Roberto

I need to tell you a story of hope, and I'm not sure quite how to tell it. Two boys were sharing a computer today, and so since the first one had been on for a while, I asked him to share. The second boy, Roberto, shook his head and declined. Roberto is on the far left in the photo.

I told him it was easy, and asked him to put his hand on the keyboard. He shook his head again. I pointed at his right hand, and he reluctantly put it up on the keyboard. I realized then that it wasn't that he didn't want to try, but that he only had three fingers.

In my broken Spanish, I told him that computers work fine for people with less fingers, and that there are computers for blind people and deaf people too. Then he put his other hand up on the keyboard, and it only had two fingers.

I took his two hands, and moved his fingers to the "f" and the "j". With a little help, Roberto typed his first letters with his two fingers. You should have seen the smile.

When we finished class, Roberto printed his first letter, addressed to his papa, thanking him for sending him to school.

When we called our trip Hand Up, we would never have thought that the phrase would mean what it did today, on so many levels.

We'll never forget today, and we are thankful for all of your hands that made a difference for Roberto with less hands.

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