Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Everywhere

Today's title may bring back memories. Lots of early childhood teachers have made use of that sing-song little ditty:

Clean up, clean up,
Everybody, everywhere.
Clean up, clean up,
Everybody do your share!

The children here, both younger and older, apparently share in cleaning up throughout the day. We commonly see them sweeping porches or classrooms, cleaning windows, or helping with other tasks. Children being children, the adult staff must need to train them, although we haven't heard that old ditty on these grounds, either in Spanish or English.

Ministerios Puerta Abierta provides more for these children than just food, clothing, and housing. This mission wants to do more than be an enabling organization, more than a charity that merely leads children to an adulthood of no hope: a type of "servant class." Teaching responsibility to the children is one step up to a hope and a future.

We know, as the prophet Jeremiah wrote, that God ultimately gives a hope and a future. This mission intends to be an instrument of His. Of course having Sunday worship and Wednesday morning chapel and sharing God's Word are top priority. But these children are also given a real education. Each weekday morning they will be seen, dressed in school uniforms, sitting in classrooms receiving instruction. In the afternoons the older children will often be found working on their homework. This schooling is evidently far superior to what a Honduran child would typically receive, if he or she even got to attend a school. This mission intends to give opportunities.

Yesterday we experienced a downpour after lunch.  Work needed to go on in the trenches and at feeding stations. Lots of mud. Today may bring even more rain, according to the hotel clerk. More mud. But we know how to deal with that. We have been trained well!

Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere...

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