Help us get More Books

Okay so I mentioned in a previous blog post a few days ago that I'd post again to let you know how YOU can help us keep the reading train and excitement moving at Casa Hogar Douglas. I've decided that these kids - all of them - will fall in love with reading if they can just get their hands on the right book. And this love of reading and the literacy skills that will follow is going to change their lives.

Here it is...

You can help us get more books by:

1. Praying that we'd be blessed with more fun titles in Spanish

2. Buy books online or in stores from my list below and fly them here on your next mission trip or send them with a friend coming down or send them to our home office

3. Send a check to the Back2Back home office in Ohio but do NOT write on the check memo line itself. Instead - send a separate piece of paper with a note asking for it to be used for books. Checks can be made out to "Back2Back Ministries" and mailed to: Back2Back Ministries PO Box 70 Mason, OH 45040. Contributions are accepted with the understanding that Back2Back has the control of donated funds.

Do you like to shop online on sites like amazon? I do. Sometimes, I want to add one more thing so I get free shipping. Perhaps, the next time you purchase something online - you'd consider adding one of these titles in Spanish and sending it to us to use with our kids at Casa Hogar Douglas.

Any books in Spanish are great but the titles below are on my wish list....

For younger readers

Stink y los tenis mas apestosos del mundo - by Megan McDonald

Stink y el incredible Rompemuelas

Stink y el Gran Expreso del Cobaya

Los Osos Berenstain y la regla de oro

Stink el increible nino menguante

Judy Moody y Stink: Felices Fiestas!

stanley una chinche apestosa

Porque Te Amo - Max Lucado

Tu Eres Especial - Max Lucado

Los Osos Berenstain - Dios te ama

Los Osos Berenstain - en la oscuridad

Los Osos Berenstain al rescate de la Navidad

Judy Moody se Vuelve Famosa! - Megan McDonald

Corre, Perro, Corre

Chapter books for elementary kids

James y el melocoton gigante

ramona empieza el curso

Diario de Greg books 1 - 5 (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Diario de Nikki books 1 and 2

Hoyos - Holes

Antes de ser libres

El Principito - the little prince

El Caballo y el Muchacho

El ladron del Rayo

El Leon, la Bruja y el ropero - C. S. Lewis

Anything in Spanish from the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis

El Principe Caspain

Las Cronicas de Narnia

El Sobrino del Magico

La Travesia de Viajero del Alba

La Silla de Plata

La Ultima Batalla

For our Hope Program Teens and Caregivers in the orphanages

Loco Amor (Crazy Love) - Francis Chan

El Dios Olvidado - Francis Chan

El Cielo es Real - Todd Burpo

La Cabana - Young

Una Vida con Proposito - Warren

El Caso del Creador - Strobel

Radical spanish edition - David Platt

Cautivante - John Eldredge

Salvaje de Corazon - Wild at Heart - Eldredge

Camine Con Dios - walking with God - Eldredge

Beth Moore in spanish - there are TONS of titles

Not coming down on a trip with Back2Back anytime soon but still want to send them? Consider shipping them directly to Back2Back's home office and we'll fly them down here. Are you one of my Cocoa Beach readers? Pass the books to my mom. She'll know how to get it here.

THANK YOU!!!

Junior Auto Mechanics

In the past month or so, several broken power wheels cars have been donated to Casa Hogar Douglas. Some are missing wheels and others are fine except that their entire electrical system is dead. So the boys have figured out the secret to being a great auto mechanic. When you can't get the car up and running.... just push it down a hill. It can get going pretty fast down hill. Well the boys have been pushing these broken vehicles around the children's home property for weeks now. One day, I yelled, "it's MY TURN!!!! I'M NEXT!!!" and the boys about died with excitement that Caroline wanted to ride on their broken car.

So I jumped on and they pushed the car so hard and it got going so fast that...

we crashed into a wall with me screaming and yelling the entire time- not joking.

It was awesome. The boys screamed with delight. And then we did it again. But to get there - they had to push me up the hill. To be fair, I took turns pushing the boys afterwards.

Life lesson - when life gives you a broken car, don't cry - just find some energetic people to push it with you. It'll work just fine.

Better than TV

Last week it rained a ton here in Monterrey. When it rains, this usually means that the kids in the orphanages we serve are stuck inside. Makes sense though - your mom probably didn't let you play outside in the rain very often.

