Camalotal

Sometimes it’s hard to explain why exactly you love someone. You become so wrapped up in the love that identifying its source seems almost impossible and way too logical for the beautiful mystery of love. I love Camalotal. Of all the places we visit, it is the one that I feel the strongest sense of responsibility to and the one for which the biggest part of my heart belongs. To pinpoint exactly why is impossible, but maybe I can paint a picture that might show you just a tiny glimpse of why the thought of having to say goodbye to this group of children brings tears to my eyes.

Camalotal is the closest aldea we visit. Located just 15 minutes from Talanga, the bumpy aldea takes you by fields of corn that now tower higher than our truck. We pass by a river where children and women are normally bathing. After a handful of curves and turns and some big bumps (and even bigger bumps if I’m driving), we come to our first stop. We pull up beside a gate that opens onto fields of corn and down the center is a pathway that leads to a handful of houses. With a honk of the horn, the running of the children begins. As they run from their houses, they pick up speed as they come around the curve and finish the last leg running to our car with smiles stretching across their faces and books in their hands. They slip the borrowed books into the passenger window and jump in the back for their ride to our meeting area.

And then we pull into the town’s corner store. There is a little area between the store and a house and we park the car here. Gustavo, a little boy with big ears and a bowl cut, is usually in charge of getting the keys to unlock the padlock and so he runs off to the house with the keys and comes back to unlock it for us. If we bring backpacks, water bottles, or balls, little hands reach up to carry them for us. My backpack looks enormous on a little five year old girl. We trek through a small grassy area to a simple one room building with small wooden benches.

Our meetings are started with an opening prayer. With a command from one of the children to close your eyes, we join hands in a circle and repeat line for line the words of the prayer leader. We thank God for the air, the sun, food, the Earth, our families, the Gringos and then food again. The most delightful, innocent and sincere prayer of my week. Every week is different. Sometimes our time is spent making snowflakes and other times playing jump rope and football. Almost every week, we read a Bible story with varied degrees of success of keeping their attention. They are not perfect. With thirty children starting at 2 years old going all the way to 15, the older ones are co-captains of our team and help us keep order. But, an hour and a half passes by each week.

Each week, I come home trying to figure out why going to Camalotal just feels so good. Even when we first arrived here, I remember thinking that Camalotal could be one thing that we could drop if we didn’t have time. And yet something about this magical place makes me look forward to it each week. Maybe it is the doubled over laughter I have shared with the older girls when I almost ran into a barb wire fence. Maybe it is the smirks that stretch from ear to ear on almost every child’s face when someone prays for the Gringos. Maybe it is the big curious eyes that watch us as we set up for a new game or activity. Maybe it is the respect that has been so deeply instilled in the older ones that is now filtering down to the younger ones. Maybe it is the jokes that are shared between us that leave us forgetting that we are of different ages, from different countries, and in different lives. Maybe it is the fact that when I go there, the presence of God is completely undeniable—I am surrounded by one of the most sincere and genuine examples of happy, pure lives—and it is breathtakingly beautiful.

Maybe I will never know exactly why I love Camalotal—but I do and I wish everyone could feel the way I feel about Camalotal about something in their lives.

More photos from the past couple of months...