This is the one phrase that keeps popping in to my crazy brain every time I think about the week we spent at Casa (the orphanage) in Guatemala over spring break. I always thought I knew what
unconditional love meant
. It means loving someone unconditionally right? Regardless of what they might say or do to you, but do we really practice unconditional love? I know for a fact I don't, just cross me a little bit and see how unconditional I get. If your a christian then the phrase may have a whole larger meaning, God's
unconditional love for us, regardless of what we say or do.......I still didn't get the true meaning of that either.....until we went to Casa. The kids there show you just exactly what
unconditional love really is. As soon as we pulled up to the orphanage and got off the bus, literally as soon as we stepped off the bus the kids were coming up to us with big smiles on their faces and climbing up in to our arms and then giving us the strongest hugs they could possibly give. Here's where the
unconditional part comes in. You see the majority of the 400+ kids at Casa have been abandoned and physically abused by none other than.........you guessed it, adults! You would think that they would shy away from adults, after all their nightmare stories all involve adults. But they didn't, they just loved on us to the 10th degree and continued to do so for the entire week that we were there. One little boy touched our hearts in a very special way while we were there, as a matter of fact if we could have snuck him in to our luggage, he be here in with us today. Here's the story of Jon Jon.
Jon Jon is 6 years old now. They brought him to Casa when I think they said he was around 2. They said that he was one of the worst cases of abandonment that they had encountered. You see they found Jon Jon living in a trash dumpster alone. He was surviving by literally eating garbage. And to top it all off, both his legs had been broken (boy would I like to have 5 minutes with the person that did that.....wait I'm suppose to be talking about
unconditional love). Jon Jon now walks (and runs) with a pretty severe limp because I think his legs were past the point of healing normally. But this little boy has the most sweetest spirit and bubbly personality, anytime you see him he has the biggest smile on his face. One of his favorite things to do is the Hokey Pokey dance. I snuck him in to our dorm kitchen area the last 2 nights that we were there and feed him anything and everything I could think of that he would enjoy. The list includes pancakes (with tons of syrup), pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit, cookies, milk, orange juice, and 7-Up (he had never had a carbonated drink, or so he said..ha!).
Little Jon Jon would just run up to us every time he saw us, climb up into ours arms, and give us the strongest hugs he could muster up. And this was on a daily basis, irregardless of the fact that it was one of us "adults" that treated him so terribly. And that's when the true meaning of
unconditional love hit me like a ton of bricks! We've been back almost two weeks now and I can still not see a picture of Jon Jon without getting a tear in my eye and a knot in my throat. We all thought that we were going to Guatemala to help the kids, but in reality I think they are the ones that really helped us.
And as Paul Harvey always said, now for the rest of the story. The day we were leaving, Ofelia asked Mike (the orphanage founder/director) if Jon Jon could be adopted, because we seriously would have jumped at the chance to bring him home with us. Mike said no, and this is why - a family in Washington state is already trying to adopt him, and the cool part is that they supposedly already have a team of doctors waiting to try and fix his legs as soon as they can get him to the states. But believe this, we will be checking in on Jon Jon and praying for him to have the life that someone as special as him deserves!
Walk Good!!!
dan
