Mission Moroto Stories: Hope Telo
At Mission Moroto, we have a delightful child named Hope Telo. When she first came to us years ago, she was always falling down face-first and scratching up her face on the ground. She was forever going about with scabs on her face from healing wounds. Finally, we figured out that she had severe epilepsy, which caused her to regularly lose consciousness and fall face-first to the ground. After multiple hospital visits and various medications, she is finally doing much better.
But let me tell you, this girl is a character! She says the funniest things and keeps us laughing all the time.
One day, she was sitting next to Rebekah, rubbing Rebekah’s arm so hard that it began to hurt. Rebekah said, “Ouch, Telo! What are you doing?”
Telo replied, “I’m trying to find your color. Where is the black?”
Another time, we were all sitting on Rebekah’s front porch when we suddenly heard Telo’s voice shouting, “STOP FIGHTING! GO TO BED!”
We looked around and discovered that she was lecturing a group of rocks she had lined up on the ground!
On another occasion, Papa Matthew thought he would make her laugh, so he took her toy baby doll, held it to his chest, and said gently, “Keliling, baby, keliling,” which means, “Quiet, baby, quiet.”
Then he patted the baby’s back and said a little more firmly, “Keliling, baby, keliling.”
He continued with increasing sternness and more vigorous patting of the baby’s back until he finally yelled, “I SAID, KELILING, BABY!!!” and threw the baby doll up into the air.
By this time, a large crowd of little ones had gathered, and they fell over laughing, rolling on the ground and holding their bellies.
Telo ran laughing to pick up the baby, brought it back to Papa Matthew, and said, “Again, Papa Matthew! Again!”
No matter how many times he did it, they laughed, clapped, and begged for more.
For the next several weeks, every time Papa Matthew came out of Rebekah’s house, someone would come running up, holding out a doll and shouting, “Papa Matthew! Keliling, baby, keliling!”
Papa Matthew would just sigh and say, “Well, I did this to myself,” and then repeat the performance to great laughter and cheers.
Once in a while, there would be a real little child crying, and Papa Matthew would gently pat the child’s back and say, “Keliling, baby, keliling.”
The child’s eyes would get big, the crying would immediately stop, and everyone would burst out laughing!
It’s impossible to describe all the joy Hope Telo brings to Mission Moroto, but it is immense.
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