Mama Kathy's Wisdom

Interiano Carranza family

“It takes a village to raise a child,” my mom says as she looks around the dinner table.  She was commenting on the amount of extended family present at dinner that all live on a single plot of land in San Pedrito Abajo.  A father rises from the table to lovingly gather his youngest son who is crying because he doesn’t do well meeting strangers.  This same man’s sister serves food to the group with his wife while his mother, children, nieces and nephews gather around the table in a way that is obviously familiar to them all.  It is quite evident that each adult in this family plays a significant role in each child’s life.  My mom is correct; this small “village” of people is raising children as a shared effort.

This family has three children, Willian, Ada and Jorge, who participate in Camp Ágape.  They graciously opened their home to our Service Learning Group and prepared a meal to share with them. I often do not see the same “village” of support surrounding each of my kids at Camp Ágape in their homes, but my job is not to despair knowing the children face adversity.  Rather, my job is to trust in God’s goodness. 

FPC Service Learning Group

As I look around the dinner table, I am reminded of that goodness and how God provided a village of mentors who contributed to my spiritual formation through the very same church that sent this Service Learning Group with whom I am sharing a meal.  I am thankful for the ways they invested in me and how they have affected my life.  My mind continues down this path and I am reminded that through Camp Ágape, we are providing a similar village that looks out and cares for kids in a way they may or may not receive at home. 

Mom, I agree with you.  It does take a village to raise a child.  It takes a mosaic of people, lessons and experiences to push that child onto greater things.  I’m thankful for the villages in my past, present and future and I’m thankful to be a part of the UPH village that works to support these kids in Copan Ruinas.

Mango Manuel

In Copan Ruinas, when a guy is called a "mango" it's because he's a ladies man. Manuel has the potential to be a "mango" at some point in his life, but that is not why he has been dubbed "Mango Manuel". It is simply because this sweet 6th grader brings a mango to each leader working at Camp Ágape every single day.

Manuel gets to camp just after two every afternoon, just after our team arrives on site to work at camp for the day. He gives hugs to greet each leader and visitor and then fishes through his backpack to find the mango that is just right for that person. I think there may be some sort of a hierarchy because I very often get the largest mango, but I'm not sure whether it has to do with respect for me as the director or genuine special love for me. Either way, I appreciate the mangos. Sometimes he'll even bring a watermelon and ask us to cut it up so he can share with the other campers as they arrive. While the leaders are in our pre-camp team meeting, Manuel will poke his head in the room as more children arrive so we can fairly distribute the melon. Manuel makes sure no kids take a second slice until everyone has had their first.

After the first week of camp, Manuel came in and handed me a mango AND handmade, decorated envelope with a note inside. It read:

Korni es una buena maestra le gusta su trabajo le gusta mucho el ingles y ella quiere a los alumnos como sus ijos verdaderos Korni es como si ubiera una Blanca flor y a ella le gusta comer vegetales
Translation: Kourtney is a good teacher. She likes her work. She likes English a lot and she loves the students as her very own children. Kourtney is like a white flower and she likes to eat vegetables.

I was (and still am) touched and also had a hard time not chuckling about his ending line. It was a surprising ending, although I later found out that a love for vegetables is something Manuel and I share in common.

Manuel has quickly made a space for himself in every leader and visitor's heart at Camp Ágape. All mangoes aside, Manuel has proven himself to be a caring, helpful, considerate camper. He has a keen sense of right and wrong and has helped newer campers adjust to the camp schedule and culture. This past Thursday, as he was hugging me goodbye at the end of the camp day, he looked up and said, "Korni, I never want to miss a day of Camp Ágape." I patted his head and squeezed him a little tighter. I don't want him to miss a single day either.

What we do.

When someone asks me what I do, the normal and quick response is to say that I direct summer camps and after school programs for kids in underprivileged and low-resource communities. If I still have the interest of the speaker, which I usually do, I usually begin to explain how youth are trained by UrbanPromise Honduras to teach and lead the children in these programs and I explain what classes are given on a normal basis: English, Bible, Art, Discovery, Cooking and Health. While I share these basic details, faces of children in our programs fly through my head and visions of miraculously wonderful classes being taught by youth play in my mind.

