[Quick definitions (transcendent) --adjective:   beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding]

Today, after our trip to La Cancha to get the kitchen glass cabinet door fixed, we stopped to get a cake for our daughter’s (Lorien’s) birthday today. [Happy B'day sweetie!]

As we sat at the sidewalk table, waiting for our taxi, a young boy came by begging for money. That he wanted money was obvious by the universal upraised palm and pitiful expression accompanying the waving up and down of said hand.

The young boy accompanied his thinly-veiled demand with many spanish words. We did our standard “no entiendo” ["I don't understand"] when we feel that giving would not be appropriate.

So he thought he would help by interpreting. He leaned in and said firmly, “Monn-ee!” I leaned in and replied just as firmly, “NO!”

I followed it with a smile because he was so cute! In my broken Spanish, I asked him why he wasn’t in school. He said that he got out at 12:30. I don’t know if this is true or not, because I haven’t heard of other schools letting out for his age group, so I asked if he was 9 years old. He said that he was and I told him that my son was 10.

Seeing an opening, he asked for a “helado”. We did the “no entiendo” thing again because I really wasn’t sure what he was saying. So he pointed to the ice cream cone picture on Lorien’s torte box (birthday cake) and said “helado”! Steven wanted to give him something, so we asked how much an ice cream was and what was his favorite flavor.

Well… that fellow-chocolate lover went away with 5 Bolivianos! lol… We really hoped that he wasn’t going back to a drunken father to turn over his earnings. That happens so often when children are begging money. But instead we saw him with a group of kids his own age and his face was beaming.

I’m sure that part of it was, in his mind, having “won” over the Gringos. Whatever… if that had been MY little boy, I would want someone to care about him.

I can’t care for every child in the entire world.

But when God allows one of the little ones to cross my path, I will try to love them as He would want me to love them.