Another week in Kitale has come and gone. This week I have been settling into the routine that I will be doing for the rest of the summer. God is showing me how important it is just to show the people that I come in contact with everyday how much I love them. The team and I have been working on getting the stories of all of the kids that live at Discover to Recover. It has been great to get to know the kids at a more personal level and I am looking forward to talking to the rest of them. 

One child’s story in particular has been on my mind all week. Leila couldn’t come with us to translate so we asked one of the older boys to help us out. We were interviewing one of my favorite kids, Silvia. We were asking her about her life before she got to the center and she was talking about when she was living with her aunt and she broke down in tears. A lot of the story was lost in translation so we couldn’t really get the whole story. After she was done answering questions we went outside and she just held onto me and cried. When she calmed down a little bit I told her that I would bring Leila back so that we can talk to her. Then she looked up and me and said “Please don’t ever leave me” and started sobbing again. It was so hard because I couldn’t communicate to her all that I wanted to say so I just did all I could by sitting with her and letting her know that she is loved. 

      I got to go back this weekend with Leila so that we could all talk. Silvia told us that her father died so she was taken to live with her aunt because her mother was not well enough to care for her. Her aunt treated her terribly by not sending her to school, beating her and throwing her out of the house and making her sleep outside. Her mother is still alive, but Silvia has no idea where her or the rest of her siblings are. It is heartbreaking to see a child who has gone so much pain and has no way of dealing with it. It makes it even harder when all you want to do is make them feel better and there is little you can do to make it better. All  could do was tell her how much I love her and how much God loves her.  

Silvia