The older girls at Love & Hope Children’s Home have now been regular attendees of the youth group at the Union Church of San Salvador for over three months. It has been great to see our girls enjoy their time there, making new friends from all over the world and getting to practice their English (the Union Church is an English speaking congregation).
The Union Church does outreach to the Mascota community which is within a stones’-throw of the church building. This past weekend, that outreach entailed a goal of gathering 100 people, painting the front of 25 houses and cleaning up garbage in the community. After the project was announced in church a week ago, the girls asked if they could participate. So on Saturday afternoon, they showed up to help and jumped right in to the work!
When we arrived, the community was littered with garbage and graffiti covered the outside walls of the houses. Some of the houses had never been painted before. Our oldest came in her paint clothes, picked up a brush right away and worked for two hours straight. One of the other girls painted windows the entire time, alongside one of our good friends from church.
After painting, our oldest hopped from one job to the next, picking up garbage on the playground. Her initiative motivated some of the other girls to join her, and then some of the local kids started helping them too!
At the end of the two hour work window, the community looked like a new place! So many people from the Union Church came to help that they exceeded their goal of painting 25 houses and actually finished 35!
We are so, so proud of the beautiful young people that our children are growing into (we aren’t biased or anything!). More and more we see in them a willingness to serve God and others by giving of their time, energy and sometimes even material things. We can’t help but think that they are taking cues from the many sponsors, caregivers, teams, volunteers and donors that have given to us so generously over the years.