The long and winding tale I am about to recount began with a friendship. Simple, pure, life-giving friendship. A tale of two friends, a terribly unfortunate misunderstanding, and the many tumultous moments that followed.

My friend's name is Adam. One of two American boys currently residing here, Adam is the 22-year-old nephew of the ministry's founder, and for the last two months he's been here getting to know the children of Hogar Amiguitos.

Adam and I became fast friends when I arrived. His fun-loving, easy-going, light-hearted Texan conversation style meshes well with my question-asking, hypothesis raising, joke-cracking, button-pushing ways. One of our first conversations led to me recommending he check out Driscoll's sermon series on the Song of Songs, which I had just recently watched on my iPod. He was interested, so on Thursday night I brought out my iPod for him to borrow so that he might watch them at his own convenience.

Fast-forward to Sunday afternoon, when Adam and I had caught a taxi into Jinotega and were wandering the streets, talking idly about our lives and religion, and in the course of conversation Driscoll came up again. I asked if he'd had the chance yet to watch any of the sermons on my iPod and I heard a response that froze me on the spot: "What do you mean? You never gave it to me."

It seemed that on Thursday night I, not wanting to shove my prostheletizing iPod down his throat, had somehow not made it clear to him that I was giving it to him to take it back to his room that night, and so both he and I had for three days assumed that the iPod was safely in the possession of the other. This assumption was, of course, aided by the fact that the iPod was not in the room the next day, and had not been seen lying around by us or anyone else since then.

Upon our return to the home, the rest of the story quickly unravelled itself:

One of the 11-year old boys had discovered the iPod in the salon on Friday morning, snuck it with him to school (despite our daily backpack checks and pat-downs), and had sold it to a 9-year-old boy in his class. Stories varied amongst the children about how much he had recieved for the item (which is a 30GB video iPod, originally costing about $300 and costing about the same to replace), but when it all boiled down, he had originally asked for 115 cordobas (which about $5.50 Canadian) but had recieved in the end 5 cordobas, or the equivalent of 25¢.

There are a lot of words that probably come to mind now, but I'm sure "smart kid" isn't one of them. More dissapointing to me than the fact that my iPod was long gone was that these kids don't even have the slightest knowledge of the cost (or the value) of the items that they so easily take and destroy or resell for less than a chocolate bar costs.

The emotions going through me could be discribed as nothing more than incredible sadness and grief, feelings which had nothing to do with a piece of electronics slightly bigger than a deck of cards. I felt sad and grieved for this boy and his actions, for how he so could quickly and so easily commit an act of such gravity, which could never so easily be undone. I also knew that he, as well of many other children here, know nothing else but to steal; and if caught, then to lie; and if punished, then to fight. And moreover, he, as the other children here, have no idea of the value of a dollar, which is in and of itself a very very sad thing.

As for my iPod, while it is no small thing, to me it is only a thing. It is a tool that I use for things like Driscoll Group, and while useful, my day-to-day life doesn't depend upon it. Truthfully, I would never have brought it with me to Nicaragua had I not been reconciled to the possibility of losing, breaking, or having it stolen here. To me, its value was that it held about 40 Mars Hill sermons, which allowed me to bring with me a lot more food for thought than I would have been able to carry in paperback form.

I had been told by the staff that I would be given the task of naming his concequences, and I had four main criteria for myself:
1) I wanted his punishment to involve some form of restitution (making it right),
2) I didn't want it to resemble the seemingly purposeless punishment of long-term solitary confinement in one's rooms that the boys often recieve for their most serious offenses.
3) I didn't want it to be more difficult than necessary.
4) I didn't want it to be considered "soft".

Honestly, what I want for this boy is a change of heart, which nothing external can impose. But I'm hoping and praying that God will reform his heart, and that my chosen punishment may be a part of a valuable and life-changing lesson for him. Optomistic, I know.

But what I truly want for this boy is for him to have seen his last day as a thief.

*There is, however a conclusion to this tale, which I will post whenever I can... it shall be entitled Small Change Pt 2.