Rough with the Smooth

There´s treasure everywhere you look. Bolivians are beatuiful people inside and out and I find myself constantly moved by the Father´s heart for them on a regualar basis. So it´s incredible to have the privelege of working with some of them despite some of the hard things they face.

The south part of the city is the poorest and the roughest. Sometimes they have no running water and dont´s have toilets so they go in the streets.  The average person in this area earns about 200 -400 Bs a month but probably most earn closer to 200Bs if not slightly under. That´s about 25 pounds a month to feed a whole family.

My project is in the west. Here is where the beauty crashes against the rough sharp edges.

There is ´A´ who is 15 years old. Her mother became friendly with a guy but it was only a matter of time until he made his move on her. She was 12 years old when it first happened.

´J´ celebrated her birthday last week. Her daughter who is 1 and a half years old  is in the school next door. Up til last week I thought ´J´ was 17 or 18 years old. Turned out she was celebrating her 15th birthday.

´L´ is a lovely woman at my work at the school. She is a mother of two girls. One daughter is 1.5 yrs and the other 7 months. L was married last year in October but the husband was unloving and eventually turned round to her and said he was going to kill her and tried to strangle her.

One girl came to school one morning last week and on her way in her mother said that she should better behave otherwise her mum would throw her away. ´V´ is only 2 years old but she is such a sweet child. The sad part is children are abandoned if they are not wanted so it was never sure how serious that threat was by the mother because it wouldnt be too hard to beleive if it were true.  Only the other day I heard that a child who was a few days old was left by the parents in the back seat of a taxi because she was not wanted.

These are a few of the stories that could be repeated many, many times over. But despite this they have a warm and gentle nature and they are so precious.

The work that the project does really is helping them to rebuild their lives and enable them to become confident independent individuals. Makes the little I contribute feel like it can make a difference.