It´s just a library. That´s what I tell myself. But something else is happening. I´m not sure what.
This afternoon a dad we´d never met before came in with his daughter. She was about seven years old and we´d never met her either. “I´ll be back at 5.45 to pick her up,” he said. He left. She stayed. At 5.45 he picked her up. It was fine, but I´m still trying to figure out the trust he put in us strangers. It´s not like libraries like this are common. We are the only thing like this in the city.
About the time he picked her up, one of our regular boys came running in from school. Smiling his sweet smile, he said—out of breath—, “I invited some friends and I wanted to be here first.” I thought five or six friends. He´d invited twenty and they all came. Apparently he wasn´t the only one to invite friends. Within about five minutes the place was packed. We had probably 50 kids come in, and the space is rather small. Three of our regular boys jumped in and started helping out. They weren´t experts, but it helped a lot. It was too many people, really. It feels as though the snowball has started rolling and we´ve got to do something before tomorrow so that it doesn´t get out of control.
It´s a library! It wasn´t a run on the bank. A famous soccer player wasn´t visiting. It wasn´t a day after Thanksgiving sale. It is a library. All we have are books, a few games, and our love for the kids and the future of Peru.
What do I make of this? There is a hunger… a desire… for this kind of thing. We are the only thing like this in the city. It´s new. It´s different. I know that some of this is just cultural. They want a piece of the pie, so to speak. But there is also something deeper that I can´t quite put my finger on. We are trusting them and they are coming through. So far. I pray that continues.
Let the little children come unto me….
You are doing and awesome job! I pray for your continued success!