So it was my day to take care of the youngest boys dorm at Casa Hogar Douglas and it rained almost the entire day. At one point my boys had been outside for about 40 minutes during a break in the rain so they could run a bit and get rid of some of their energy. It started pouring again and I had to chase down all my boys and force them to come inside out of the rain.

As they came running inside, I asked what movie they wanted to put on the TV. They picked one out. I put it on and then I ran to try to save the clean clothes that had been drying on the clothes lines outside before it got soaked in the rain. I walk back into the dorm and was trying to fold something or clean something and all I heard was a ton of noise coming from where the boys were supposed to be quietly enjoying the movie they had selected. I was super annoyed in all honesty. What was all the talking and chatter about?

Well to my surprise, every single boy had grabbed one of the books from my bag and was reading out loud either to themselves or to each other. What a beautiful excuse for making so much noise that no one can hear the TV! I've known for a long time now that the pre-school aged kids prefer reading stories to the TV but I think that some of the 6 to 9 year old range boys have come to the same conclusion.

Now if I can just train them to wash their hands after playing the mud before they start reading my books... smudge marks of love I guess.

Reading for Fun

Miguel and Jonathan showing off all the books they read

Today I'm celebrating one of the most incredible surprises that I've been privileged to witness in all of my 4 years here on staff with Back2Back. But before I get to that, I feel like a little background information is necessary to explain why this is such a big deal...

There is a very strong connection between illiteracy and crime in the United States. I can only imagine that the statistics for Mexico would be similar if not even worse. The Department of Justice states, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence and crime is welded to reading failure." Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), two-thirds of American students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare. They say that fourth grade is the watershed year.

Less than 8% of Mexican adults have a college degree. The average number of books an American reads in a year is around 10 books. The average number of books a Mexican reads in a year is less than 2 books each year. There's a statistic somewhere that says that less than 4% of the Mexican population has access to a public library - including the ones that you might imagine should exist in schools. The current secretary of education here in Nuevo Leon (the state we live in) has started a new campaign to encourage elementary teachers to read to their students for 15 minutes each day. There are billboards and signs on buses to encourage teachers to read to their students. Why? Because teachers are not reading to their classes.

About a year in a half ago, I began working with children from one of the orphanages we serve during homework time on a daily basis. A few things jumped out at me:

1. almost every elementary aged child was multiple years off grade level in reading and math

2. the students were not reading at all throughout the week

3. the kids had no access to any kind of "fun" book even if they wanted to read

4. their public school does not have a library

The need to me is more than clear. Reading is the key to the future educational and vocational success of the orphans our ministry serves. Literacy skills are critical for all academic subjects. Return on any tutoring efforts are going to be most efficient in younger children. So start early and start young has been my philosophy. Several Back2Back staff joined me in my efforts to make reading more consistent and more fun throughout each week and infuse reading into not only their homework time but also into their normal routine throughout the day at Casa Hogar Douglas.

Since we started, I've seen the most notable attitude change toward reading in the younger children - ages 3 to 6. They LOVE to listen to stories now. But the most shocking improvement came this past December when Miguel, age 10 and Jonathan, age 11 read the entire first book of the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid in one weekend. A year ago, these same 2 boys would whine and complain when I would force them to read for 15 minutes in order to play with my Nintendo 64 for a few hours. I'm convinced that these two boys are the first children perhaps EVER at this orphanage to read large chapter books for fun.

Not only did these two boys read their first ever chapter book from cover to cover, but they read all 5 books in the series in 4 weeks. What blew my mind is that they chose to read these books for fun. There was no bribe offered to get them to read. It was entirely on their own. But once they read all 5 books, I just had to make a big deal out of it. To celebrate, I took them shopping for snacks, ate a ton of pizza and ice cream and watched the movie that was made from the first book.

The kids at Douglas are now reading on their own, for fun, in their free time. The older girls have started reading for fun now too. Some even bring the books to school to read during their free time at school. I could not be more proud of these kids. I was blessed with teachers and family members who made reading fun for me. I was blessed with the ability to go to a public library and participate in story time as a young child. And now I'm blessed to pass along to the children who live at Casa Hogar Douglas an invaluable resource - literacy skills and access to fun children's books in spanish. Thanks to a Rotary Club donation, we recently were able to remodel an old building at Douglas and turn it into a children's library.

Want to know how you can help? I'll post another blog post in a few days here for how you can help us in our efforts to provide fun reading material for the kids.

