Not to long ago I finished reading a book my sister gave me in August titled
When God Winks At You. The author says a God Wink is when the Lord speaks to you not orally but through something that happens to give confirmation or a message to you. Sometimes just a little thing that happens to let the person know they are not alone that God is hearing them. Some people call these coincidences or other things. The book is a compilation of stories where people had thing happen that they felt were like a message from God giving them hope, confirmation or help in making decisions or all sorts of different things. I got a nice one this week.
As hard as it is going to be to leave here this week, I am pretty much ready to head home. I am going to miss all of the kids a ton, but a few in particular much more than others. I can explain my leaving to most of the kids but how do you tell your 4 year old who believes you are his father and only parent he knows that you are going to leave him in an orphanage alone. I have tried explaining my leaving to Juan Fernando a few times without much feedback other than silence. I doubt that he really understands the concept of time and when he hears his papa is going away for a long time to him that means a few days. Juan came to the casa a couple of months before his 2nd birthday and has been here over 2 years now. I adopted him or he adopted me as his own the first day he arrived and as Forest Gump says we have been like peas and carrots ever since. For a year, he would cry every time I left the casa, literally. It took a very long time for him to accept that I was not abandoning him and I am always next door from the main house where he lives. Before he could speak, he called me daddy, and after he learned Spanish he changed to calling me Pa or papa. He still is the first one to run up to me when I enter the casa each day and he spend most of his time with me. The other kids, when they want to bother him the way kids do to each other at times, will come up to me and say "mio dady" or "mio pa" which means "mine" because they know this will really get Juan mad. He is very possessive and will immediately grab me and say "no, mio." I usually take him to the supermarket with me on Tuesdays which he absolutely loves. Leaving him here is the hardest part of my leaving; lots of guilt and waking up at night thinking about it.
Well, yesterday, his family came to visit him for the first time in well over a year and a half. We found out that he has a brother who is just a year older than he is, Hector, who came with his mom, her sister and her sister's son (Juan's cousin). Juan and Hector had a great time playing with each other for about an hour. He really bonded well with his family for the first time since he got here. On her two prior visits, Juan did not know who his mother was and was not happy to be with her when she was here. I have routinely shown him photos of her on my computer from their prior visits and now that he is older when I explain who she is he understands, so I think that helped him recognize her and understand who she is. She indicated that she will be back to visit more frequently and hopefully can take him home some day before he gets too much older. When she left I really had a better feeling about his situation, not necessarily at the casa, but his life in general. He has a family and a brother very close in age and probably will join them to live with them at some point. I don't see him being here until he turns 18 like the kids who have no one or only distant relatives. I thought about the book I had read and how his family coming here was a nice God Wink to let me know things will be okay with him after I am gone. It still won't make my leaving any easier, just a little nicer knowing the family finally came back to see their little boy Juan Fernando.
The first photo below is Hector, Juan Fernando and his mother. The photo on the right is Hector, Juan, his cousin and his aunt (mom's sister).
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