A Special Visit
"I never ever thought someone would come to my house to visit my boy." Marina started crying before she could say anything else. It was a moment of sharing, of sitting together in the shade beside the excavations at San Andres on the last day of our visit together. We were a mixed group of children, youth, moms and dads - five of us from the US and the other forty or so from our sister church community - representatives of the students and families who participate in the scholarship program. All of the students in the program have economic need, and the majority are older students who seek to overcome the culture of gangs which surrounds them by completing high school and earning technical or university degrees in the hopes of achieving sustainable employment. For one young man, the dream of employment seemed impossible. He was born with a severe hearing impairment. The public schools in El Salvador are not equipped to assist children with s...