First-Person: The First Thing You Notice?
No Shoes

By Russ Dilday, Communications Director, Buckner International

Adapted from itsmymission4kids.blogspot.com

Not again, I thought as I passed through the single steel door of Nueva Esperanza’s 20-foot concrete wall. Not like Romania.

Dozens of children, mainly small boys, greeted us as we entered the compound. Waifishly thin, most had shaved heads, a prevention against parasites. They wore shorts and shirts, but none wore shoes. That was the first thing you noticed about them. Dozens of barefoot children milling around, a strange sight in any school or group of kids, but commonplace at this orphanage. Many had extensive scarring on their heads and bodies, a product, we were told, of gang violence while they were on the streets.

Our small team had already visited two private orphanages on the northern coast of Honduras. Both had the same feel: small and needy, but well-ordered. The children sang songs and dressed in uniforms. The only uniform in Nueva Esperanza (New Hope) Orphanage is, ironically, despair.

It took me back to my first trip to Romania in 2000, before the government orphanage reforms that provided foster group homes. Back to the time of the big orphanages, the dirty children, the poor nutrition, the small, overworked staffs, the hopeless looks.

I thought I’d seen the last of that type of orphanage. I’d gotten used to seeing orphanages where we’d been working, where Buckner has made a difference through physical improvements and sharing Christ with children in several countries. Where the kids know and look forward to us coming. Here, in the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, it looks like I haven’t.

You could read the hopelessness in their eyes. In the first two orphanages, children greeted us with smiles and hugs. Here, the kids stood and looked at us as if not knowing how to interact with an adult. Maybe they don’t. Or maybe they do, but the adults in their lives have taken advantage of them all their lives and to let an adult into their lives has meant more suffering.

Fortunately, we had David Balyeat on our team, a missionary kid from Argentina and missions minister for Shiloh Terrace Baptist Church in Dallas, he soon had the children surrounding him, eager to hear what he had to say. The kids began to warm to him and, consequently to the rest of us.

Geoff Moore, a Christian recording artist with us on the trip, was visibly moved. He voiced what was on the minds of us all: How soon can we start doing something? Anything?

We toured the home and spoke to staff. While there are 10 staff, they work in shifts so that only five are on campus at any one time. Five for 92 children, some of them infants in need of constant care. Some of them special needs children. All of them in need of love.

Director Soreida Isavia noted the needs for Nueva Esperanza: facility maintenance, clothing, shoes, recreation equipment, more workers. She’s passionate, but out of resources. The list seemed too big from the start, but Leslie Chace, our Global Initiatives director for Central and South America, already has 5,000 shoes on the ground, ready for delivery. It will be the first step toward a little hope at New Hope.

And the despair that hung around the group as we first entered lifted… a little…. as we got to know the children and saw their smiles. There is hope here, if we will bring it. and we will bring it soon in the form of shoes collected from caring Americans.