Children and Butterflies

Oftentimes I have seen children outside playing, running, and chasing butterflies. Today I saw this simple activity in a new way.

I am spending a few days getting to know Pastor Pablo Benitez and his wife Paula, serving at Su Refugio (www.SuRefugio.org), a Christian children’s home for abused children. When the local government gets reports of potential child abuse in the home, they will investigate and when the problem is real and serious, they pull the children from the home and place them in foster care. There are virtually no foster families in the area and few places for these children to go in safety: Su Refugio is one such place. Pablo and Stella told me the backgrounds for some of these children – horrifying what they have been through. Knowing the abuse some of these children had experienced and now seeing them playing as if they had no cares in the world was moving, to say the least. This is how children are supposed to grow up!

I also realized this home is different than an orphanage. In an orphanage, you do not necessarily know the background of the children: they could have come from a battered childhood, but they also could have come from good home lives where the parents died in a car crash and had no other family to take care of them. Su Refugio is different: every child here has a battered past.

Pray for them and pray for Pablo and Stella as they serve God by serving the children.