My first mention here of Hogar Sagrado Corazón was in September 2010. It was then that our daughter M arrived in her new (temporary) home in Bolivia.
As described on the Salesian Lay Missioners website, “Hogar Sagrado Corazón (Sacred Heart Home) houses 100+ girls who have been abandoned, orphaned, or were in some way being abused in their homes. According to one of the Sisters here, about 30-40% have been victims of rape. The volunteers’ number one job here is to love them...”
And at just over nine months and counting, our M remains there selflessly loving her way through a year given to mission work.
My image of the place over many months had been growing and increasing in realism. As we would hear stories from M and as we would see the few disconnected pictures that she had managed to snap off to us I had tried to arrange things in my mind and to imagine the place and the girls and their lives at the Hogar as they might have really been.
Soon I began to realize that what I had developed was more an abstract image of jumbled places and disjoined people. So I began to pay closer attention and look and listen for signs that would help me to arrange the puzzling pieces of place correctly in my mind.
It was at this point where what was once a lackluster acceptance of our upcoming travel to Bolivia became a combination (in equal parts) of eager anticipation and disquieting dread.
What had my mind created from all these fragmented images? Was my image complete and accurate or faulty in some (or many) respects? Mild apprehension settled in. What chimera awaited me? Would my sweet little M be living as Maria von Trapp or Miss Hannigan? In any case, my image of the place was on course with a reckoning.And so it was that on Friday, May 6 Denise, my imagination and I boarded a plane for Bolivia – or more accurately from Omaha to Chicago to Miami to LaPaz, Bolivia and finally to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
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