Twenty tons of love and solidarity left Saint Augustine’s Collage in Valladolid made up also with donations from San Agustín College in Chiclana, from Romareda College in Zaragoza, from the town of Viana in Navarra and from some communities of Madrid as well as from the Commission for Missions and the Premio Arce Foundation of the Polytechnic University of Madrid in cooperation with a commercial business.
This time the star gift is a carpentry workshop which will kick start an arts and crafts school. Besides the workshop where a lot of hopes are placed for the opportunities it offers to the young people of Kamabai, there are foodstuffs, medicine, clothes, toys, tasty chorizos and hams, plates, ceramics, a television, and even a washing machine. In June last year, in the fifth container, two electric generators were sent which will bring to life the workshops of the professional school.
Solidarity of big and small
Each container has its own history and protagonists. Some come back with the same freshness and unique sense of giving like Carlos de la Fuente. He is truly special, generous to a fault, and totally given to helping those most in need and depressed. He is retired and comes to Valladolid for one week each month to look after his elderly mother. That’s when the city is caught up in a whirlwind: the Daughters of Charity, the Little Sisters of the Poor, homes for the elderly, homes for children with aids, containers with humanitarian aid, nothing is too small for the infinite resources he receives from where we don’t know and so generously distributes.
Other types of people come on the scene too, small and friendly, like Elena, an eight year old girl who saw me collecting toys and came up to me with a huge and cheeky smile: “what a lot of toys! Can I have one?” I just stopped and she added “ if there’s any left over I would like that little bear”. I said yes, she could have it, but her mother realized and told her they were for “the poor children and that wasn’t right to ask for one”. She was disappointed and surprised, she gave me back the bear with an enormous hug and kiss: “ tell the poor children that I love them very much, not to be sad and tomorrow I will give them my own bear”. She kept her promise and next morning she brought me her big bear and a special drawing for the “Owner of the Toys”.
Diego is another one of those marvelous and surprising children. He went up to his father and from the hip said: “ now write to your African son that we have prepared the letter and present”. Or Gonzalo, so tiny he is barely a palm from the ground who wrote to his “brother from Sierra Leona”, “ We are sending you clothes and food. You’re the best!”
Or the commentary between Carlos and Mario, two children from top juniors, who when the container was leaving, were so taken by it that they said to each other: “they’ll be so excited with our presents, it would be great to be there when they open them.” What have you sent them, I asked?” “ well notebooks and pens, clothes and some toys” and the asked me in turn, “ Do you think they will come to University here when they finish their studies there?” They might, I said. “Well they can come to Valladolid with us. Not Madrid like Yamasita. They will study at home with us”. Raquel, one of the catechists sent me an e-mail that night saying; “I asked Lain how he spent the afternoon helping to fill the container. Do you know what he answered? One of the best experiences of my life”.