We've been having several meetings lately about 'children of poverty', 'the defiant child', and those that are 'chronic', or victims of situations that are constant and beyond their control, thus outside influences and ways of life are the driving motivators of some of their behaviors... and some of them just lack love or a kind word...
I was thinking of this when I saw a fellow blogger had posted a pic of Yolanda from Ecuador:

It occured to me to post a pic of our families' other children, so here is our son "Isaias" (Brigham's age) and the girls "Marcella" and "Julia":

Isaias lives in El Estor, while Julia and Marcella live Quezaltenango and San Lucas Toliman, the village we stayed in when we visited them in Guatemala. That's grandma in the middle.
When my parents first started receiving pics of the girls as toddlers, I criticized them many times for wasting their monthly monetary donation and was a huge disbeliever that their packages ever made it out of the US. What a load of CRAP!
Finally, they decided to go see for themselves, but dad passed away, and Brigham and I went in his place. Naturally, google told me that we would be robbed, knifed, and all manners of unsavory things that had my nerves on end...and when we got there, it was a terrifying thing to see guns all over--in fact, I thought one man was trying to rob my son of his backpack at the Guat City Airport, but it turned out to be one of 5 of our armed guards protecting him. In the corner of the next pic, you can see a couple of them--right after this picture was taken, they drew their weapons and scared us--but they were pointing them at a scrawny little dog-- and they would have shot it had it growled at us! We were visiting a church up this steep hill--absolutely gorgeous country.
We had only been in San Lucas Toliman for a few minutes when we were ushered down into some local houses (pitiful shacks) and I immediately received a nice wave of shame when these kind and gracious tiny people drew us into their homes to display years of American photos, gifts, cards and letters that were pinned to the walls of their homes:
Here, we'd consider them merely sheds or worse--wouldn't even keep your lawnmower dry, constructed of a variety of materials: pieces of wood, cement block, tin, trash bags, and corn stalks wired together. Almost any room in my house was way bigger than their entire homes; a very humbling experience, and the lucky ones had most of their walls constructed of blocks, or a single mattress, or maybe a stove. This kitchen was constructed of boards and a garbage can to cook on:Many organizations rip you off/take your money and run. I can verify with my own 2 eyes that CFCA does NOT. We ended up having 32 people in our overall group, and there were many tears shed as these Mayan people cried with thanks that their children were able to go to school and receive dental/doctor care and extra food. You are never asked to donate more... unless you want to, for a birthday or confirmation, etc. We saw many programs being implemented by CFCA, such as well-digging, forestry, irrigation, laundry house, and the ancient but clean hospital. Here is Brig with the hospital director (remember that Brigham is very short!):

We were told that their limited stature was due to hundreds of years of bad nutrition (basically based on oppression by the invading Spanish). I am 5'1" and I could put my chin on the tops of the ladies' heads!
But here's the thing: despite the horrors of their existence and their lack of almost every possible 'convenience', the kids were just smiles and grins and the families were truly grateful and sweet. The majority of these kids receive LOVE.
CFCA boys watching us visit Lake Atitlan.