. I found a new set of socks that came with a pink, purple and blue set… also with a puma on the side.
The following week I found Aracely while all the other families were at lunch and I took her down to the patio. I told her some nice person had given us their child's special running shoes. I did not know if either pair would fit her. She assured me that the one pair was her exact size…sight unseen!! I explained how the puma is the fastest runner of the lions. So without further ado I took out the shoes and socks and gave them to her to try on.
She then told me how when her father had been with the family things were better. Her mom used to be able to buy them shoes but since her dad had left her mom works hard but just can't afford things for them like shoes. Her brother too, works hard and is good to them but her brother and mom have a hard time paying the rent, lights, and other critical household expenses. Since they came to the Center they were eating better and life is improving. Not bad for a nine-year-old to be able to process all those heavy life burdens.
With that we went out to the patio to see if she could run with her "new" shoes. She flew like the wind to the wall and back. I then suggested to her that she might like to leave the shoes at the Center to have them when she needed them. She told me that where they used to live a neighbor always stole their stuff but now they had a new one-room dwelling and no one was stealing their stuff. She was sure that she could protect her shoes and socks.
The following week there was a rematch of the tag team race. Aracely had a hesitant smile on her face as her team lined up. The kids noticed her cool shoes and I imagine there was a bit of envy in their little hearts. The whistle blew and they were off. When it was Aracely's turn she flew like the wind again and soundly beat the boy she was running against. If you could have seen the smile on her face…it was a special moment.
It is thanks to the generosity of the many Working Boys' Center supporters that we have what we have to share with kids and families like Aracely's. In one months time Aracely has changed from an angry little kid to a loving, trusting little girl. There will be future battles but these days she can let her guard down and enjoy a bit of laughter and hope.
This past week I was once again in her English class. I asked her if she was learning English? She said in perfect English to me, "I love you ‘too' Madre Cindy." I hadn't told her I loved her first…or on second thought…thanks to you…I guess she had heard that.
The Cuascoto Valverde Family
Written by Father John Halligan, SJ
The Cuascoto Valverde family joined the Working Boys' Center three months ago. It was a chance acquaintance with a WBC member that brought the family of five to the Center. Father, Leonardo, is a single parent to Maribel 17, Jimmy 13, Wendy 11 and Genesis 9 after his wife walked out on the family. It wasn't violence but the lack of moral and prayer formation that left this family motherless.
Despite many hardships, the kids are all smiles but very shy. They'll stay careful until they catch the Center experience of no danger zones in our give and take. Jimmy talks up. He says things are starting to go right. They were going all wrong before. "Before what?" I asked him. "Before we came to the Center." He couldn't find any words to describe what was "wrong". That's fair enough. He is 13 years old, has been working full time on construction sites, says he wants to be a doctor precisely as if he is saying he wants to go to the moon, meaning wants to "get out of here." We chatted a bit about the hundred thousand years of study it takes to be a doctor while it takes only three years after grammar school to get a title as a mechanic or something like that. He warmed to the conversation and repeated, this time with much more feeling, that things are really going right.
Wendy says the best thing about the Center is physical education class. It didn't take the skills of an investigator to find out that Jill O'Hara, Cassie Nescheim, Lindsay Meyers and Marisa Religa, our USA volunteer physical education teachers, are generous with the needed love exercises along with the muscle building. Wendy has found something she badly needed. Her bigger sister, Genesis, likes everything especially the way we treat Wendy.
Maribel, age 17, obviously thinks a lot, maybe too much, about what's going on. It's a delight to notice that as each day passes she smiles and laughs and talks more. Thanks, in part, to our alert teachers. Our placement testing had put her at below the school level which she had finished years ago. She accepted being placed with students catching up to their level. Within five weeks she showed her vastly superior abilities and was immediately promoted to technical training classes. She's leaning toward cosmetology as a specialty. We hope she becomes crazy about cosmetology and puts her God-given gifts to good use.
The daily experiences of her family surviving in the shack they call home has given her much more than a healthy, pensive mindful of material stored very secretly inside her. So far all she'll express is that it wasn't so bad when her mother was still with them. Whatever career she choses, she'll be okay. Unlike younger Jimmy who is so far only able to think: "out of here," Maribel says flat out, "I want to be at the Center all the time. I wish I could sleep here." It's a family of all kinds of families.
The father of this family, Mr. Leonardo Cuascoto is almost five feet tall and a most impressive man. He's a neighborhood construction contractor. Asked about his personal goals, he's shock and surprised anybody cares. But he says that the Center has made it possible to start a savings account for a fund to buy land. The family needs a house. But he mostly wants to talk about what has happened in the shack since the family joined the Center. All the kids suddenly want to wake up in the morning and get moving. They don't want to miss breakfast and all the rest of the day at the Center. Leonardo goes on and on about this new and happy life and how bad it was with the kids not wanting to open their eyes before joining the Center.