Celebrating Wilmer

Above: Wilmer unmasks his spider man costume on his 15th birthday so that he can open his presents! Below: Wilmer smiles for the camera on his birthday on June 11.

Below: Wilmer, dressed as Spiderman, takes a hit at the Spiderman piñata we got him for his birthday!

To read this post in printable form, open it at www.micahcentral.org/blogs/Wilmerjune09.doc

Wilmer celebrated his 15th birthday on June 11. While that may not seem like a huge milestone for your normal teenager, it certainly is for Wilmer when you consider that it is the first time he has ever celebrated his birthday! Until last year, he had no idea what day or month he was born in; so limited was his education, in fact, that he really didn’t even understand what a month was.

Wilmer will pass another milestone in July: his second anniversary at the Micah Project. This is nothing short of a miracle when you consider that this little boy spent most of his life on the streets. Having a dad in jail and a mom with limited mental abilities left Wilmer in the dubious care of his older brother…the very person that introduced him to the addictive fumes of yellow glue when he was just nine. When we found Wilmer living with the other street kids under a bridge in the market area of Tegucigalpa, he was still just a little boy who loved to play with the toys and games that we brought to the bridge. In fact, the only difference between him and any other little boy is that he could only play the games we brought with one hand; he was unwilling to let go of the bottle of yellow glue that he clutched with his other one.

What makes the changes in Wilmer’s life so miraculous is how impossible that change seemed in the beginning. Going cold turkey off yellow glue left him with bouts of anger and great anxiety. He left the Micah House for weeks at a time during his first year with us, always going back to his bottle of yellow glue and his life on the streets. When he was in the house, his education was so painfully difficult that we wondered if the glue had permanently damaged his brain. Our patient teachers went through the ABCs with him for months, with absolutely no progress.

And then something clicked. Even as his body began to put on muscle and take the shape of a teenager, almost overnight he began to attach letters to sounds, sounds to words, and words to meaning. When he finally “got it”, he became a voracious reader, reading anything in sight. Every night before bed, he’d come into my office and read a few pages out of the children’s Bible that we had bought for him. Just a few months later, he was reading a real adult Bible in our devotional time with the other Micah boys!

Wilmer seems determined to catch up for lost time. He applies all of his energy and concentration to everything he does. He loves going to church, and has been memorizing Bible verses every week. On his soccer team, he is nick-named “the Meteor” because of his ability to run and run without getting tired. Last year, our musically-gifted Marvin Morazan helped Wilmer record a simple song about life on the streets; now Wilmer keeps asking when he can record ten more songs so that he can produce his first album!

Besides having great bursts of personal growth lately, Wilmer has also become an empathetic and caring young man. Every week, he helps his mom purchase groceries so that his toddler siblings don’t go hungry. He also goes with the other Micah boys every Tuesday to spend time with abandoned senior citizens at a nearby shelter.

Because all that has happened in Wilmer’s life lately, we wanted to make his 15th birthday a big celebration. Since we had a group of friends and supporters in from Houston, we asked them to bring lots of decorations. We hung up a Spiderman piñata, and had a raucous and fun party! Halfway through, Wilmer donned his Spiderman outfit so that he could do a better job of whacking the candy out of the Spiderman piñata! I think that’s one thing I love the most about Wilmer: even as he quickly grows into manhood, he still has the sparkle of an innocent little boy. After the chaos of the piñata, he sat un-hooded in his Spiderman outfit and eloquently thanked everyone for helping him get off the streets and changing his life. I could hear in his words the budding wisdom of a great man of God coming from the heart of this amazing fifteen year old second grader, just two years removed from the dark blankness of street life.

At the end of Wilmer’s birthday party, I called out what I traditionally do: ¡un abrazo cada uno! (A hug from each one!). With that, fifty of Wilmer’s biggest fans smothered him with hugs and words of congratulations. And as we hugged him, I think most of us realized what a blessing Wilmer is to us! His life is a clear example that God can redeem anyone, no matter how much darkness has threatened to rob the image of God from them.

Please pray for Wilmer in the months and years to come. It’s easier to be a fifteen year old second grader than it is to be an 18 year old sixth grader! Pray that Wilmer will continue to be patient with God’s plan for his life even when he is not changing and advancing quite as fast as he is now. And pray that he would know how much we love him and much we are celebrating what God is doing in his life!

Muchas gracias,

Michael Miller