José

The child in the picture above smoking marihuana is José. José is one of the children that live on the streets of Bolivia. Many of these children come from broken homes. When they are still very young they start to sniff glue to help them forget the hard reality they live in, and so it is with José.

Youth with a Mission started a home for girls and a home for guys to help them get of the streets and built a better life. José has come of the streets to live in the guy’s home, but soon after coming there he left again for the streets. Later he came of the streets a second time. Around that time I decided to write him a letter, but before I send the letter he had left the house a second time. He came back one more time but left again. He is now doing worse, because he has started using cocaine, although he is only 14 years old.

Sometimes I think of him and I wonder what goes on in his mind. Why does he not take the chances that are given to him to start a new life in a home where there are people that love him and want to help him built a good future. Why is it so difficult to reach his heart with God’s love for him? What hopelessness moves him to go deeper and deeper into drugs?

It makes me sad to see that so many young lives are destroyed. Instead of receiving love, care and encouragement, they are neglected and abused. They end on the street, but nobody seems to care and they are seen as the scum of society. They are left to a destructive life that leads to a young death. It seems as if they feel they are predestined to this kind of life; that they are bound to it and can never escape. When I think of the evil behind this and how these lives are destroyed it angers me. I wonder what lies have been rooted in their hearts from a very young age, lies that tell them that they are of no value, not worthy to receive love and without hope. All they can do is survive each day and sedate the pain and harsh reality of their life with drugs. Even when they are offered help and a better future, many of them cannot receive it. This also seems to be the case with José. I cannot look inside his heart, only he and only God know what keeps pulling him to go back to a life of hopelessness. Maybe this kind of life is all he knows. How can he trust anyone, when there never was anyone to trust. Maybe it has taken him a long time to freeze and sedate his heart to make it stop hurting. Maybe for him hope and love bring pain and fear, and maybe that’s why he keeps running. I don’t know, but I hope and pray God will bring him back and heal his life, before it is to late.

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners." Isaiah 61:1