Trust

I like to think the boys I care for on a day to day basis trust me. I like to think that they know that I love them, will defend them, help them, not make fun of them and that I will not hurt them. But knowing all that I know about their individual case histories, all they've been through, abuses they've suffered and the many ways in which they've been forced to raise themselves... trust with these boys is hard to build. With some it can take a really long time. For others it seems to happen almost instantly which is honestly a bit creepy.

Tonight, I realized that while I was deep in conversation with someone else, multiple of my boys would walk up to me, eat off my plate and either try to hug me or smile at me and then just walk off as if it were no big deal. And it wasn't. I didn't care. A few hours later though, I found myself laughing at the thought of how many of them came from 5 feet, 10 feet or 15 feet away to eat something off of MY dinner plate without asking.

But I think that's some evidence of trust. They know I'm safe. With almost all of them, I know that they trust me but I love some solid evidence every now and then that all these hours, days, months and years are helping them in some way.

The desire of my heart is for them to feel loved and to feel safe. I'd prefer them to feel that in the comfort of the loving home of their biological families but if that isn't happening and they have to remain in an orphanage, I hope and pray they would feel loved by the people taking care of them who claim to love Jesus.

I can't stop thinking about what Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:18-19, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Regardless of the depths of some of the scars that my boys carry on their hearts, there is NOTHING deeper or more capable of FILLING that than the love of Christ. God can mend broken hearts and then fill them with the fullness of God. The gospel message is nothing short of crazy and insane. Why we get to be blessed enough to hear it is beyond me.

Through their eyes

The boys I serve on a weekly basis often ask me about myself. They are curious as to where I'm from, what I do for my "job" on the days that I don't visit their orphanage, what I think about WWF and why I hate it so much, what America is like, my favorite color and my favorite professional sports team, why I think the Florida Gators are so awesome, and the list goes on and on. With my 10 and 11 year olds we sometimes we talk politics, end times theology, about what we dream about doing 10 years down the road, whether they can mess up enough to the point that I'll stop loving them or about Latin American pop stars we see on TV.

I know, based off of the questions they ask and how difficult it is for them to understand that it is literally my job to spend time with them, love and serve them, that they are convinced that I am one of the most unique/strange people they've ever met. Sometimes I honestly do wonder what these little orphan boys think of me. They are curious and well... sometimes so am I.

This past week, one of the boys drew a beautiful portrait of me. Here it is.

So there you have it. This child in particular, thinks I am a round ball with stick legs.

I had the privilege to pray with several of my older boys before bed on Tuesday night and one boys' prayers in particular left me speechless, grateful and humbled. He had committed a huge disciplinary "no-no" that day and was in big trouble to put it lightly. I prayed first and then he followed my prayer with his own. He told God that he needed to confess some things he had done that day and that he knew that if he did not confess his sins before God, that his relationship with God would be strained. He wanted to be right before God and not let the day finish without making himself right before God. He went on to thank God for making tomorrow a new day and a new opportunity to walk with Him again. As he prayed such an honest, simple and genuine prayer before God, I immediately felt convicted of my own sin and my own need to confess that before God. My sweet little man was preaching some truth to me.

This precious child proceeded to then pray for me and each member of my family specifically. He prayed for my older brother who is not a believer, that he would come to know Christ as his savior and for him to grow in his knowledge of God. Ryan - Mexican orphans are praying for your salvation - I think we should continue that discussion on whether or not science supports the creation theory. What do you say? He prayed for my mom's health and then prayed for my younger brother's decisions about what to do with his life and whether to go back to school. The details and the accuracy to which he remembered about things I've said in passing and how he prayed left me teary eyed.

He then proceeded to thank God for the fact that I am there with him and actually like being with him and that I love to take care of him and his dorm every week. He thanked God for the fact that whether or not I'm running a fever and sick, this little man knows that I will be there to take care of him because I love him.

My little man answered any doubts I might have had about what they think of me. He is a very intelligent child. I am so thankful and honored for the opportunity to speak truth into his life, to tell him that no matter what he does, that nothing can change the fact that I love him and so does God. I am grateful that he knows that being with him is my passion. Everyone else in his life might have abandoned him, but he is loved and wanted and valued nevertheless. That's the gospel. That's how God loves us. He loves us anyway, regardless of our faults. In fact, God is so passionate about us that he came down to earth to suffer and die for us so that we might become right with Him. God loves us so much...