Posted on 11/08/2013 8:31:01 AM PST by Gamecock
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Greg and Lisa Nillson of East Texas started sponsoring Carlita from Honduras in June. Two months later they bought the hut next door to where Carlita lives.
“This is a key relationship for us,” says Greg. “We don’t want a long-distance thing. We want to do life with this family.”
The Nillsons’ new hut, which cost them a few hundred dollars, is made of wood planks and pieces of scrap tin. Greg brought his camping equipment and they are busy becoming “part of the neighborhood” with visits every couple of months. Lisa is planting a garden and hosting a weekly “girls’ night out.” Greg is fixing up the hut and wants to organize a neighborhood work day to clean the place up.
“It could look a lot nicer around here if everyone just pitched in,” he says optimistically.
Carlita, their sponsor child, fled the first time she saw them.
“She just didn’t recognize us,” says Lisa. “We look different in the photo we sent her.”
Carlita’s mother Fabiola was surprised to see the Nillsons at her door one morning. They invited her to their “house-warming” party.
“I’m not sure what ‘Save the date’ means,” says Fabiola in Spanish, still puzzling over the perfumed invitation card.
Lisa says Carlita’s family has been “a little stand-offish and that’s fine. They want to know if we’re in this for the long haul, and rest assured, we are.”
Greg is still trying to keep the roof from leaking during tropical downpours, but “standing in the doorway seeing Carlita walk off to school each morning makes it all worth it.”
He also says he’s getting to know Carlita’s father, who hangs around the hut most of the day.
“I want to start an accountability group with the guys in the neighborhood and really get into each others’ lives,” Greg says.
The Nillsons have been seen peering through the fence in the play yard at school, waving at Carlita.
“My friends say, ‘Tell your sponsor parents to go away. It’s annoying,’” says Carlita, who prefers receiving occasional care packages to the new, closer contact.
The Nillsons often drop by her hut, twenty feet away, offering cookies and wanting to forge relational connections with Carlita’s family. They are quietly considering buying the entire neighborhood and starting an HOA, to put basic living standards in place.
“A good HOA won’t tell you what color to paint your house, but prohibiting use of the main pathway as a latrine might serve us all well,” says Greg.
The Nillsons say they will fight through every difficulty, for Carlita’s sake.
“Making this our second home is our way of saying, ‘You mean more to us than just a monthly contribution,’” Lisa says. “We’ve put our stake into the ground. This is real.”
For their part, Carlita’s parents are considering moving to the other side of the neighborhood and hoping the Nillsons won’t find them.
Satire is not humor when it is indistinguishable from the real.
So just maybe it is real!
I always tell people that the thing the rich and the poor have in common is that they both get to stay home all day.
Got me, too. I’ve known people who think they can waltz in and solve other countries’ problems. It was too real!
Inspiring, isn’t it?
LOL!!!
My wife and I had a good laugh.
Still....a fresh coat of paint can do wonders. :O)
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