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Friends-

I´m in town today because I had to drive a trip to bring a family of our children in to meet with their mother, who, as I sit here typing to you, is telling them that she is dying. This is my Lent.

For me Lent is about being wounded and finding strength in the promise of redemption. But today, as I sit here thinking about the child who will walk into my classroom tomorrow more wounded than I can imagine ever being, the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday seems so very far away.

But this Ash Wednesday I know too that I am surrounded by a community in which that resurrection is very real and living every day. These are my resurrections:

There is Beau and Laura who have so far put the following in each others room in the middle of the night: giant toad, 4 foot wild iguana, rooster. Beau had a possum by the tail but just couldn´t get it down the tree and into Laura´s room. They are also on a campaign to find the tastiest vitamin by chewing a different type of non-chewable vitamin at dinner ever night. There is a reason they are called non-chewable.

There is Naomi, who is struggling in her first days as our 1st grade teacher and could not see how awesome her class looked today in mass as I looked at them across the church.

There is Sandra and Saturnino, houseparents who have such love for the Farm that they are building a house for their family just outside the property of the farm just a few feet from my classroom. As I teach every day I see Saturnino building this simple house with a tin roof, bamboo frame and mud walls.

There is Ana Cristina(13 years), Maira(11) and Cindy(15) who together, virtually on their own, sewed all of the uniform skirts for the girls in our school.

There is Arturo, whose birthday is today, who through the generosity of a medical brigade from the states is having surgery next week to repair problems in his ears. For the past several years he has had to wear boots when it rains and was not allowed to go swimming with the other children for fear of worsening infections. In just over a month from now we will all celebrate with him as he runs into the ocean for the first time.

There is Andrea and Matthew, who Monday night got engaged on the beach at sunset as Franklin and Carlitos (11 and 6) brought Matthew the ring and the whole volunteer community peaked from behind trees.

And then there is Michael, who last night when asked to say the prayer before dinner prayed for ¨Laura, Mama, la comida (the food), la fork and the noodles.¨ He truly teaches me to me thankful for the things in front of me each day.

These are just a few of my resurrections, reminders that no matter how broken our children are, how broken I am, the promise of eternal life lies in the joy of Easter.

Today as my heart is with our children and their mother I need to remember more than ever that Lent is a time of waiting for something that will surely come, that redemption is entire. The prayer that is on my lips today and will be tomorrow as I invite that child into my classroom, is the closing prayer of the liturgy of the hours, the daily prayer of the church.

May the Lord bless us,

protect us from all evil,

and bring us to everlasting life.

Amen.