One such story that occurred this week in camp involves a young boy named Douglas. While signing Douglas up for this vacation camp, Camp Libertad, he was timid to say the least. From the first day of camp, Douglas has participated in activities and gone through the motions of camp, but it was rare to see a smile on his face or a great deal of excitement on his part during any crazy camp activity. I chalked it up to a normal dose of "pena" (bashfulness common among children in the underprivileged communities) because he's new to our programs and decided to give him time.

It appears that time and a Creative Stories option at camp was all he needed. This week, three of our leaders led a week-long Options class on creative stories in which they read stories, acted them out, created alternative endings, and drew representations of them as a group. Our leaders assigned roles to the children in the class before beginning a story and the children jumped into action as the story demanded it, especially Douglas. All week long, my ears have been filled with the voices of excited leaders sharing about how much and how well Douglas is participating as the various characters in the stories, how much he is coming out of his shell, and how impressive it is to hear him read aloud. During various stories, Douglas transforms into Prince Charming or the lead rooster. During the Creative Stories option within Camp Libertad, Douglas transforms into a different child with a different attitude.

In my heart of hearts, I know my quick answer about what I do is nowhere near complete and doesn’t actually speak to the full impact UPH is having on the children and the community. I believe improving the explanation means improving the verbs. Through stories like Douglas', my eyes are opened to the fact that I'm blessed to direct programs the provide creative outlets to children in underprivileged communities. We are blessed to see bashful children transformed as they act out children's stories in a safe space. We equip youth to lead and serve children and their communities and we inspire them to be better, stronger people who deserve the title "leader". This is what we are privileged to do.

Mentor - Mentee - Future Mentees

First of all, I can't take credit for noticing what is going on in this picture. Jason, the intern/long-term volunteer from St. Andrew's University in Scotland is the one who brought it all to my attention.

This is a picture of Melissa, one of our youth, at the most recent pilot program, a sports camp. She is right in the thick of it, doing her job. She is with the kids. She is participating. She is having a good time doing it. What's even cooler than seeing a youth caught doing her job well is catching her mentor watching her off in the distance with a pleased look on her face. If you look closely, Rachel, the Youth Director for UPH, is in the background, watching the action. It is a perfect progression of what the UPH program hopes to be. Adults pouring into youth, equipping them to then pour into children so that we may become a community from which servant leaders step forth.

God is up to big things here in Copan. I'm blessed to be a part of it.

El Pequeñito Fer

There's something about two big brown eyes set in a young smiling pudgy face that my heart can't resist. Little Fernando participated in our third pilot program last week. He darts around the room with energy like a firecracker and is actually too young to have participated in our program. Don't let his miniature size fool you though--he catches on to games and activities sometimes faster than the older kids and fearlessly runs and plays with all the campers twice his size.

He's in Kindergarten and our programs are for children in 1st through 6th grades. However, he was signed up on the same form as his older sister and slipped through my lines of defense with his toothless grin and the excited twinkle in his eyes. Once I realized that we had a stow-away in our camp, it was too late to tell him to leave because he was already part of the camp family. So, I decided it was only appropriate to give him a special name--after all, he was a special addition to the camp. From the beginning, he was known as "El Pequeñito Fer".

I thoroughly enjoyed watching him soak up every activity with wonder and excitement. There's something special about the youngest children who participate in these pilot programs. I look at them and see them as the first set of kids who could possibly go completely through school while simultaneously going through our programs. I think about how the trajectory of their lives will change from the extra love, attention, and support.

On the last day of camp, it occurred to me that perhaps El Pequeñito Fer didn't like being called pequeñito (small). Maybe he wanted to be called big or strong, perhaps El Gran Fer. I stooped down as he was punching out holes in his craft and asked him about it. He looked up at me, obviously confused by the question. He was El Pequeñito Fer, why would he want to be anything else?