pain

Saturday afternoon at a church downtown that has many, many International School connections, the praise team was practicing for Sunday morning worship. One of the team members ran out to move his car because looters were going through the street ahead of a protest that was marching. A few men in motorcycles drove ahead of the march, and, seeing this man moving his car, pulled out a gun. He ran for cover in the church door, but was hit by a bullet as his family looked on. His family included his 6-year-old daughter who is my class. She saw the whole thing. She saw her dad bleed to death on the church steps.

The death was random; the shooters declared that he was a Micheletti supporter (there was no way they could have known). Later, the same shooters came back to take pictures of him and try to pass it off as the police killing a Mel supporter. This has unfortunately spread through the media as well, thus making this man's already tragic death an even bigger tragedy. Now he has been turned into a martyr for a cause he did not support.

But tomorrow I return to a class of bright-eyed 6-year-olds with the job of explaining that Marcela's dad is with Jesus and won't be coming back. But I don't want them to know about the world they're living in right now.