Josué

Below are a couple of pictures of Josué. Josué (Joshua in Spanish, not to be confused with the name José/Joseph) is a 4-year-old boy who is part of the preschool program at Carmen Bajo. Back in September when Laura took me to Carmen Bajo for the first time in over a year to show me how to get out there using public transportation, Josué was pouting and crying the entire afternoon. Laura smiled a huge, genuine smile as soon as she saw him, called his name and held out her arms. Josué crossed his and turned around, running to the other end of the comedor and Laura just laughed. She turned around and told me that Josué was one of her favorite kids, and that he could be both sweet or mad. When he’s sweet, he’s really sweet. And when he’s mad, he’s really mad.

That was a Tuesday. I went back to Carmen Bajo the following Friday. And the next. And the next. Josué was variously pouting, frowning, crying, and screaming each of those days. I thought Laura was crazy, and I wondered how anyone could ever put up with this terrible little kid. But finally, after four weeks, I walked up the stairs to lunch one day, and there was Josué playing Foosball nicely with a couple of other little boys, laughing and smiling.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. But the more time I’ve spent at Carmen Bajo, the more I realize that Josué is a really sweet little boy. He needs a lot of coaching to get there some days. And some days he doesn’t get there at all. But now, even on those days when he doesn’t get there, I can still see this great little kid underneath the frowns and tears.

In February, I was hosting the Grace Community Church team that helped take the Pre-Kinder and Kinder classes to the zoo one morning. Each of us “adults” (I still laugh at that term being applied to me, no matter how long the kids at my home church have been calling me “Mr. Danny”) took three kids. Except in the case of supervising Josué. By the end of our time there, we’d given him to the craziest, most energetic member of the team, and the other two kids originally in that adult’s care had been siphoned off to others. For the most part, Josué was doing what he was supposed to. Until the bus ride back to the Compassion Project. Fabian and Grace’s youngest daughter Raquel was sitting in the front seat with another 4-year-old-ish little boy. Josué wanted either to be in Raquel’s lap instead, or just to have the front seat. I’m not sure exactly what set him off, but he flipped out. I’ve seen some temper tantrums in my time, but nothing, and I mean nothing anywhere even approaching this one. He was flailing all over the place and beating the other little boy with both his fists. Raquel just huddled over her charge. I had the luck to be the next closest person over the age of 5, so I grabbed Josué and pulled him away, holding him in a bear-hug that I intended to both show my love for him and function as a straitjacket.

I tried to calm him down over and over as he cried and screamed and flailed, sometimes somewhat escaping before I’d pull him back into my arms. I must have asked him two dozen times to “Digame con tus palabras lo que quires.” I was doing everything, including conjugating my verbs for “usted,” to treat him like a person and not a problem. But he simply wouldn’t calm down, and I finally (literally) passed him to Grace, who held him the same way I did and just smiled. I mean grinned at this kid. She never spoke a word, and after about 45 minutes, the waterworks and most of the sound effects had calmed down. (Grace made quite an impression on the team through this, too).

Then one day last week the VBS group from the Pueblos Unidos team did Fruit-Loop necklaces for their craft. As the kids were coming out of their classroom to go upstairs for lunch, I saw Josué standing and smiling on the sidewalk. I swooped over and picked him up and swung him in the air, and he immediately screamed at me to put him down. Wondering what about that had changed his attitude so quickly, I did just that. I was stunned. He’d been smiling, and I’ve done this a hundred times, never getting that reaction. So rather than just thinking “Oh, that’s just Josué,” as I would have several months ago, I asked him what his deal was. “Tengo cereales in my bolsillo,” he said: I have cereal in my pocket. And that he did. He pulled out a heaping handful of Fruit Loops he’d stashed in his pocket during craft time. Now that’s Josué, I thought. Then we went upstairs to lunch, and Josué pulled out the rest of the cereal from his pocket. Handful after handful. I couldn’t believe a 4-year-old’s pockets were so big. He set them all on the table, and a couple of the kids around him looked at them longingly (as if they didn’t all have strings of them around their necks). When one of the kids asked if he could have one, and reached for a single Fruit Loop at the same time, Josué snatched them all away and clutched them to his chest, sticking out his bottom lip. I leaned over, from the tiny seat next to him that I was doing my best not to break (it wouldn’t have been the first time I’ve crushed preschool-sized furniture) and told him “Tienes mucho. Queremos compartir,” (You have a bunch. We want to share). I didn’t expect that to remotely work. But it did. He pushed one Fruit Loop to each of the 4 kids around him. Not the most generous reaction I’ve ever seen, considering that he had half-a-box-worth of cereal in front of him, but I took it. With a little more prodding, he actually doled out about 75% of the Fruit Loops to the other kids at the table.

This is getting long, but I’ll give you one more example before I make my point. Whenever we have a team at Carmen Bajo, the first thing we do in the morning is roughly an hour of devotions with the team and everyone from CB. We arrived one morning, and I scanned the room for the kids I know, one of them being Josué. He was standing in the middle of the room with a cup of Sprite (or something clear and fizzy) and not looking happy. He wasn’t crying or screaming, but he was a little down in the dumps. With a totally different reaction than I’d have had 5 months ago, I set my sites right on him. I figured there were two ways his day could go from here, and I knew which way I didn’t want it to go (and which way I didn’t want to listen to it go). And aside from that, I do just really love the kid. So while all the other gringos steered clear, I walked right up and asked him if he wanted to hang out with me for devotion. I truly have no idea how that came out of my mouth in Spanish, and in Spanish that a 4-year-old would understand, no less. But whatever I said, he looked up at me and immediately bobbed his little head “yes.” I took him by the hand and led him to a chair at the far side of the room, where I sat and plopped him in my lap. He finished his Sprite and continued to play with the cup. He hardly said a word, and he only got squirmy once, standing up and trying to pull me to come with him somewhere. It was in the middle of someone’s testimony, so I tried to get him to sit back down, but as soon as they finished, I decided it was less disruptive if I just stood up and went with him. Turns out after all the soda, the poor kid just needed to go to the bathroom. It would have been nice if he’d just said “Me voy al baño,” and I wouldn’t have delayed the poor little guy, but I guess he forgave me pretty quick, because he came right back upstairs with me and stayed on my lap until I had to go down the hill with a construction group a while later.

So now we finally get around to it. Josué reminds me of me. Not because I was ever anywhere near the obnoxious little stinker than he can be. And yet because I am. I’m selfish and my feet are “swift to run into mischief.” I can only imagine that from the vantage point of God, I look like the flailing, screaming, child that Josué can be, refusing to be calm or rational or to think outside of himself (myself). And yet He sees through all that to the person He created me to be. The person who knows better, and just needs a little prodding in the right direction. He sits me in His lap and holds on to me, comforting me in my distress, and even in those times when I struggle with all my might to get away, to ignore Him, to head to somewhere that He can see I don’t need to be. That’s what we all need, to be held onto, cared for, even in our ignorance and sin. My love for Josué has made me thankful that God has love enough for that, love enough for me.