Shopping Trip

The following was written in July 2009, by Crystal Fox. She sponsors Yaneli, Cristina, and Camili, and volunteered with Dove Missions for 2 weeks.

After club Linda and I took the three little girls that I decided to sponsor shopping for school uniforms. Not an easy task with three very shy little girls who speak only Spanish...Thank God for Linda!Anyway I was expecting to pay abou $50/uniform. I bought them each one skirt, two tops, two pairs of undies, two pairs of socks, an undershirt and shoes.Then I thought I`d get them each a notebook and told them to pick one out.Then we went down the isle to get pencils and guess what? They had STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE stuff!!! So now each girl has Strawberry pencils, colored pencils, crayons, pencil cases and book bags.Plus we got some erasers and pencil sharpeners.I would have liked to let them each pick out a top or something on their own but I had to be back to meet the boys and it was getting late.
The girls are all so shy but seeing them so carefully choose something as simple as underwear made my day! And they all loved their book bags:) When we got to the school Hilda took me to meet their mom and she was so sweet. She hugged me and kissed me and couldn`t thank me enough.I got Hilda to tell her that I was going to sponsor her family and she hugged me all over again. The girls hugged and kissed me too and Camili was smiling so big!!!Just seeing that made it all worth it:)In the end I paid about 3900RD. That`s about $130 Canadian. Can you imagine getting all that stuff at home for that much?

The girls live with their mom and grandmother. Their father is dead, I don`t know if this is recent or not but they are probably the quietest, most shy girls in the club.They live right on the water in Playa Oeste and I know that might sound good but their back yard is basically a garbage dump.Many of the kids play in the water and use it for cleaning and even search throught the garbage for things to play with or treasures to sell.Their house is cement with a tin roof and while better than many here, is something most of us can`t imagine. They have no windows, only a front and back door. Think how hot it must get when it is 115 degrees here!