Today Petrona doesn’t smile. The smile that overwhelms in the face of adversity, that endears hope and devours pain, is missing. We all feel it.  Today her pain transcends time. Sergio’s treatment seems futile; the pain is drawing Petrona back to the moment in the fire, when the insufferable pain she couldn’t feel then, and her life of pain in the subsequent months, was beginning to engulf her. Sergio, however, is unfazed. “When I come next time, there will be a very great surprise for you!” he says in Tzotzil, Petrona’s Mayan dialect. He translates his words into French and then English to engage hope in not only Petrona, but all those in the room who come from abroad to volunteer their help.  Petrona is a fourteen-year-old Mayan girl who lives […]