One really nice thing that we have here in Mexico is the ability to have a woman come in and help me with the house once a week. For 70 pesos, she comes in and scrubs this house from top to bottom! I've become very attached to Mari and her family. She is a single mom with 3 kids - Samadi who is 11, Jasmin who just turned 4 and the baby. They live with Mari's mom a few doors down.
Mari cleans a few houses a week, for whomever she can....house cleaning jobs aren't very easy to come by. She generally makes less than $200 pesos per week...that is less than $20! Can you imagine living on $100 per month or less? Her brother pays for the rent of the house (about $100 per month), and she uses the money she makes to buy everything else....water, gas, electricity, food, clothes for the kids. As you might imagine, they don't have a lot.
Sierra and Samadi play together all the time. He is a nice boy and they have a lot of fun. Jasmine has become my little shadow, and is over at the house all the time. She loves to follow me around, helping when she can, but mostly just watching what I do.
One day Mari told me that another woman in the neighborhood told her that she should give Jasmin to me!!! I couldn't believe that someone would say that, but knowing the woman who said it...well, unfortunately I believe it. Of course, Mari said she could never give her children away.
The kids eat dinner with us occasionally, and I love this because it feels like a big family, which I've always wanted.
At any rate, one day Mari was over and we were talking and she mentioned that Jasmin had wanted a Barbie for ever and a day, but she just didn't have the money to buy one. She was upset because one of the families who she works for hasn't been paying her, and there have been some other problems with them (this is the same lady who told her to give Jasmin to me). This family is quite well off and they have a girl who is an older teen...apparently the girl had all sorts of Barbies that are just sitting up in the attic, but she won't give any of them the Jasmin.
The next time Sierra and I were at the Mercado, we found these Barbie knock-offs....four of them for 95 pesos. We decided to buy them for Jasmin. That afternoon we went over to Jasmin's house and hid the Barbie's behind a couch and I told her that I'd heard from a little birdie that she had wanted a Barbie. She just looked up at me like, "yeah...but that'll never happen". I told her that there was something for her behind the couch. She was confused, so Sierra pulled them out. She still didn't quite get it. Her face looked like "oh, look...Sierra has what I've always wanted...great". Sierra held them out to her and said, "no, these are for you"....all of a sudden her little face lit up and she was jumping up and down and screaming "I love them, I love them!!".
It was great...you always dream of making someone so excited and happy with a gift that they jump up and down in excitement. Unfortunately for those of us from the US, our kids are generally so accustomed to getting the things they want that we rarely see this kind of joy exhibited. Her excitement made me so excited and happy that I kept on talking about it for 3 days. Sierra grew quite somber and thoughtful, and this led to a great conversation about how much it means to be appreciated for the things we do for one another and how when we feel appreciated we want to do more for each other. I noticed her really trying in the next few days to show her excitement about small things...this is an area of struggle for her and it is a source of disappointment for me when she takes without gratitude. It's an area we are working on and could use your prayers!!
For the both of us, it was wonderful to be to be used by God to bless Jasmin and her family. It was so cute...literally 15 kids from the neighborhood all came running to see what the fuss was about and all the girls immediately began playing together with the Barbies - it was truly a blessing to us to be a part of the excitement!!
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