Marveling at Our Friends
By Texas T., on mission in Uruguay
Nearly every Saturday and Sunday we have kids from the neighborhood over to play games and pray the Rosary. This is one of the easier activities for me so far because the kids do not mind so much that my Spanish abilities are still limited. They enjoy switching between talking to me using a voice so slow and over-pronounced that it erases any chances of comprehension and then whispering in each other’s ears and giggling. They don’t seem to realize that lowering their volume to keep their secret from me is completely unnecessary.
At this stage, when I lack words, most of what I can do is just marvel at the way our friends carry the burdens they bear. Milagros is one of my favorite people to visit in the neighborhood. She is around 12 years old, and she has cerebral palsy which makes it impossible for her to move out of bed. She is invariably delighted to see us when we stop by her house to play games and chat. Milagros loves to talk, and on my last visit we got on the topic of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” She said that she wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor.
My first assumption was that she wanted these careers because she wanted to be important and live somewhere other than Barrio Borro. I couldn’t blame her. She spends almost all her time in a single-room house that is smaller than my bedroom was back home, and has little company other than her loving, but busy, mother. Milagros, however, surprised us all when she explained the motive behind her hypothetical career choice. The reason she wants to be a doctor or a lawyer is because of her brother. Milagros’ brother is currently in the hospital and under custody after being involved in gang-related violence where he was shot by a policeman. Milagros wanted to heal her brother and get him out of jail. Milagros, who has already been robbed of her childhood by her disease, didn’t think about a better future for herself when we asked her who she wanted to be. What she wanted was to give her brother a second chance to a future she could only dream about. Visiting people with such big hearts is a privilege, and a constant reminder to me of how I should live out my mission.