The Sweetest Thing

Last Wednesday we had a really difficult week with Segundo Paso. There is a local marching band that has been preparing for an event that they have coming up this weekend and they have been practicing in the street in front of the church. This was particularly distracting last Wednesday and as a result we could not conduct business as usual with the kids at Segundo Paso since they all wanted to watch the band and they couldn’t even hear what we were saying anyway. Toward the end of the day each week we go to the park to play, so we finally decided to just go a little earlier. We had already given the kids their snack (a little milk and Ritz crackers).

One of the girls who is particularly difficult each week had not eaten her crackers yet and when we went to the park she sat and continued to watch the band for a while. I encouraged her to come with me and play with the rest of the kids, she gladly got up and came with me but quickly turned around like she had forgotten something. I watched her go back to a kid we had passed that was also watching the band, sitting in his wheelchair, and she gave him her crackers. I almost broke down crying right there in the park from watching her make such an unselfish decision. When she caught up to me I told her “that was a really nice thing you did” and she looked at me like I was crazy and said “what did I do?” when I told her that I saw her give her crackers to the boy she just shrugged and said “oh” and then ran ahead to play with the other girls. A little while later she said to me “ya know it’s because I didn’t really want them anymore”. It was the sweetest thing!

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