Bambu, Continued

The engine groans to a halt, signaling for people to begin filing down the aisle and out onto the gravel road. As the bus surges forward again to make its 5:30 stop in Suretka, you can look down a hill on the opposite side of the road and see the elementary school of Bambu. It is a wide, single-story building with green cement walls and a tin roof. Extending out from the main structure is an awning of sorts to cover the...

Bambu, Costa Rica Travels

Daniel Wagner, a high school senior, chronicles his summer travels to Costa Rica… If you’re on your way to the Native reserves of Talamanca, Costa Rica, you will undoubtedly find yourself on a school bus, climbing the steep slopes of the mountainside on a gravel road so narrow, you can grab the leaves off of a tree as they brush across the window. On more than one occasion you may even be required to ford a river....

Best Friends

Deb Joseph, our Volunteer Coordinator who operated a six-week summer camp in Kentucky recently sent me a bunch of pictures of children at the camp. As I looked through the pictures, I couldn’t help but smile. When we visited Deb to see how the summer camp was going, she told us about a young man named Sam, who she was particularly grateful participated in the camp. Sam is 13 years old and very shy. He had never really had a...

A New Room for Megan…

On a recent trip to Kentucky I had the pleasure of visiting one of our sponsored children’s homes. Andrew lives in a small mobile home at the top of a mountain with his younger siblings Billy and Megan. To get there, you travel up a long, winding gravel road. The school bus doesn’t go up the mountain, so to get to school, Andrew and his siblings have to walk down the mountain. It’s easy to see how their home could be...