A Visit with my godchild, Juva, and her family

This post was actually from last week:

Today I went to visit Juva, a beautiful 7 year old girl who is my godchild.  

Today was a holiday, part of the upcoming festivities celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the school.  The family now had 4 children, the youngest, Chilina, only a few weeks old.  Alina, their mother has the exhausted look of new mothers.  

Chilina has been up all night and is sleeping all day.  Junior, the father, is the typical proud papa. 

The baby sleeps in a small laundry basket filled with blankets when she is not sleeping in bed with her parents. 

 The older children take turns touching and kissing the baby.  They offer me a beer, and it is only when they bring only one beer that I realize I should not have accepted because even a beer is an extravagance for this family.  I thank them, tell them that I cannot drink the whole beer and then they save it until Junior returns.  The baby sleeps in bed with her parents for now; she will move into the room with her older sister when she is older.  They are happy because they have finally been able to put a metal roof on the part of the house that was covered only with tarps which leaked when it rained.  Juva sings and dances the dances she will do for the Mass celebrating the school’s anniversary.  It is good to feel at home and to realize that loving families, at their core, are the same everywhere.