Mennonite Weekly Review

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia — Through Samuelito Day Care Center, love and laughter touch the lives of many children born into desperate circumstances.

Ely Masabi teaches children at Samuelito Day Care Center, a ministry of the Bolivian Evangelical Mennonite Church in Santa Cruz, Bolivia — Photo by Ryan Miller/Mennonite Mission Network

This ministry of the Bolivian Evangelical Mennonite Church finds much to celebrate in the midst of daily struggles to survive.

On Aug. 31, a grand fiesta marked Samuelito’s first anniversary.

The president of the Bolivian Mennonite Church, Léonidas Saucedo, shared a message of how God uses what the world considers insignificant to create lasting change. Day-care personnel and children led worship and performed traditional dances to honor a year of ministry among some of the most vulnerable citizens of Barrio La Moliendita, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Santa Cruz.

“We, of course, know that poverty is a very complex problem with no simple answers,” said Margrit Kipfer Barrón, who helped the church begin the day-care ministry while serving the Bolivian Mennonite Church through Mennonite Mission Network.

She named colonialism and globalization as two root causes of the system that oppresses the families of Samuelito’s children.

“We can’t undo in a few months what has been done during 500 years of history,” Kipfer Barrón said. “What we can do is try to help with the resources we have, and that’s often starting with the most obvious needs and then if the opportunities arrive, going deeper.”

Going deeper includes finding excuses to celebrate life. During its first year, the day-care center also threw parties for birthdays, Mother’s Day and even turned a hygiene workshop into a festival. The celebrations also help welcome children who arrive.

Three-year-old Darling and her baby brother, Hector, arrived at Samuelito in March. Because their 19-year-old mother was inexperienced, single and had little income, the children were in “a terrible state,” said Yuneth Vargas de Moreno, director of the day-care center. “The baby was malnourished, and the little girl was very thin. She didn’t talk at all.”

The mother had separated from the children’s father, a drug addict who was physically abusive.