In Search of Angels

Mid-day, Nathan Hernandez, 20, drives me from the guesthouse in search of a ceramic butterfly and then to the Nehemiah Center.

I ask him a question that’s been nagging me since Jairo told me about Managua household security. You see, the Hernandez guesthouse has no walls, no wire, no dogs.

“Why?” I ask.

Nathan smiles. “Because we rely on God to protect us.”

He reads my body language perfectly.

“No, really, we do!” he says.

Then I remember his mother’s answer of last year, which I had only half-believed. “Los ángeles nos protegen. (The angels protect us.)”  Across the Spanish-English language barrier, that was as much as she could communicate.

Nathan, fluent in English, expands. “One of us is almost always home.”

There are exceptions, though, he says, when all of them are out.  And his mother doesn’t want to feel boxed in. “This is much nicer.”

I agree.

Besides, he says, it is hidden from the road, behind other walled houses and at the end of a long, L-shaped lane.  “It is very private.”

He tells me the large grassy lot beyond the trees is also theirs. He chuckles. That would be a lot of fence!

They had a dog, Spike, last year, but someone stole him from the yard. Spike was the only theft because a Hernandez was at home.

I try on Nathan’s shoes. I wonder how I might tell that story if it were mine. (I really think that I would have  wall and wire and dogs, but let’s suppose. . .)

Influenced by North American secularism, I think I might reverse his order, with God’s protection as an afterthought.

Señor, abre mis ojos a tus ángeles. (Lord, open my eyes to your angels.)